Concerning Windows Phone and its relevance to the larger business

Five Lumia phones leaning against each other Nokia Lumia 630: Will enterprises bite? You could be forgiven for thinking that Microsoft has missed the boat with its Windows everywhere proposition. It’s a hybrid world in which Android, iOS, OS X and even Linux are not going away. This in turn leaves Windows Phone 8.1 as just …

[hplasm]

re:" Microsoft,... is at least familiar with the needs of enterprise IT"

The needs of enterprise IT, as defined by Microsoft, are what they want them to buy, whether they need it or not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: re:" Microsoft,... is at least familiar with the needs of enterprise IT"

Just like any other vendor in business to make money then. Except that Microsoft seem to be rather good at it. The share price is the highest it's been in a decade, and they now have a nearly completely unified offering that scales well from tiny handheld devices to the largest multi CPU servers.

Nokia already had over 20% of the UK enterprise market - and we can expect that to keep growing as Blackberry slowly fade away. Windows Phone is already and very clearly a far better choice than IOS or Android for most enterprise use, and the WP platform isn't even really mature or fully featured yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: re:" Microsoft,... is at least familiar with the needs of enterprise IT"

"Microsoft seemed to be rather good at it." TFTFY

[h4rm0ny]

Re: re:" Microsoft,... is at least familiar with the needs of enterprise IT"

>>""Microsoft seemed to be rather good at it." TFTFY"

No, you added incorrect information. MS have been bringing in quite a bit of money in the enterprise market recently. Azure, Server 2012, Windows 7, Office 365. All doing very well.

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple of problems with this

1) it's not very profitable to sell to businesses compared to you average consumer as businesses demand more active support, thus on the surface the gross income may look great, but once you take away support costs it's not so rosy.

2) The iPhone is indeed expensive however how many CEO's do you know who drive around in a bashed up Ford because it is cheap?...none, they want to flaunt their wealth, thus the iPhone would seem the natural choice, not a chav phone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A couple of problems with this

"thus the iPhone would seem the natural choice, not a chav phone..."

Personally I would take a Lumia 930 instead for the better camera, better display and touch screen, better maps and Nav and better microphones.

[Byz]

Re: A couple of problems with this

Bet your not a FTSE 100 CEO then ;)

[Zane]

Re: A couple of problems with this

The guy was talking about CEO's - and you are apparently not one of them.

/Zane

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A couple of problems with this

"it's not very profitable to sell to businesses compared to you average consumer as businesses demand more active support,"

You clearly don't have a clue what you are talking about. Business demand LESS support than a consumer on a per user basis as they generally have some degree of in house support, and business phones on average generate far higher revenues, and are retained for longer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A couple of problems with this

Boy I wouldn't want to be supported by you ;p

I've worked for many large support and support organisations so do know what I'm talking about.

Industry figures show that for every pound a consumer spends they get 10p supports business demand 90p go figure

[Matt_payne666]

Re: A couple of problems with this

Chav Phones??

with iPhones spanning many years now and the 4 looking quite similar to a 5s, especially in a case - the iPhone is the phone that seems to be the favourite amongst the masses... its not aspirational or un reachable - its not a Vertu or a Titanium Nokia... its a phone that's free on a £20+ tarrif...

If you are buying on contract (lots of us do) then £30 a month will net you prtty much any phone you want for free a couple of months after launch...

Iphones are like Vuis Vitton/burberry bags a few years ago... cool until the masses got their hands on them (albeit fake) once they are everywhere tis just not cool

I moved to windows phone from many iPhone years as I was bored of the same phone, Android was too bitty and I wanted something different... two years are nearly up and a 930 is bang in my sights as the next phone...

[greenawayr]

Re: A couple of problems with this

"2) The iPhone is indeed expensive however how many CEO's do you know who drive around in a bashed up Ford because it is cheap?...none, they want to flaunt their wealth, thus the iPhone would seem the natural choice, not a chav phone..."

Pretty sure this was covered in the article

[Neil Alexander]

In an environment powered by Exchange/ActiveSync and Lync, Windows Phone really is excellent. The integration with Exchange mailbox/calendars and meeting invites is seamless, as is joining Lync meetings. It just seems to fit together very well.

