The first one is the need to get the word out. 93,000 employees are a lot of people. If they are able to impress clients, family, friends and random strangers, they may start a word-of-mouth effect that could be crucial for the success of the phone against Apple and Google. That’s why, in a letter to all Microsoft employees, their mobile big honcho Andy Lees told them the following:
When you get your phone, the first thing you can do is MAKE IT PERSONAL! Pick up the phone, turn it on, download mail, get directions, make calls, find friends…. In short USE IT! [...]There is also a lot you can do while we are heading to launch even before you get your phone including: Understand the unique value of Windows Phone 7 and evangelize to your customers, partners, friends and family!
But evangelising is only part of it. The other good reason is getting apps to compete with the massive App Store and the Android Market. As pronto as possible. That’s why Andy Lees also addresses this need and wants Microsoft’s software engineers to create their own applications in their free time:
The package includes everything you need to start building apps. In addition, we’ve introduced a new employee developer program which makes it much easier for you to develop apps for Marketplace in your spare time. And if you need some help jumpstarting your development, check out the Windows Phone Developer Training Kit.
Indeed this is not going to be a free lunch. But I am sure that most Microsoft employees won’t care about following these suggested tasks. In fact, I bet that most of them would be enthusiastic to grab the new phone and start having some fun with it instead of having to use products from the competition. And perhaps show the Apple boys and girls that they are not the only game in town anymore. [Techflash]
Bernhard de Kok
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 12:00 PMSounds a little bit like desperation. I’d feel a lot more comfortable about the phone if the company thought it was that good that it didn’t need such tactics.
I do hope it is successful in its own right; the competition would be good for the market.
Disclaimer: I currently use an iPhone 3G which really didn’t appreciate the iOS 4.0 upgrade.
Graham Jupp
Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 10:43 AMIts not always the case that the best technology wins the game, often the winner is the company that shouts the loudest. As such, simply having the best product means nothing if no-one knows about it.
Joe
Sunday, July 25, 2010 at 11:27 AMdo you think apple would let their employee use any phone other than iPhone?
matt
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 5:46 PMwell obviously. as I said, they haven’t gone down the “make it easy for everyone to port their iphone and android apps over, thus quickly luring existing android and iphone devs to our new phone”
as a reward for this, it will be alot harder for winmo devs to port to other platforms, so if they gain a strong market share, they will be well on their way to getting a monopoly.
Rahul Khanna
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 11:53 PMNot really desperation, didn’t Gizmodo report that Apple and Google do exactly the same things? I think it said Palm was the only smartphone company that didn’t and look where it got them… If I was a company I’d want all my employees using and loving my products too.
klaw
Monday, July 26, 2010 at 10:31 AMThis is a great strategy, for another reason that’s not mentioned…their entire staff will also be their beta testers and first-string critics of the software.
When your phone has bugs, glitches, poor UI or is missing functionality, you have both an incentive to make it better, and the ability to make the necessary changes.