Microsoft's veep of marketing for Windows Mobile (jeebus, that's got to be stressful job right about now) has gone on the record in saying that there'll be a "major announcement" out of his camp at
Mobile World Congress next month, which makes sense -- it's the biggest mobile trade show of the year, after all, and we've been expecting
WinMo 6.5 for a little while. What's particularly interesting, though, is that the dude says they're looking to cut down on the total number of phones offered by its licensees in an effort to "be more focused" and do a better job tailoring the platform to the devices in the market. Makes sense in a way, but on the flipside, one of Windows Mobile's solid advantages over the competition has always been its endless selection of styles and form factors. Taking that away means that WinMo's got to be better by leaps and bounds to keep going head-to-head with the Palms, Apples, RIMs, and Nokias of the world, so here's hoping MWC turns out to be a watershed event.
[Via
Phone Scoop]
posted Jan 10th 2009 6:28PM
That had better include HTC, or you can go straight to hell, MS.
HTC is far and away the best designer of phones right now. The question is will Microsoft try to keep them from putting TouchFlo on future handsets in order to make WinMo more relevant.
Better include HTC when they scorch the MS name by shipping test-rig D3DM conformance drivers "as defined by Don Couch" to the general public, and continue to do so with the latest rom for the HTC Diamond.
And, we all know about HTC chosing to scorch MS's name specifically by going with the Ebay-quality Qualcomm SoCs, and continuing to ship devices of such inferior quality -- burning customers for at least 3 generations.
Require WM licensees to pass WHQL hardware conformance tests, or let them go to the Android wolves.
I'm a HTC Touch Diamond Telus user, and I'm happy with the phone... only after going through some serious tweaks. I had to go into the phone's registry (Windows Mobile phones have registry!!!) seriously tweak the GPS, battery, touch screen sensitivity (which was not even set at max for some reason), and performance issues to make it work for me.
Seriously, if Microsoft just optimized the existing OS, and made the icons and texts bigger for touching, it would make a lot of people happier.
Why do they tend to do such half-assed jobs on their OSs??
Since Microsoft doesn't actually make their own phones I think it is important for their business to be as flexible as possible so the phone manufacturers can be innovative (e.g., HTC's TouchFlo3D, Samsung's TouchWiz, etc.). Microsoft's focus should be on integration of the mobile OS and applications with the desktop OS and applications.
Like you intimated, Microsoft's biggest problem right now is they paid too little attention to the condition of the mobile OS that the phone manufacturers had to get rid of the ugly. Too much of what we see from the phone manufacturers should be native to the OS in some way, shape, or form. Now that the phone manufacturer's are distinguishing their offerings by creating these unique interfaces, Microsoft is trying to figure out how to make sure people don't forget that it is actually their OS on the phone.
Saying they're going to restrict the number of phones that have licensed copies of the mobile OS is probably just a ploy to make it look like future versions of the OS are going to be somehow be really special -- trying to capture some of the buzz that has been Apple's, Google's, and now Palm's. What Microsoft is not going to do is cut off a profitable revenue stream.
Fewer phones plan to use Window Mobile.... so Microsoft's PR person says, "We don't want to be on a lot of phones." I don't believe it.
"going head-to-head with the Palms, Apples, RIMs, and Nokias of the world"
And don't forget the Androids!
In other news, HTC is releasing android roms in advance of releasing their new lineup.