The full 2-hour video of Microsoft introducing Windows Phone 8 has been posted to YouTube by “WMExperts.”
Microsoft revealed that Windows Phone 8 will offer a new camera app, Internet Explorer 10, near-field communication (NFC) for e-wallet capabilities, Nokia Maps, and Direct X support among other things, including (and most importantly) “Shared Windows Core.” Windows Phone 8 will share the same kernel and other elementary code with Windows 8. Current Windows Phone 7 users, including all eleven buyers of Nokia’s Lumia 900 phone, will be left out in the cold; Windows Phone 7.8 ((also due “this fall”) is the “best” they’ll ever be able to do.
The following Microsoft presentation was conducted at the Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, California on June 20th, 2012.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote of Windows Phone back on October 27, 2011:
Windows Phone will be popular. Over time, it’ll eat the lunch of the increasingly fragmented, increasingly insecure, and increasingly costly Android (losing patent infringement lawsuits and dropping features/paying royalties to multiple IP owners will do that to you).
The not-iPhone world will begin to dump Android and move to Microsoft’s mobile OS offering because it will eventually cost less, work better, and come with far fewer legal issues. In the iPhone wannabe market, it’s already happening (Nokia, for example). We expect the same to happen in the iPad wannabe market, too [with Windows 8/RT]. Google and Microsoft will long battle each other for the non-Apple markets and that’s a much better scenario for everyone than having a single ripoff artist flood the market with fragmented, insecure, beta-esque, mediocre-at-best products. Google’s attempt to be the next Microsoft is doomed.
This, of course, will also impact Google’s search business. Apple’s Siri will increasingly deliver info to users sans Google and Microsoft will, naturally, use Bing for their search. As we’ve said many times in the past: “Google will rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them.”
The bottom line: We’d rather see a company trying unique ideas, even if – shockingly – it’s Microsoft, than the wholesale theft of Apple innovations that we’ve been seeing for over four years now. Don’t steal IP. Even worse, don’t steal IP and “claim to be innovators.” We have no problem with any companies that attempt to compete with Apple using their own unique ideas and strategies.
Related articles:
Microsoft Windows Phone 8 to launch this fall with NFC e-wallet support – June 20, 2012
With Siri and new alliances, Apple takes on Google search – June 21, 2012
Android sees lowest U.S. user growth in three years – June 4, 2012
I’ve grown accustomed to MacDailyNews telling us what’s going to happen and then basically watching it happen. Not sure about this one, but MDN has been right so many times in the past that I’ll reserve judgement right now..
It certainly would have been better for Microsoft if Nokia wasn’t such a disaster of a company. They’re way too slow moving. Maybe HTC and some other companies will pick up WIndows Phone 8 in a strong way and start putting Google’s fragmandroid in the grave where it belongs.
Alternate MDN Take:
This is two hours of your life you won’t get back. Don’t bother watching.
I hope the MDN folks didn’t waste their 2 hours of their life.
7 of the top 9 are Windows Phone, but no Apple phones are listed. LOL
I tried to check out the best sellers claim on Amazon and couldn’t figure it out. The top 9 phones were Androids and a Windows Phone was number 10.
@Paul
is that 7 of the top 9 on an EPA haz-mat list? You don’t say.
The presentation was actually 15 minutes…….it was 2 hours with all the glitches and crashes. just sayin’.
Looks pretty good to me. UI more suited to phone.
Is there anything actually “new” in iOS 6? 3d maps… I seem to recall that everything else was just an update or bug fix. Call handling is nice. I’ve always wanted that. Tired of these chicks always wanting their computers fixed. Be nice if I could forward them to the Apple store.
the UI is more suited to a phone? It just looks like a cluster fuck of more ugly ‘live tiles’ crammed onto the same area.
I actually thought like metro looked like shit BEFORE… WP7 style… Now it’s hard to even look at. This is just sad.
WINDOWS 8 IS COMING. All mac’s going back to there places where they belong under the desk, the bottom of the tech department storage closet, or a very lonely corner collecting dust. Cheer up mac fans your desktops gonna look lovely. Again.
Many companies just moved to Win 7 past couple of years. No hurry to change to Win 8. My company just started installing Win 7. Initial sales to be driven by consumer PC sales, which will continue to be weak due to global macro situation. What is the catalyst to upgrade at the enterprise level? How many times have they extended XP support?
I was only upgraded to Win 7 from XP a few months ago. We were on Win XP for eight years. There is no way in hell that my employer will ever roll out Win 8, unless that’s still the latest version of Windows 5+ years from now, when we’re finally ready to upgrade again.
