After Apple’s victory over Samsung, jubilation was heard not only in the camp of Apple itself, but also in the camp of Microsoft. The reason is on the surface: the court decision dealt a blow not only to the Korean manufacturer, but also to Google, its mobile system. In this context, the Microsoft platform now looks very tempting for smartphone and tablet manufacturers as an alternative to Android.
One of the main advantages of the platform, which seems especially relevant right now, when the court decided Samsung to pay Apple a little more than $1 billion, is the presence of Microsoft’s own thick portfolio of patents. It can help the company avoid numerous lawsuits with Apple. Given the existence of a cross-licensing agreement between Microsoft and Apple, such a trial is unlikely at all. In addition, many manufacturers of Android devices have been paying royalties to the Redmond company for a long time.
But Microsoft will not be able to win back market share with a rich license portfolio alone. To do this, she needs allies. Thanks to the results of the trial between Samsung and Apple, their appearance is more than likely. The reason is that after the defeat of the Korean giant, many manufacturers of Android devices no longer feel safe from Apple’s attacks. Switching to an alternative platform will deprive them of dependence on Google and, at the same time, reduce their risks.
The new Windows Phone 8 platform, which has lost most of the disadvantages of Windows Phone 7 (including the need to rewrite all applications in C#, which greatly hindered the development of the Windows Marketplace), can also play a positive role in the acquisition of supporters. Here again, everything is simple: software developers are very interested in the emergence of a new market, and a market to which it is relatively easy to port an application from competitive platforms. This means that the Windows Marketplace application market in the Windows Phone 8 version will grow very actively. Where there are a lot of applications, there are a lot of users, which means a large number of sales. Vendors, like no one else, are interested in sales.
These three factors (plus Microsoft’s active marketing policy) may in the future bring WP8, if not to the leaders in the platform market, then to equal positions with Android and iOS.