I'm not sure if I would fancy the challenge of trying to integrate Windows Phone into a non-Exchange environment though, especially given that IMAP support in Windows Phone seems a bit lazy (and lacking in IMAP IDLE) and I don't know if having to support CalDAV/CardDAV separately complicates things somewhat. (Maybe this is an issue for iOS and Android too?)

[Mark #255]

Re: CalDAV/CardDAV

Android doesn't have native CalDAV support. That is, the calendar will plug into Google calendar, and into an Exchange server (though I've never needed to try this myself) without further ado, but not CalDAV, unless you install a separate plugin (of which there are several available on the Play store).

And woe betide you if you try to use a simple WebDAV store to save your iCal file on.

[Google]

Blackberry seems to tick all the boxes too but was never mentioned.

With TheRegister getting so chummy with MS lately this article leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Blackberry seems to tick all the boxes too but was never mentioned"

Blackberry is dying. Gartner already advised everyone to exit.

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Blackberry is dying. Gartner already advised everyone to exit.

Ah yes good old Gartner. The same company that predicted three years ago that right about now Nokia Microsoft would be top of the mobile pile with about 60% Market share and Android and iPhone would see a massive tail off... I must remember to ask them for the lottery numbers

[dajames]

Kiss of death

Blackberry is dying. Gartner already advised everyone to exit.

If Blackberry is dying then it is largely because asshats like Gartner have been telling everyone to get out.

People really should learn to judge the value of a product on its technical merits, not soundbytes from idiots.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Kiss of death

"People really should learn to judge the value of a product on its technical merits"

Yes we did that. For a 'secure' mobile phone platform Blackberry 10 isn't so good:

Vulnerability Report: BlackBerry OS 10.x ttp://secunia.com/advisories/product/45971/ Affected By 48 Vulnerabilities

For comparison: Vulnerability Report: Microsoft Windows Phone 8 http://secunia.com/advisories/product/48250/ Affected By 0 Vulnerabilities

[Steve Todd]

Where did the author get this idea from?

Putting the iPhone 5c out as low cost budget device pretty much says it all

The 5c was never intended as a budget device, it was always targeted at the midrange market and Apple would have had to have been mad to contemplate jumping directly from high-end to budget in one step. The cost of handsets tends to be masked by the carriers including them in the cost of a contract. From that point of view the 5c costs a consumer about the same as a mid-range Windows 8.1 Lumia 930 (and it's not too far different if you pay cash too).

[PerlyKing]

Re: Where did the author get this idea from?

That was the point: Apple's idea of a "budget device" costs more than most flagships from other companies. It's a message from Apple saying "we don't do cheap".

[Steve Todd]

Re: Where did the author get this idea from?

Where did they ever say it was a "budget device"? They previously had been using last years model as their mid-range device and the previous years as entry level. The 5c took the innards of the 5, upgraded the LTE radio and a few minor bits and put it in a cheaper case. The 5 was dropped, the 4S was sold still as the entry level model.

[Mattjimf]

Windows 8 not compatible with MDM

The NHS trust I work for has predominately iPhones out in the wild due to being able to be set up and restricted by the MDM solution we use (Sophos). This allows us to restrict the iPad to what we want it to do and ensure that the security of the devices are locked down as much as we can. We have a few Android devices out as well, which again can and are locked to how we want them to be using the same MDM.

When looking at Windows 8 phones the big issue we have found is that Windows allows the user to remove the restrictions put in place without notifying us, so we have no idea what the user is doing with the phone once it's out in the wild. Until this is sorted Windows is just not an option for us.

Of course it may be that this is more to do with the MDM we use rather than Windows, but we are not really in a position to change it.

[jimbo60]

Re: Windows 8 not compatible with MDM

Sounds like your MDM is inadequate. My company uses Afaria and does not have that problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely disagree on all points with the article

And I have to say that looks like an "opinion" piece paid for without much ground on real life experience. The mentioned advantages of WP seem to be:

1- Device price: anyone with experience in the enterprise environment knows that the price of the device is the smallest line item in the total ownership cost. Yes, VIPs like to have the latest and greatest (and more expensive) gear, but the cost of a couple of desk visits to fix an issue erases the difference.

2- Standarized: oh, the madness of having different devices with different capabilties. Like in the desktop and laptop world, this horrible mess you live in is usually fixed by, you know, standarizing on one supplier. And at that point, WP does not have any advantage. Besides, if WP starts selling well, won't you think we'll see many different models, with different capabilities?

