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We are getting to a point where the power of the device is less of a distinguishing factor. Lots of people are satisfied with the hardware of the previous generation Iphone or lower spec'd Android Phones. If hardware prices continue to drop the feature phone market (which Nokia dominates) could easily turn into a low end smart phone market. The Windows Phone OS could actually be a good choice for this. This is also useful for Microsoft in the business market where there are a surprising number of feature phones (and aging Blackberry's).

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I don’t understand that reasoning. Why would a phone maker choose Windows Phone over Android?

– Android is cheaper than Windows Phone (many phone makers pay Microsoft to be able to use patents used in Android, but even then, Android is cheaper than Windows Phone)

– Android has lower system requirements than Windows Phone

– Android has a thriving app market, Windows Phone doesn’t

Windows Phone low-end phones will only be hit if Microsoft convinces network operators to push them. That could happen if network operators were to regain power over the consumer by doing so. For instance, it could mean that on those phones, the app market is managed by the network operator, customers would pay different rates for different kinds of data, and customers could only use a pre-installed web browser that serves the network operator’s ads.

Just for a funny anecdote, an Android user at.my work asked me what virus scanning software I used on my Windows Phone 8. I laughed because I thought he was making fun of Windows Phone. Turned out he was serious - his Galaxy had gotten two different viruses and he was running virus scan on it. I told him that ironically Microsoft's market share wasn't high enough for malware authors to target.

And Android is complicated enough that it doesn't feel secure when it gets bloated. It is easy for someone used to windows to imagine that slowness or crashing are caused by a virus.

The person that asked me the question was a very experienced Android user that legitimately got two viruses on their phone that were causing link hijacking and popup advertisements.

He just assumed that Windows Phone would have the same virus issues as Android.

Somewhat ironically (compared to the Windows desktop situation), the only people I know who have actually gotten virus-like infections on Android are people advanced enough to be running custom rooted 3rd party roms on their devices.

This isn't to say it can't or hasn't happened on phones running factory stock roms, the Samsung /dev/exynos-mem permission bug on its own was one example of a huge attack vector on a limited set of Android phones, I just haven't seen or directly heard of it happening on a stock phone.

Android certainly does not have lower system requirements than Windows Phone. I mean, it could run on lower spec hardware... for some definition of "run". Mine are both last-gen devices, but my Lumia has half the cores and RAM as my Galaxy and runs twice as smoothly.

I hear later versions of Android did get smoother on flagship phones, but I don't know how or if that translates to lower-end devices.

The smoothness thing is actually an architectural choice. On Windows and iOS, the multitasking subsystem will stop the world for a user gesture. On Android it treats a user gesture as one task to handle among many.

Well frankly, it seems like Android made the wrong choice. Going completely unresponsive is completely unacceptable.

That's certainly true now, and the Android team is on record regretting the decision. It would have been the correct engineering principle for a general purpose computer but obviously fails for a consumer content consumption node.

Currently both the core team and OEMs are striving hard to work around it (reversing it would be impossible as it's baked in).

However, I think as mobile platforms increasingly take on the role of general purpose computers, it will actually end up being a net benefit, and Apple's decision will look as short-sighted as the lack of true multitasking in older Macs.

But maybe not? Who knows...

These Android manufacturers are generally not just shipping vanilla Android and have development costs on top of patents and licensing. They do this because owning the software stack gives power, and they believe it distinguishes them (although usually makes the product worse than stock Android). Microsoft want to own the software stack so shipping Windows on Nokia phones makes sense. It wouldn't make sense for other manufacturers unless they don't mind loosing power over the stack (which Samsung, Huawei, Amazon etc. don't want).

I agree with your points regarding limitations with Windows Phone. Just because an opportunity exists doesn't mean that they will succeed. Although I am unconvinced that the app market is that important. A few key apps are important, but Android app purchases lag heavily behind iPhone, and it is reasonable to suggest that feature phone users will lag even further (especially without a locally integrated payment system in developing markets).

Now that Microsoft is buying Nokia, they will be making their own phones. I think the idea is that they will operate that division at a loss to undercut their competitors and gain share in the middle or bottom of the market.

Samsung and Apple both need to make money on their phones. Microsoft does not. Both Bing and Xbox were operated at a loss for years; it paid off for Xbox but not (yet?) for Bing.

> If hardware prices continue to drop the feature phone market (which Nokia dominates) could easily turn into a low end smart phone market. The Windows Phone OS could actually be a good choice for this.

But at the moment the feature phones and almost-smart phones by Nokia, i.e. the Asha series, are not running the Windows Phone OS, but the S40 OS (which is some kind of Symbian I believe).

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