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Comment by maaaats | Hacker News Reader

The article is full of errors and unbacked claims.

> ... adding on a mobile phone business that Microsoft probably should abandon ...

Why should it be abandoned? Just because the author isn't a fan of WP8?

> have argued that Stephen Elop made a massive strategic error by choosing Windows Phone over Android; ... It would have been to Nokia’s benefit to have everyone running Android, including themselves.

Not necessarily true. There's only one manufacturer making money on Android at the moment, Samsung. When Elop got aboard, Nokia was already waaay behind. It's not like he drove them down, he merely tried saving them. Choosing Android might have gone better, but probably not. At least it was better going for WP than sticking to their own, dying systems.

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Why should it be abandoned? Just because the author isn't a fan of WP8?

The general public aren't a fan of WP8 either.

20% of the general public in Poland, Mexico and some Eastern European countries don't agree with that claim. People forget how varied is the smartphone market across regions.

Only 20%? This is not a great argument!

As Apple fans are often quick to point out when someone mentions Android's share, market share is not the only (or best) measure of a platform.

Except the argument was that the general public aren't fans of Windows phones, to which 20% market share of a few regions was used as a counter argument.

I would tend to think that market share is one indicator of a phone platform's popularity, and while 20% is not bad, it's not an amazing figure either.

I looked around for a chart of the iPhone's market share by year, but couldn't find one. I remember the iPhone having trouble in its first year or two, and most of WP8's credibility comes from the ~2 year old Lumia line.

True. In 2010 the iPhone only had about 4% market share. My only point is that I'm talking about popularity of existing devices. It may well be that Microsoft will turn it around!

The other way to look at it is that iPhone had ~100% share of the "modern smartphone" market (choose your own name for it, but Blackberries and Symbian don't count).

People want smartphones. WP phones are the cheapest entry level smart phones (such as Nokia 510, 520, 610, 620) they can afford in eastern europe.

You see WP devices 'a lot' (that is: you get to see them once in a while) over there, but these are mostly owned by people who wanted some sort of smartphone. Also a lot of them are quite annoyed that there are no apps.

I can't find anything to back that claim up. The only thing I can find that's even close suggests that Nokia had 19% marketshare in Mexico for 2012, but based on other stats that's by far accounted for by Symbian devices:

http://www.statista.com/statistics/245193/market-share-of-mo...

Sounds like 80% of the general public in Poland, Mexico and some Eastern European countries aren't a fan of WP8.

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