3- Security: by this reasoning, desktops and laptops should move all to Linux, right? WP is "secure" because it does not have yet a decent user base to exploit. Make it popular and will be as unsafe as Android or Windows. Make Linux as popular as Windows is today and you'll see a raft of security vulnerabilities appearing from nowhere.

4- Integration with the Windows universe: the claimed 90 percent integration only applies if you accept a desktop interface that looks like a phone, which is not exactly something business are moving in droves to, judging by W8 adoption. And even that 90% could, or not could be, a good fit for the enterprise environment. So this is basically a pie in the sky assumption. And you have also to make a leap of faith by believing Microsoft knows what the enterprise needs in their mobile environment. Certainly their previous attempt was obliterated by iPhone and Android. What makes you think this time is different?

There is currently no ideal smartphone platform for business. Neither Apple or Android are, but nothing points to WP being better than the two in any counts.

The best bet to survive the mobile deployment craze is to stick in as much as possible to standards (especially in app development) and reward those manufacturers that follow them, rather than fall in yet another Microsoft lock in.

[Charlie Clark]

But there’s no arguing with the fact that Microsoft, more than any other mobile device vendor, is at least familiar with the needs of enterprise IT

I reckon BlackBerry is at least as familiar with corporate customers.

For any large corporate deployment pretty much any manufacturer will provide custom ROMs as required (plain Android, Cyanogen, corporate app-store, etc.). For smaller orders fulfilment will be key as I believe Don Jefe pointed out recently.

[dogged]

> 3- Security: by this reasoning, desktops and laptops should move all to Linux, right? WP is "secure" because it does not have yet a decent user base to exploit. Make it popular and will be as unsafe as Android or Windows. Make Linux as popular as Windows is today and you'll see a raft of security vulnerabilities appearing from nowhere.

While security by low market-share is certainly a factor, WP8.x uses a sandboxed apps model which isolates applications from each other and the guts of the OS, much like iOS does and like Windows RT apps do. This means it's inherently less vulnerable to attack than anything where a privilege can be escalated, such as Win32, linux or Android.

I didn't quite understand your point about #2 either. If standardizing on a certain model Lenovo or Dell on the desktop is fine, why is standardizing on an HTC 8X or Lumia 720 not fine?

[Anonymous Coward]

"WP8.x uses a sandboxed apps model which isolates applications from each other and the guts of the OS, much like iOS does and like Windows RT apps do. This means it's inherently less vulnerable to attack than anything where a privilege can be escalated, such as Win32, linux or Android."

Android apps are sandboxed in the same way as iOS and WP8. Android has a switch (that can be disabled by policies) that allows app installation from unknown sources. Once that is disabled you can't install any apps except the ones from allowed stores. Which equalizes Android, iOS and WP.

"I didn't quite understand your point about #2 either. If standardizing on a certain model Lenovo or Dell on the desktop is fine, why is standardizing on an HTC 8X or Lumia 720 not fine?"

It is absolutely fine to standarize on any of these models. The point is, deciding to standarize on an HTC 8X or Lumia xxxx is exactly the same as deciding to standarize on a iPhone 5, Galaxy S4, Sony Experia, or whatever. Once you standarize you eliminate the problem of different capabilities in your device estate. Which equalizes iOS, WP and Android.

WP is very, very late to the game and has nothing to differentiate currently, unless you count the vague hopes and unfulfilled promises mentioned in the article (MS understands enterprise better?) or its massive disadvantage in third party application support, which are not exactly strong selling points.

[Ian Watkinson]

Interesting pick of some statements, lets question a couple.

POINT ONE :"Putting the iPhone 5c out as low cost budget device pretty much says it all"

Why would you, it's not the budget iphone, the 4s is.

Three:Available from:£16 a month £99 upfront cost

Vodafone:Free on Pay monthly plans from £25

O2:nope.

EE:Nope.

So from 2 of the big four, you can get an Iphone 4s, for about the same price as a Nokia Lumia 625.

POINT TWO:Android is not just one platform.

