As expected, HTC has just announced a new smartphone with Windows Phone called the HTC One M8 for Windows. The new device is the same as the HTC One M8 with Android, albeit it comes with Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1 preinstalled.
Sounds great, especially since it may be possible to dual boot or switch operating systems once the XDA crowd gets its hands on this thing. But then…
The HTC One M8 for Windows is an exclusive device for U.S. carrier Verizon.
Yeah. Good luck, with that.
The Lumia Icon was also a Verizon Exclusive. The Lumia 930 is the global model.
This doesn’t mean there wont ever be a global version of the HTC One M8 running WP.
I hope not.
There are 300 million people in the United States, and 123 million of them are Verizon customers. I know you’re sad to be left out, but I don’t consider 123,000,000 to be “very few.”
People seem to forget just how large of a domestic market the U.S. is. That, and the relatively friendly business environment makes the US a prime market for Microsoft.
Just due to the logistics of product launches, it makes sense to launch in ones own market.
We don’t really hear much crap about Jolla only selling phones in Finland, Khazakstan, and some other hilariously small markets on OSAlert though
That’s because Jolla doesn’t need big numbers. Windows Phone does.
Also, Jolla sells in India and China now.
“now” meaning essentially “just now” for Jolla.
The point is, they (due to resource constraints) did a staggered global roll out just like HTC is doing, but mums the word on even a syllable of criticism or snark towards them, from you.
It isn’t like HTC has no intention of going global, it’ll likely make it’s way over to Europe and Asia in due time. Just like the Lumia Icon did.
At least for Nokia, the staggered roll out was deliberate and preferred due to the allocation of resources and return on that investment. They tried with the Lumia 800 to do a global roll out and a funny thing happened:
The phones weren’t pushed as aggressively, or marketed as much by the carriers/store fronts because there was no deeper partnership.
Carriers like VZW love exclusives and will return in kind with marketing dollars, which is what HTC needs right now.
Edited 2014-08-20 11:49 UTC
I think this is very true, and one of the reasons the smaller US carriers (T-Mobile and Sprint) can’t always get the best devices at launch. Sprint in particular seems to have to fight to get anything really good, though I can’t complain since they are finally getting some love from Nokia. The last Nokia phone on Sprint was a Series 30 basic phone, from what I recall, which was years before Windows Phone was even in the planning stages.
Market cap HTC: 107.57B.
Market cap Jolla: three beer and a dead cow.
Comparing those two is stupid.
And I’m sure, relatively, the product launches were of higher scale to reflect that. For example, I expect HTC to spend more on launching on one carrier in the US than Jolla has spent cumulatively on all of their efforts.
What does it matter though? At the end of the day we’re talking about the same principles, and it is even more striking in Jolla’s case (because they have less resources):
The fact of the matter is that roll outs are expensive, big or small. So companies stagger them and target the most lucrative markets first (for reasons I outlined in my original comment)
Why you’re being dense on purpose is beyond me, this isn’t that difficult to understand. Do you only feign concern when it relates to Windows Phone?
Edited 2014-08-20 16:42 UTC
It probably also doesn’t hurt that the ENTIRETY of North America has a grand total of 3 official languages that software needs to be localized in – while the EU has close to 10 times that, despite North America being about 5 times larger geographically and having a slightly larger population than the EU. If you’re faced with the choice of supporting one or the other, only a complete moron would focus on the market that’s not only smaller, but which ALSO requires 10 times more localization work.
Of course, actual reality is terribly inconvenient to people who just have a raging hard-on to latch onto any excuse to whine about the US.
Actually, in the comments for those articles, there’s been a number of people indulging in childish gloating about the fact that Jolla devices aren’t available in the US – and even expressing their hope that they’re never made available. Because knee-jerk nationalist spite is a TOTALLY valid reason to hope that people are denied access to a piece of technology.
I have a feeling that the Jolla Sailfish environment is too far different for the average iPhone/WP/Android user to convert to. It has some weird swiping paradigm or something doesn’t it? It’s just a small project that will never show up in American carrier’s show rooms, as they would have to support yet another OS.
Edited 2014-08-20 15:03 UTC
Oh I certainly don’t think that the US market is missing out on anything by not having access to Jolla phones. Of course, that makes the gloating seem even sillier – not really much of a punishment to be “denied” something that most of the market has no interest in to begin with.
I was speaking from the perspective of those who advocate for Jolla & Linux in general. Apparently all that high-minded stuff about “freedom” doesn’t apply if you made the mistake of choosing to be born in the wrong country.
