"Yet Windows Phone is a dismal failure even with Nokia's huge manufacturing bulk behind it. The only sensible conclusion I can come to is that making a desirable mobile OS is far more difficult than it appears, and that there are numerous 'below the water line' effects that make a mobile OS popular."

I don't have any empirical data to back this up, but in my personal opinion a large reason why Windows Phone just isn't doing so well is because of brand association with 'Windows' and 'Microsoft'.

Microsoft's general appeal to the public is not one of hip and chic and new, which is what Windows Phone marketing has generally been about. Microsoft is associated with corporation and money and monopoly. The appeal of Windows OS to users is that people just use it and it works and sometimes it does things they don't understand and they get viruses and they get angry at it and they have to use Excel and Word. Even if Windows as a product is stellar the old moniker still lurks and it's very difficult to move away from that. People buy Windows because it's Windows. Good or bad. Doesn't matter. And Microsoft clearly has the OS marketshare muscle to force people onto Windows 8 despite it not being very favorable to many at all. Microsoft is just seen as an unappealing 'businessy' corporation for the general public. It doesn't at all attract the young or relatively middle aged chic users that it wants so hard. Windows is just seen as a business brand in general.

Apple already has a well known established brand and image, and Samsung is relatively faceless to the western market (and quite respected in the east) so much so that it can shape its brand image still (Going for the Apple look). Microsoft is simply just too well known to market Windows Phone as Windows Phone.

I honestly believe that if they just set up a different Mobile branch with a new name, rename Windows Phone to something else, and removed some of the "Windowsy" stickers on the Phone's OS, it would sell very very well. As an operating system the core apps work very well together and it's honestly better than Blackberry's and stands as a fair contender with Android in terms of polish. The only real problem is that it's just called Windows Phone.

That, and Microsoft just loves to drop support for older phones (2+ years old). That's a big no-no. Fucking over your already small userbase because you're churning out bigger and more powerful phones to go after the cash prize of young consumers does not bode well. It shows your greedy cunty side and will obviously detract already existing customers... which makes developers not so willing to make apps on your platform, however open and easy and inviting it may be. You are not Android. You do not offer the upgradability option like Android.

But unfortunately Microsoft's goal is to unify all of their products under a few 'key' Windows things. Skype is increasingly becoming more Microsofty and hotmail was turned into outlook. Neither of those things as brands are exactly super appealing. Microsoft is trying to centralize everything a la Google with it's wide plethora of apps and services while simultaneously creating a walled garden of windows only products like Apple.

When I think of outlook I think of being at work and dealing with business emails. I hate that.
I don't want to tell you what I think about when I think of Internet Explorer.
Associating that with Windows Phone doesn't make me happy. I don't want to take my internet explorer experience with me on the go.

When I think of Android I think of an open platform and flexible. Google's default apps are very open and clean and simple. Chrome mobile is just primary colors and white and sharp with some text. It doesn't fuck around but it doesn't look businessy either. Same goes for the gmail app. The plethora of adequate white space between apps and their overall simple and clean design shapes Google's image as an open and simple company. In general, that's always been how Google has marketed itself and it's products. Windows is trying to copy that same design style to some degree in Windows Phone, but it just doesn't work. That's not the company's history.

Now, going back on topic. Samsung is going to spend a few years actually just making Tizen work as an OS and polishing it, unless they somehow hijack a lot of grunt developers overnight or something. iOS has gone through a lot of polish and testing and Android has taken years to work as well as it is currently today. Yes yes, TouchWiz is Android to many Samsung users. But under the hood Android does quite a bit more than what TouchWiz lets you believe. And there's lots of things that you only learn about once you let something loose in the wild.

Sleep deprived walltexts. I am sorry HN.