The article in todays Helsingin Sanomat about Microsoft Phones declining market share and the lack of key apps made me to think and to give my opinion on the subject.

I know that the market share of Windows Phones is small at the moment, even here in Finland in the old Nokialand. Windows Phone 7/8 was the first real mobile operating system that was build from the ground up by Microsoft. It took a bit too long and during that time iOS but mostly Android took ground.

I like iPhones, for me Android is more of a “poor mans” Apple version. When Windows Phone OS came it was totally different to the competition and it had to gain momentum from the developers and in some points it failed to get the big app players to make Windows Phone versions. But most of them came, slowly. I think a big mistake was that Microsoft did not help and endorse the big players to make Windows Phone versions of their apps. It would have helped big time in the beginning.

But almost all the important ones (well the ones I want to use) are there now and I have a strong belief that when Windows Mobile 10 will be launched in November it will again gain some more ground among the users and developers. Now after 3 months from the launch of Windows 10 over 120 million PC’s are using the new operating system and it will grow every month. It has gained the acceptance and love from users compared to Windows 8. This is a big change and now it is more than important for companies, media houses, game developer, app developers etc. to understand and to also create universal apps for the Windows 10 platform. Those apps will not work only on phones but on tablets and PC’s as well.

The success of Surface Pro 3 and now Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book plus the new hardware from HP, Dell, Lenovo etc. will lead the way more and more into the business world as well, not forgetting the consumers. From my own experience as I made great amount of concepts to different companies on mobile apps the leading operating system in mobile environment (tablets, phones) is still Windows. Android and iOS are more of a consumer OS and companies in their own mobile work applications prefer Windows environment – for many, many good reasons. So there are huge amount of business apps that are not in Microsoft Store and this will grow with Windows 10 – both on PC and Phone as you need to create only one universal app.

But let’s not forget the consumers as Windows 10 is also platform for apps. Developers should not forget this huge potential, mobility and apps are not only for mobile phones, but tablets, PC’s and hybrid PC’s as well. There are so many PC’s on the market with touch screen.

So my strong belief is that those big and smaller players will understand the significance of Windows 10 platform and start to create universal apps of their current iOS and Android apps that work on various Windows 10 devices.

What are your thoughts?