Except, if you're buying devices in bulk for an organisation it will be. You'll pick the touchwiz Samsung version that you like, or can afford. Or you'll pick the Sonyfied Version you like or the Huawei Emotion UI. Indeed as this is most IOS like, it's not a bad pick if you're choosing to wean people off older ios devices.

So in the same way, companies cope with all the different versions of windows, you know the Dell type, Acer type, Fujitsu Type, Lenovo etc, they will cope with the android versions.

They could even go Nexus, and get "pure" android.

THIRD POINT:"And so we come Windows Phone, which would appear to tick all of the relevant boxes in relation to larger scale enterprise deployment"

Except for maybe corporate apps. Ah yes, ironic isn't it. Corporate lock in on an app level keeps Microsoft out.

Why would corporates who've developed in house apps for ios or android suddenly abandon them for a less popular os? I mean if that was easy, people would have dropped windows and gone linux ages ago.

FOURTH POINT:Windows still totally dominates on desktop/notebook machines

Except people are moving in droves to tablets, where Android and IOS are kings. Surface is what 2%? That makes Mac use in the 80's look stellar!

FIFTH POINT:Sponsored link: Microsoft UK is holding a live virtual summit on the company’s enterprise mobility strategy on 4 June at 10:00. Check out the agenda and register here.

Ah yes, so it's an advert? Which is the reason it's not a well thought out piece of technical journalism then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the sponsored link underneath the article is an advert - "trafficked" there by our ops team because it is contextually relevant.

The article, on the other hand, is by an independent analyst, who is not in the business of writing puff pieces.

That said, hats off to your counterblast, especially point no.2, which I, for one, had not considered before.

[Ian Watkinson]

Whilst, I'd not go so far as to say it was a puff piece. It's not the most balanced or well thought out piece that El Reg has put out recently.

I respect that everyone the Author included has a point of view, just in this piece it's not set out, or defended particularly well.

Another point you might well want to consider is that Mobile Device Management is mature for IOS and Android, it's new for Windows 8, the prime mover in this space is...Microsoft with Intune, at a cost of £5 per device per month. Which when you start to add in the other costs, makes it a tad pricey.

At this particular moment in time, I think Windows Phones have an edge, with the Lumia 625 being pretty much the cheapest reasonable 4G hand set about. (circa £100) however the 4G Moto G is coming soon, as I suspect will a selection of others. I know which my choice would be on a Lumia 625 vs 4G Moto G shoot out, and as a hint, it's not the Fins....

[Anonymous Coward]

" Reg readers"

" Reg readers also frequently highlight security concerns with Android"

The same reg readers that keep spouting other false claims like claiming the market share of windows phone is in the double digits? Or the one that keeps rattling on how the microsoft shares are at its highest value in decades?

Those reg readers?

All android malware up to date only works if the user downloads his apps from dodgy sites and enables installation from unknown sources without knowing what he is doing. Both things that can be blocked with MDM.

As for the "fragmentation" of the android market, I thought that not even "cult of mac" would bring that old canard any more.

Does this article have anything to do with your recent relationship with microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: " Reg readers"

Freeform Dynamics regularly surveys Reg readers - few of whom are commentards - for research.

As for our recent relationship with Microsoft, I don't know where that comment came from. For the record Microsoft has never not talked to us. Also, they have advertised with The Register every year since 2005.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: " Reg readers"

Your recent relationship with Microsoft - well, it is just recently that you have started saying that you are a Microsoft "media partner" whatever that means. Your articles have always been very much pro-windows phone (in particular Andrew seems to be in love with the platform), but recently appear to be even more so.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re: " Reg readers"

When we promote events we disclose that we are a media partner. We do this for transparency.

Admittedly, there have been a lot of Microsoft events, live and virtual, lately - but here is a recent example of our media partnership with another company - Amazon.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: " Reg readers"

"false claims like claiming the market share of windows phone is in the double digits?"

It is in the UK.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: " Reg readers"

" Reg readers also frequently highlight security concerns with Android""

It requires a bolt on just to secure the insecure mess of the base product. That's what Knox does - you have one of the highest vulnerability counts base OSs in Linux combined with the highest vulnerability count middleware in Java - and surprise, surprise the result is like a collander that lets malware through.. and Knox was already found to have holes.

Meanwhile WP8 out of the box still has zero known vulnerabilities.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 5 year plan...

W7 with Office 2010 is the most commonly deployed configuration.