Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from 2011

The fallacy that WP7 is immune from the race to the bottom

People left and right are claiming that if Nokia had chosen Android, they would be one vendor amongst many competing on thinner and thinner margins, while WP7 somehow isolates them for that. As far as I can tell, that is now commonly accepted as truth. It is amusing how a fallacy turns into "common sense" when repeated enough times. In reality, of course, people don't buy operating systems. They buy phones, and they would not buy a more expensive phone if a cheaper one offered the same capabilities given comparable manufacture quality and design. This is such a simple and fundamental truth that it is almost unbelievable that it is ignored. Apple is always used as a counter-example, but in reality an unlocked iPhone costs about the same as any other high-end smartphone with comparable parameters. Granted, people will pay more for good design or even just a fancy logo, but the name of the OS running in the phone hardly even enters the equation.  In particular the notion