The New York Times Windows Phone 7, at left, has been praised for its unique design.Designers and start-up tech firms seem to agree on two things when it comes to Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 mobile platform. First, it’s gorgeous and uniquely designed. Second, they won’t be building an app for it in the near future.
Why? Resources.
It’s a typical and understandable rule for most bootstrapped start-ups: build for the platform that your customers are on. Yet for Microsoft, this poses a Catch-22.
Start-ups can’t devote resources to building apps for Windows Phone 7 until more customers buy phones that run on the platform. But, customers will not flock to Windows Phone 7 until their favorite apps exist.
Leah Busque, founder and chief product officer at TaskRabbit, a San Francisco-based start-up that performs errands, said in an interview that building apps for Windows Phone 7 is not tied to how good Microsoft’s mobile operating system is, but rather a struggle of where to focus TaskRabbit’s scarce engineering resources.
“Over half of our users are on an iPhone, so we had to focus on that platform first, then Android is second,” she said. “I’m not ruling out a Windows 7 app, but we have to follow our user base and provide solutions that makes sense for them.”
According to a report issued last month by Nielsen, the market research firm, Google and Apple are both succeeding in the mobile smartphone race, and Windows Phone 7, although growing slowly in popularity, is still trailing far behind. Of Americans who own a smartphone, 71 percent own either an Android device or an iPhone. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 only accounts for 1.3 percent of the market.
Alex Rainert, head of product at Foursquare, seemed to offer the same sentiment as Ms. Busque. “It’s always going to be a question of resources and what people can spend their time on. As much as we might like the platform, we have to go where we have the users,” he said. “For most start-ups, whatever you choose to work on, you are inevitably choosing not to work on something else.”
Mr. Rainert, who also blogs about user interface design, noted that Microsoft has built a beautifully designed and vastly different mobile platform. While the design is refreshing, that unique interface makes it difficult for developers.
“When we’re building for Android, the transfer cost from iPhone is lower because we can use about 60 percent of the design elements on both platforms,” Mr. Rainert said. Building for Windows Phone 7 is more labor intensive because designers have to conform to the Windows 7, he said. Foursquare does have a Windows app, but the company’s resources are primarily devoted to updating other platforms.
So what can Microsoft do to bridge this gap?
“Microsoft should continue meeting with developers, host MeetUps and publicly talk about how they are pushing the envelope in terms of what a user interface should be on a mobile phone,” explained Dave Morin, founder of Path, a mobile social network. “One of the things that Microsoft has is it is really flush with resources and capital. Comparatively, most start-ups are not.”
Mr. Morin said that he hopes to build a version of Path for Windows Phone 7 next year. “I think that Windows Phone 7 design is some of the most innovative user interface work that is being done right now,” Mr. Morin said. “We’re very interested in it as long as the user numbers continue to increase.”