Microsoft is incapable of moving quickly, because they’ve tied themselves to the slowest-moving customers in existence, enterprise.
——RM
Yes! We all agree with you! Now put your misery …etc
There is a huge backlash from disgruntled Lumia owners that they won’t get the next upgrade. Also from what I can tell WP8 apps won’t run on WP7.8. So Microsoft have just “Osbourned” any future Lumia 610, 710, 800 & 900 sales. This is going to be bad for Nokia which is losing money like hand over fist and was hoping the Lumia range would replace their Symbian phone whose sales have fallen off a cliff.
Anyone, customers or partners, have to be prepared to be EOL’d and drop kicked out at a moment’s notice. You can’t ever trust Microsoft who just isn’t used to acting in consumers interest. You wonder if Ballmer just released the Lumia and then had the next thought “Hey we should tie the phone into Windows 8 too!” Just the kind of thoughts that would occur to Steve Jobs BEFORE obsoleting recent devices. Bad move, bad form. It just makes consumers even more suspicious and Microsoft untrustworthy. It’ll cost them.
You notice that they’re using Nokia maps on this? That means that only Android will be using Google maps (and search) by this fall. Ouch, that’s gotta hurt….
As a massive Apple fan, I’m a bit torn when looking at the metro UI. It looks incredibly slick and modern and it’s really going to appeal to people that are heavily into social media. Personally, I find it looks a bit messy to the eye, a bit too much going on. I’m more of a minimalistic style fan, so iOS suits me just fine, but I can really see this being a big hit with many people especially young people. So Kudos to MS for developing something distinctly different, even if not to my personal taste.I do think Apple needs to up their game now, metro will be liked by many people so Apple needs to be careful not to get complacent, they shouldn’t just rest on the fact that they have a vast app eco system and iTunes, that will only hold people for so long.
Uh, dude. Metro has been available for awhile now. But the sales of Windows Phone units, as well as the reception of Windows 8, suggest that isn’t will liked by young people or anyone else.
It’s actually widely reviled.
It already had the chance to catch on, and it didn’t. Kind of late to speculate that Metro will be a hit.
Exactly. TheLastWord needs to get out more and smell the dying Metro weeds.
Why would you want someone else to be able to pick up your phone, look at your start screen allowing this “stranger” to see what your life is all about, your interests, the people in your lives?
I think it has come down to MS & Google both realizing that they MUST be vertically integrated to be a player in this decade for the long run. MS & Google’s newly expressed hardware positions are certainly destined to push OS users & licensees toward Linux-Unix of their own making.
Yet, MS & Google are both hobbled by their primarily software oriented past. That leaves them years and years behind Apple in capability and supplier infrastructure.
This time delay in MS & Google realizing the danger they are in with Apple leads me to suspect MS & Google are not going to be able to become major hardware players. Why?
Apple is 100% committed to staying #1 with the best & most competent devices Apple is not going to give Google or MS a chance to have a leading product advantage and as such they are always going to be looked at as third rate by consumers.
Excellent observation MDN. Microsoft may not be Apple but at least it’s not evil like Google. Different strokes for different folks. Google sucks!
They have nothing ready. Nokia Lumia will not support this new OS. It will sink Nokia.
Look, apple is doomed again and panicking… after seeing the mighty WP come…
says this guy named Zune? LMFAO! Thanks for that man.
Hmmm…. this video looks VERY similar to the presentation of the old “iPhone OS” back in 2007… 5 YEARS AGO!!!!
To open it up, MSFT noted that when going to Amazon, 7 of the top 10 smartphones ranked by customer reviews are Windows Phones, and you know what, they are right! But they neglected to point out one thing:
Amazon does not sell iPhones, so iPhones do not show up in the rankings.
So yes, as MDN points out, MSFT is after Android, and that is who they may be able to topple. Time will tell.
This is why MS scheduled its Win 8 tablet and phone announcements when they did – to beat their true competitor to the punch. Everyone knows that Google will announce their Nexus tablet at Google IO. If MS were serious about going after Apple, it would have blown this smokescreen 3 months ago. Lord knows there were scant enough details in the Surface presentation that they could have done it anytime.
Google is MS’s focus now. They’ve conceded the high end to the iPhone and iPad and are now content to battle Android for the table scraps. It’s a thing of beauty.
I completely agree with MDN’s take. I respect Microsoft for doing something actually original, and genuinely innovative in the mobile phone os space.