Tuula Rytila Sees A Bright Future For Windows Phone

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Windows Phone VP and Chief Marketing Officer Tuula Rytila sees a bright future for Windows Phone; leveraging the Microsoft brand name on Lumia devices for US market penetration, and reinvigorating the platform with Windows 10. There’s no shortage of excitement in Rytila’s voice for the Windows Phone platform, she’s definitely all in for the direction Microsoft is taking it.

When I asked her about the lack of a Windows Phone presence in the US she acknowledged the fact the US market has been elusive. Part of the Microsoft strategy is to leverage the brand name Microsoft and making things like One Drive and Office more seamless between desktop and mobile. In other words Microsoft wants to give the user a unified experience so they feel that if they have a Windows PC, they’ll need to have a Windows Phone.

When I followed up regarding apps and app development, I was very forward in pointing out that Windows apps tend to look incomplete and thrown together. While Windows Phone native UI and UX is a pleasure to use, the apps third party developers put together aren’t as polished – which really is a disservice to the Windows Phone platform. The question to Rytila being, what is Microsoft doing to cultivate better apps from Windows Phone developers and does WP have design guidelines like Apple and Google?

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Her response was basically they are actively working with third party developers to provide better guidelines for app development and design, she pointed to Microsoft’s own “unified apps” model where a seamless UX is the order of the day. I then asked her about Google and Google’s refusal to provide their API’s for the Windows platform. I asked if there were any talks between the two for possible future allowance of API’s for users who live with Google to use Google on WP. This one I didn’t expect much from but she did say that Microsoft is continuing to develop strong relevant apps that they hope Google will notice and maybe lead to future work together.

Finally the subject of a flagship device did come up. Without giving anything up, her response was that Microsoft Lumia team is working on a flagship and they are working hard. There is really no news on when to expect this other than to know that Microsoft wants to do it right. They’re aware that customers expect a certain level of quality and features when a company releases a flagship device and they are pushing themselves to get it done right. Overall Rytila seems to have a great vision of where they’re taking Windows phone. The trick for Microsoft is to convince the consumer that they should follow them on that vision.

Note: the above article contains no direct quotes from Ms. Rytila, it has been summarized from a brief group Q&A session. Featured image courtesy Mattias Burling.

Last Updated on November 27, 2018.

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