![]() Some have suggested that Microsoft should support Android apps on Windows Phone and maybe even beyond, on desktop Windows. The app disproportionality is mirrored by developer tools, which is logical, as why bother making tools if few will use them? Android apps on Windows Phone? Want to use that camera to recognize credit cards, and do security validation? Similar problem: they only have iPhone and Android widgets (though you can roll your own if you want, as most have generic service APIs). Want to integrate PayPal payments into your smartphone app? There are iPhone and Android widgets available, but nothing for Windows phone. ![]() I’m involved in a lot of mobile development these days, and it’s rare to find helper libraries to support one on the path of Windows Phone development. ![]() What’s worse is that the network effects of dominant mobile platforms make the development road to market share growth that much steeper. Users rarely see icons for the Windows Phone version (because they don’t exist), and thus, familiarity diminishes. Companies make mobile apps and advertise their presence through icons indicating availability in the Apple App Store or GooglePlay. Although most technology readers have heard of Microsoft’s efforts, we are, in a word, “weird.” Lack of recognition is mostly linked to a dearth of apps for the platform. Market recognition is certainly an issue. With 80 percent of the market in 2014 going to Android, how on Earth is there room for a third ecosystem when even the second ecosystem loses ground in spite of a new version that generated record sales? A mobile market dominated by Android and iOS Even Apple lost market share, slipping a third of a percentage point in spite of the untapped demand for larger form factor iPhones sated by the release of the iPhone 6. Microsoft lost market share because the size of the market grew so fast, a growth mostly absorbed by Android. Though the OS grew slightly in terms of units sold in 2014 to 34.9 million, that’s dwarfed by the 192.7 million units sold by Apple or the whopping 802.2 million Android phones shipped. That is not a good way to do business, and even if it were a solid app, it's hard to support these practices.Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system is a platform beset on all sides. So people who just go to the website to buy pay $89 (or $69 when they get a deal of the day), but when they pay from the nag screen, they only pay $56. Even when trying to close the nag screen by pressing the little X in the corner, the X turns into "Don't leave yet, get your personal discount", which opens the website and gives you even more discount than their "Deal of the day" which is shown after you download the trial. This is clearly done to play on the insecurities of the less-than-tech-savvy users, who might believe that their machine is now in a worse state than before they ran the app, and need to pay now to get a clean system. Especially with an app that is supposed to clean your system, it's really messed up to run an activity only partially, and then ask for money. While it's OK to provide only limited functionality in a trial version, the appsshould be upfront about what the limitation is. Sneaky about trial limitation and prices Trial version only cleans 500 MB, but it does not disclose that limit before one pushes the button to clean after a scan.
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