Can Windows Phone gain real traction? (One user's opinion)

I read a report somewhere this week that was breathlessly excited by the fact that Windows Phone sales were ahead of the iPhone in China as far as market share - WP had 2% and iPhone had 1%. And there's been a lot of celebrating the fact that Blackberry's apparent demise leaves WP the undisputed No. 3 in the U.S. and in much of the rest of the world.

But I feel like it's such a precarious perch that it wouldn't take much for Firefox OS or Tizen or some other outfit to come in and steal the position. Or for WP to just continue to linger with pretty much the same market share.

What I want is to hear radio and TV commercials for various products touting that their app is available on iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. I don't have any illusions about the top two falling behind WP, but as the smartphone user base gets more embedded into the Apple and Google ecosystems, the harder it will be for anyone else to gain any traction. As it is, Google probably was just in time to avoid having "iPhone" and "smartphone" become thoroughly synonymous in the minds of the average person, and for a significant percentage of people, it might as well be.

I think the key for Microsoft is to follow Nokia's lead in one respect -- identify a key feature that users are missing on Android and iPhone (high quality photography) and push it hard. There might just be enough people dissatisfied with their smartphone cameras to make that a winning strategy. But you already see Apple, Samsung and Sony trying to close that gap. If they do catch up, keep looking for the next differentiator.

When I look at webOS and Symbian and BB10 and Windows Mobile and the other failed mobile OSes of the past five years, I see platforms that tried too hard to match iOS and not enough to exceed it (although I liked webOS a lot). Android worked for a lot of reasons, but one of them was that Google decided that they would trounce iOS when it came to customization. That's what WP has to do -- find out where iOS and Android are lacking, even if consumers haven't realized it yet, and then blow them out of the water in that area.

That, and some more key apps wouldn't hurt.

I don't think Firefox OS or Tizen are a threat to Windows Phone. The biggest thing Windows Phone has to overcome is the idea that there can be three top OS'. So far we've seen that only two can dominate.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Really well put.