This evening I attended a very interesting event. Microsoft hosted Windows Phone 7 for iPhone OS Developers. This was our regular Silicon Valley iOS Group meet-up. But today it was held at Microsoft headquarters at Mountain View. No I am not dreaming. This actually happened!
Microsoft wanted to present Windows Phone 7 to iPhone developers and attract them to port their applications to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft presented the tools, the overall development methodology and constructed an application on the fly. That was quite impressive. They also brought in a third party development team who develop on iOS, Android and Windows Phone and had them show their app and share the development experience across platforms.
Nice touches:
- The development environment was based on regular VisualStudio and SQL Server 2008. They showed the development using C# and XAML.
- Two primary development frameworks are XNA (for game development) and SilverLight.
- There was a visual design environment where you could drag and drop design elements on a canvas and then program the events (OnClick etc.) and edit the code-behind. This metaphor is already very well known to many developers.
- It was very simple to develop using a DB on the local machine and then pushing the DB over to a remote Azure Cloud. The migration of local data to the cloud (at least for small example) was nice. Support for SQL Azure and Migration tools finally seems to be coming together.
- The programming model was built around developing Against Web Services which made it very simple to change.
- Unlike Android, submission to Windows Market Place needs to be vetted by Microsoft and hence there is tighter control over security. Pretty much like Apple.
- There are some really innovative controls like Panorama which shows Microsoft has tried to set itself apart and not just copy iPhone, the way Android has been doing.
The rough edges:
- Windows Phone 7 has no enterprise distribution model. The Application market place is only for the consumer. So if a corporation wanted to build an Application and distribute through a store they cannot do it today. Please note that Apple has an enterprise version of their developer license which allows a corporation to distribute their apps.
- It did not seem to me that Windows Phone 7 has true multitasking for applications. An incoming phone call would send a running app to tombstone. Which means it is where iOS was in the previous generation.
- Windows phone has to support multiple devices and form factors (for example phones can come with or without sliding keyboard). Although this is nothing compared to the dreaded Android fragmentation, but this puts an onus on QA. Here are some choices: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/buy/7/default.aspx
- They do not have the concept of an ADHOC build. This is used to give iPhone Applications to BETA testers without cycling through the store.
- When asked “What are the top selling Apps in your marketplace?” there was no clear answer.
My take
Overall Windows Phone 7 seemed behind iOS and will continue to do so. However, they have a few things. The widely known and understood development model and the foothold in the enterprise. Also, with the recent success of Kinect they seem to have their mojo. Time will tell whether the Nokia marriage will last happily ever after or end in a messy divorce. But it does seem like they are making a sincere effort to win the hearts and minds of developers.
Tidbits
- When asked whether they would port their apps to WP7 several developers raised hands.
- Flurry is reporting a sharper increase in developer interest with WP7.http://wmpoweruser.com/after-nokia-deal-flurry-confirms-windows-phone-7-overtook-blackberry-in-developer-interest/
- If you want to remember one link, keep this in mind: http://create.msdn.com/en-US/
Thought I would share this with you all.
Best Regards, Somnath
12 comments:
Looks like MSFT is successful in their first step, i.e. getting pro iOS developers like you to their forum.
Antroid and iOS are already there in Asia but the smart phone mobile user battle is not huge countries like India and China where population is more than 1 billion. I feel who captures market share there, they are going to be winners. Nokia has good presence in those countries. Lets hope NOKIA and MSFT tie-up gets revenues.
Well, things look a bit different after Nokia surrendered!
Nice article. Thanks for sharing.
I was wondering if anyone has published recent market data on WP7 - devices sold, # of apps etc. Do you know?
Pretty Interesting article...
Nice summary of the talk. I think you covered most of the major points, but you left out one major "rough edge" that was asked about by several members of the audience: The lack of options for people wanting to port their existing apps to WP7. No C or C++, no OpenGL, no linking to third-party libraries (unless they're also C#/VB). The only answer from Microsoft was "you have to re-write your app". Fine if your app is 1000 lines of Obj-C. Not so fine if your app is a product of 5 man-years of development effort.
Although C# & XNA are easy to learn, I think this limitation is a major hurdle for existing iPhone/Android shops who would like to also hit WP7.
Thank you for your article!
Thanks Ryan.
Yes, I missed out the gaming aspects.
Also missed out the good folks of Falafel Software.
They were excellent in providing a comparison point.
Very nice article Somnath. I totally agree with your view points regarding Microsoft in the enterprise. They are so far entrenched in this business that I believe that it will extremely difficult for the other players to even make an attempt at unseating them. The Redmond connection to the enterprise and the current development platform already familiar in most developer communities, I feel that this could be a MAJOR view shift to the current landscape.
Somnath,
Thanks for this great write-up. Did they give any indication when enterprise distribution will be introduced? It seems to me that this will be a big component of Microsoft's APP strategy.
It will be very interesting to watch how the relationship between Nokia and Microsoft.
Hi Somnath,
Really appreciate you capturing all relevant points in your blog. The blog is informative and your thoughts and assessments stimulate new angles to evaluate...
As was stated by Big Mike in the blog comments before, Enterprise adoption is key for the platform's success and MS knows this well.
A few months back, I did watch MS folks demonstrate Windows 7 and its seamless interface to Office applications - specifically OneNote and the Real Time collaboration that it facilitates.
Successful entry into the Enterprise drives developers to port or write new applications. Many of the individual application developers would love to see their apps on all leading platforms and will make time to get their apps to work on the Microsoft platform now that Nokia tie-up provides them a huge market to serve. The first ones certainly will get the early adopters attention and dollars.
MS is good at providing developer tools and with time, they will make it easier to develop and port applications written for other platforms and devices. Their seamless integration to Azure makes the mobile platform more useful.
This is an excellent review. One interesting point that I think needs to be considered is the usage vs cost of smartphones vs feature phones in the India/China market. Nokia's highest selling phones (that make up it's 35%+ market share) are feature phones. Assuming that MS/Nokia will attack India/China markets for smartphones (as they are already far behind iPhone and Android in the US and other markets), the main driver to smartphone adaptation will be data, especially media (audio and video). For media consumption to take off, the mobile network infrastructure has to guarantee the bandwidth required to stream the media services to the device. I know that network infrastructure is improving in these countries, but the question is will the improvement be fast enough to allow MS/Nokia to penetrate these markets without falling further behind globally to iPhone and Android in smartphones.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20040926-266.html?tag=topStories1
Windows Phone to oytshine by 2015 - http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/29/technology/windows_phone_7_forecast/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin
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