It’s my perception that developers have ignored the Windows phone, tablet, and desktop markets for too long and to their peril. Indeed, I talk to software developers regularly, and many of them exhibit a "who cares about Windows anymore" attitude, "it’s all about phones and tablets nowadays." But all this is about to change.
The game changers? Two things.
First, Windows 10 and Microsoft’s vision of universal apps, and second, the dying tablet market, which has finally realized that tablets are just big reading devices that don’t necessarily make you productive: large smartphones — aka "phablets" — do the same things.
What we’re seeing today is a fading Apple and Samsung tablet market. In contrast, the hybrid tablet-laptop market, running Windows, is enjoying better times. The driver? Simple. Productivity.
As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, phones and tablets are in reality "reading" devices. On the other hand, fast, light-weight laptops are "productivity" devices. On laptops, big screens, ergonomic keyboards, lots of RAM and faster processors, precision, and control are all superior to anything a tablet offers.
With Windows 10 coming soon (and free) to a laptop near you, you will find that what you see on your laptop is what you will see on your phone, Windows phone that is. Can anything get better than that? All of this falls right in line with what I think is the most productive office, mobile or otherwise, you can have — a smartphone for reading and responding quickly, and a laptop for precision, speed, and control over productivity. Who needs the intermediary device, i.e. a tablet?
In general, Android and iPhone apps are exactly that. Apps. Little islands of stuff-doers that can make your life easier, but don’t necessarily make you more productive at work, even though a lot of marketing hype is geared towards that. These little apps can accomplish just about anything in your personal life, but the one single thing they don’t make you is highly productive at work.
At work, smartphone and tablets cannot match their laptop or PC cousins in terms of number-crunching and data display-ability. The same goes for creating large documents, complex diagrams, and more.
Today’s professionals have to do a lot of the following: gather up a lot of data, pound and pivot the data until you get something meaningful out of it, and produce reports that are so graphically rich and engaging that people can’t help but think you’re the smartest person in the room.
If the future is "big" data, the future remains laptops and desktops, or laptops that can dock wirelessly to give you true workstation power and productivity.
Moreover, a productive work environment is a windowed environment. Witness the mass resistance to Windows 8 and its DOS-throwback full screen apps. Who can work like that?
So here comes the big fix, Windows 10. And it’s gonna be a big winner for a lot of reasons, which I will get into later.
In closing, Calvin Coolidge once said, "the business of America is business." Today, Microsoft knows one thing for sure. In the end, "the business of Microsoft is business."
With Windows 10 on the horizon, and its palpable propensity for possibly becoming one of the most successful products to come out of Microsoft in a long time, developers need to make sure they’re geared up to take advantage.