14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone has finally made it to the top three mobile operating systems, as the platform has recently switched places with BlackBerry, which doesn’t seem to be a major player in the market.
Although Microsoft’s mobile platform is far behind iOS and Android, the Redmond-based company is trying to push forward to lower the huge gap between number 2 and 3 spots in the hierarchy.
Windows Phone 8 was a small step in the right direction and combined with Nokia’s expertise on the handset market, Microsoft has managed to strengthen its presence in various countries.
The next version of the operating system, Windows Phone 8.1, is a huge step forward, which will definitely add a good amount of market share for Microsoft’s platform.
One of the few aspects where Windows Phone seems to have failed is its presence on the enterprise market. Apparently, Microsoft did not have enough consumer offerings included in its OS, even though the company has done a lot of work to make Windows Phone perfect for enterprises.
However, with the release of Windows Phone 8.1, lots of consumer features have been added to the operating system’s major enterprise security and management services.
Microsoft Senior Director Stella Chernyak told V3 that “a great enterprise phone starts by being a great phone for everyone. To achieve this with Windows Phone 8.1 we did a lot of things to improve the user interface and make it more customizable.”
She then went on and highlighted some of the major new features that were part of Windows Phone 8.1, “we also added our Cortana voice assistant. These additions mean companies will see more Windows Phone 8.1 devices coming in as employees' personal devices.”
But this is not all, as Microsoft has confirmed that it now supports “enterprises’ core needs by offering an open device management platform,” which basically means that a vendor can create a solution to manage Windows Phone 8.1.
One of the most important features available with the Windows Phone 8.1 is called “Universal Application,” which will certainly increase enterprise customers’ interest in the new platform.
With Universal Application, developers will be able to build an application once and run it on all Windows Phone phones and tablets. The new feature was announced back in early April and proved to be one of the most praised by enterprise customers.
As a consequence, Microsoft has raised the bar regarding the expectations for Windows Phone adoption rate in the next couple of months.
“Since unveiling it we've had an unbelievable amount of enthusiasm from enterprises for Windows Phone 8.1. Several hundred customers are participating in our enterprise adoption programme.
Several hundred in enterprise is a significant number and they are all Fortune 500-type customers. Our projection is to deploy [Windows Phones] to several million seats [individual employees] in the next few months,” concluded Chernyak.