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A comment on Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1.4B two years ago. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1... by MarkCole on Sunday April 30, 2017 @10:34AM (#14231675)
The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year.

There is room for them to carve out a niche of Microsoft Phones earning them a couple of billion in revenue, and a couple of hundred million in profit. However for a big company like Microsoft that money is a drop in the ocean, and they want to own the market which at this point in time is unrealistic for them unless they can produce something truely groundbreaking.

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Re:Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1... by jliptzin on Sunday April 30, 2017 @12:22PM (#14232268)
It's the ecosystem. My friend swore by his Android, always telling me how he could never switch to iOS. Until one day one app that he REALLY wanted to use had a nice polished iOS version but the Android version was clearly total crap with no obvious intention to improve, since then he's switched to iOS and isn't talking too much about Android anymore.

So even if you have a small following, those people eventually drop off too one by one over things like this.

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Re:Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1... by vorticalbox on Sunday April 30, 2017 @01:35PM (#14232727)
That could be said for any phone system, the photo gallery and editing on windows phone is extremely good.

Your friend could have easily gone from iPhone to android for the same reason.

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Re:Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1... by PhasmaFelis on Sunday April 30, 2017 @06:11PM (#14234141)
I think the point is that any given person is more likely to find an app they "can't live without" on Android/iOS than on WinPhone, just because there's so many more to choose from.
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Re:Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1... by jl6 on Sunday April 30, 2017 @03:45PM (#14233455)
But new phones are incredibly sophisticated devices requiring a lot of investment to create and bring to market, so maybe even billions a year of revenue might not be enough.
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Re:Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1... by MarkCole on Tuesday May 02, 2017 @03:12AM (#14244523)
That's true hence from that revenue they might only be able to squeeze tens or maybe hundreds of millions in profit from it. Which for Microsoft is in their eyes probably not worth the effort.
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Re:Microsoft phone revenue fell to $5M last quarter, from $1... by enraged_camel on Sunday April 30, 2017 @11:52AM (#14232096)
>>The minority that likes their phones may be miniscule in comparison to say the iPhone. But in the phone market a small market share can still equal billions a year.

Ah yes, the good old "even if we captured only 1% of this huge market we would make billions!" argument.

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