Switch to Windows Phone Android App?!?

In the next week or so, Microsoft will be pushing the Switch to Windows Phone app to Google Play. It’s supposed to make it easy for Android users to change OSes and migrate to Windows Phone. On the Android side, users will run the app and it’ll upload to SkyDrive their current app list; sidenote, SkyDrive is Microsoft owned. Anyway, once a user gets a Windows Phone phone, they install the equivalent app for that OS and it’ll scan the uploaded Android app list. The Switch to Windows Phone app will install Windows Phone versions of apps from the Android app list and if any app isn’t offered, it’ll suggest several equivalents from the Windows Store. Paid apps will have to be re-purchased for the new OS.

Well, there’s nothing subtle about what’s going on here, the name Switch to Windows Phone says it all. The real purpose of this turducken of an app, which will probably be sold as a convenience, is a blatant attempt to siphon off Androidians specifically, as there’s no iOS version. To me, this is kind of like Amazon placing Amazon-specific QR codes on every item at Best Buy, trying to woo customers even though they’re shopping in an entirely different store.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone is gaining market share, in the U.S. it was recently measured at 4.1%, but it has quite some catching up to do to come even close to Android’s 51.2%. If this is their latest unspoken marketing gimmick, I don’t think it’ll work. There’s many reasons people have a mobile OS preference and most are entrenched. Unless users are given compelling reasons to switch, typically by hardware or software features, they won’t. Being able to port apps from one platform to another isn’t going to do it.

Source: CITE World via BGR

by zAcHcOmA via AndroidSPIN