Related: I’d love to see Windows Phone become the third horse in the smartphone OS race.
Marco Arment in Google Blindness:
Developers aren’t fools. We aren’t swayed by charismatic figureheads who try to convince us to develop for their platforms. The formula is quite simple. We’ll develop for a platform if:
- We use it.
- A lot of other people use it.
- We can make a living developing for it.
If your platform nails all three, we’ll develop for it. Nobody will even need to ask us. We’ll break the door down.
Marco was not talking about Windows Phone. He was talking about iOS and Android. But he used the general term "platform" because he could be talking about any platform. He could be talking about Windows Phone. He could be talking about Barley.
If Microsoft could get us using Windows Phone (they already have me seriously considering the jump), if they could get more and more people to use it, and if they could make it lucrative for app developers …. they could gain ground on both Android and iOS.
Every single part of Marco’s recipe is extremely difficult to do. So I won’t hold my breath. But I can hope that one day Microsoft can figure out how to at least make it a game.
I find myself feeling about Windows Phone the way I felt about WebOS. Some of the stuff I saw in WebOS really had me wanting Palm/HP to make it a game in the mobile space. It was the fact that it was so different, at the time, from what iOS/Android was doing. The same goes for Windows Phone. It is different. And different means choice. And choice is better!