Windows Phone 7 is a sinking ship. How do I know this? This past week I walked through a Radio Shack, Best Buy, and two Wal-Marts looking at their wireless phones. Not one single WP7 phone could be found. All iPhone and Android. Almost entirely Android. Retail is a cut-throat business. If you aren’t moving it off the shelves, then you’re moving it off the shelves. The fact that WP7 phones are not available at retail in many stores tells me they just aren’t selling.

Now don’t let the twitter excitement fool you. Much of it comes either from Microsoft fanboys or people who are desperate to try something else. Don’t get me wrong. I happen to like WP7. It’s a refreshing take on the concept of a mobile OS and I think still stands a very good shot at running a competitive third. However, Microsoft has to make some changes in 2012 for that to happen.

Licensing

The first is licensing. Google recently announced they were activating 700,000 devices *every day*. That number is hard to get your mind around. But let’s look at it from the perspective of the user and the OEM. From the user’s perspective, they want inexpensive phones. The fact that iPhones are never on sale and WP7 phones are simply not there, that leaves Android. And during my walk through my local Best Buy I saw no less than 4 very current, very capable Android phones that were completely free. In fact the phone I currently carry is a Samsung Galaxy S2 that I got free from Wal-Mart. People get free even if it’s not the best experience for them.

From the OEM side, free also comes into play. Android is licensed for free from Google. Now we can discuss patent indemnity all day but the fact that nearly all phones currently for sale are Android tells me that OEM partners have made up their mind. Android being open source means they can customize the way they want to (TouchWiz being an example of what not to do).

Microsoft really needs to license WP7 for free and work on building up the ecosystem.

Customization

One of the great things about Android is the way you can customize it. You can use your own lock screen, have different launchers, have nice background pictures that span desktops, widgets to keep you updated, etc.  With WP7 you can’t change the lock screen and third party apps can’t write any information there.  It really cracks me up when I hear being talking about customizing their phone and what they mean is changing the tile color from baby blue to hot pink.  Yeah, that’s it.

Video in websites

I tried to like my Focus, really I did.  One of the things that always bothered me was finding a url in a tweet to a video only to have it not play in IE9.  Plays fine in iOS and on my Android.  Now I know why this happens.  Websites detect the iOS user agent string and send down HTML5 video and Android can handle the Flash.  So this isn’t a problem with WP7 so much as a problem with websites not sending HTML5 down for WP7.  Guys, let’s fix this!

Fix the Multitasking

I really like the multitasking concepts in iOS and WP7.  It’s comforting to have some belief that when I switch away from an app, it’s no longer running and eating up my CPU.  However I’ve seen two main problems with multitasking in WP7.  Holding down the back arrow brings up the list of “running” apps however often I have an app that I know I started up that is not in the list.  Heck, I’ve even had an app like a music app that was currently playing not be in the list.  The other problem is being able to force close apps that are misbehaving. And, yes, this can be an issue.  I recently installed a free ringtone app and tried to download a ringtone. It hung up on the downloading screen.  Switching away and then back to it had no effect as it just picked up where it left off, hung up.  It seems that the only way to dump an app in that state is to either uninstall the app or reboot the phone.

Fix Tap-N-Turn Directions

Everyone needs to stop with the WP7 has turn by turn directions.  No it does not. If I have to constantly tap my screen to have the device remind me where I am or how far to the next turn, I’ll just refuse to use the feature.  A platform doesn’t have to have TBT to be successful (iPhone) but if you are going to say you have it, then have it.

There are several other issues that I can think of but let me know what you think.  Drop me a comment here is shoot me a message on twitter (see my twitter link at the top of my home page).