You are probably right. I dream of just being able to order a Jolla mobile from jolla.com or Amazon and have it ship to the U.S. some day. I bought mine used on Ebay from someone in Italy. I absolutely love the phone but buying it sure was a hassle.
As for your other question, yes, it does have a weird swipe user interface. In my experience, it does have a steep learning curve, but it doesn’t take long (maybe an hour of use) before it feels nice and natural and fast. Also, I like that I don’t need to use any physical buttons or permanent on-screen buttons.
And how many of those Verizon subscribers will switch to this phone, I wonder? And how many switchers will go from another OS to WP, or will just upgrade from their current WP?
Another thing to consider is that the global market, where Windows Phone is actually sort of popular (compared to the US), will never see this phone. They may see an HTC One-based Windows device in the future, if this phone does well enough in the US on Verizon. That’s a big “if“.
Personally, I’m stoked that the Nokia Lumia 635 will be coming to my carrier, Ting, in November. I think HTC has disavowed all knowledge of the 8XT and it pisses me off.
and only 50 users are out of contract.
If the typical contract is two years, doesn’t that mean that 60 million Verizon customers will become “out of contract” and eligible for a phone upgrade within the next 12 months?
I not sure that you can predict when the bulk of customers did their last contract renewal, or contract extension out to 2 years, based on how many there are. There are other factors than just the number of subscribers divided by 2.
Promotions, popular new devices, including more than just phones, changes to the plans as well as churn caused by these same things from other carriers that may make customers switch away from Verizon, might all skew the renewal rate. And that skew might be in either direction for each factor too. Their EDGE program offers customers the option to upgrade again 30 days after they have paid 60% of the cost of their phone, which would work towards shortening the renewal cycle. Once/if the customer sees how much that is costing them they might react in a way that goes the other direction though.
There is big money in this and I’m sure they work very hard at making sure that it keeps coming in.
I’m sure Verizon works very hard to skew it in favor of keeping the bulk of customers near the beginning of their contract period but I can’t say how successful they are at that.
While saying “very few” might not be entirely correct it’s also not all that much on a global scale, especially since the US is a weak market for Windows Phone.
If they manage to crack the Windows Phone version, I wonder if it would be possible to install Windows Phone on the regular M8/Android version?
That would be an interesting experiment.
A $0 license fee isn’t the same as free.
Do the license terms permit you to install the OS on the device of your choice simply by tapping that you agree when you boot it up after flashing it onto your phone? Or are there other restrictions?
I know not everyone will care about this, but some will.
It would be interesting to see a comparison of resource usage with Android vs WP8.1 on the exact same hardware. I’m willing to bet that WP has better memory and battery consumption with less latency than Android, but that’s just a hunch. I guess it depends if HTCs Android extensions are installed on there also
Edited 2014-08-20 00:12 UTC
With identical hardware, the HTC One for Windows offers nearly double the battery life vs Android version.
http://wmpoweruser.com/interesting-with-identical-hardware-the-htc-…
See all of the power waste that occurs carrying around an Android phone! Android is not a “green” product, therefore you are destroying the earth carrying around there Droids d"Y~S Multiply all of those wasted Watts by the amount in Android phones in service. I say this tongue-in-cheek.
Edited 2014-08-20 13:04 UTC
The VZW website must be in error, HTC’s website shows a 10% improvement in battery life with Windows Phone.
Still, pretty good. Just not dramatically good like WMPowerUser (and really, don’t read them, they’re like a fucking tabloid) claims.
That, and Android L brings tangible battery life improvements (much like WP 8.1 U1 did). So good news all around.
Apparently AT&T will also release this phone.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/19/6031237/htc-one-m8-for-windows-ve…
Much better battery life. Better performance. No crapware. Future software updates. What’s not to love?
Edited 2014-08-20 10:26 UTC
Updates? On an HTC Windows Phone? It’s less likely than you think.
In all seriousness, I hope they stand by this one and follow through with updates, but it would be nice if they threw a bone to those of us with HTC phones that are just now a year old.
Yes, WP performs better than android on equivalent hardware. Reasons for this are slowness of Dalvik (don’t know how much ART will narrow this gap) and more limited multitasking. On Android you tend to accumulate crap background processes for stuff you don’t use / need anyway.
There is much to be improved around Android, but it seems to be doing fine even with the flaws, mostly due to nice app ecosystem and insanely healthy hardware ecosystem (lots of cheap hardware options available).
1. Release phone with OS few people want
2. Make it exclusive to one carrier
3. ???
4. Profit!