Expect news on the future of Windows Phone before Feb 19

Posted by Noni

Vice President Windows Joe Belfiore has tweeted a message in which he promised more information soon for Windows Phone fans. He writes:

“First, as we end our 2014, I want to acknowledge the comments and letters you all have sent, noting that you’ve been frustrated seeing Microsoft launch new applications like Office on iOS and Android, without accompanying news around what will happen on Windows Phone.”

“I want to assure you that our Office team have not forgotten Windows Phone. We’ve just aligned all of our news and announcements to a single event. You’ll hear much more about what we have planned before Chinese New Year.”

When I read something like this, I feel as if Windows Phone has been left in the hands of idiots.

PS: Chinese New Year is the 19th February.

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Noni

Thoughtful. Pragmatic. People watcher. Professional troublemaker.

Moverick says:

January 3, 2015 at 6:25 am

In same news, Paul Thurrott of WinSuperSite expresses his frustration with Microsoft’s handling of the whole situation:

After dealing with angst-filled complaints from Windows Phone users for months, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore this week tried to reassure fans that the firm “hadn’t forgotten about” them. But he did so via the Chinese microblogging service Weibo, which would make sense if those frustrated fans lived in China. Which … they don’t.

This kind of thing makes me crazy—if only Microsoft had some other means of communicating with these fans. Maybe a corporate blog of some kind? No?—because it’s emblematic of the inability to communicate that has hobbled Microsoft for years. And of the disconnect that the firm still has with its biggest fans, many of whom are thinking of jumping ship because “mobile first, cloud first” apparently really means “iOS and Android first, then we’ll see what happens.”

Anyway, when it comes to improving mobile Office, suffice to say that 2014 saw the first-ever releases of full-blown Office for iPad, iPhone and Android, major improvements to Office Online, and absolutely no changes at all to the Office Mobile that’s built-into Windows Phone, an app that dates back several years now with few if any improvements along the way. (There hasn’t been a single meaningful change to Office Mobile since Windows Phone 8.0 shipped over two years ago, at the very least.)

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It is a sad day when fans of a struggling platform begin to feel like they do not matter much to the platform.

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