04.23.10
Windows Phone 7 – Oh dear.
Lets get one thing VERY VERY clear. I am NOT a basher of all things Microsoft. I hope that over the months and years my stance on ‘the right tools for the job’ has become well enough established that I can avoid the religious rants that other lapse into.
There are some great if not exceptional tools and systems available from the Redmond giant and I’m more than happy to use, endorse and promote them in the right space, but the presentation on Window Phone 7 I attended the other day left me wondering what they must have been thinking!
The pitch and positioning of WP7 was interesting in a number of different ways:
- The “Chassis” approach Microsoft is taking to the release plan shows that WP7 is not being positioned just as a Phone OS for vendors to buy and load onto their devices. It’s going to be released to support very specific chassis – i.e. hardware – specifications only.
- The OS build is “ground up”, so this isn’t a further tweaking or set of modifications and enhancements to the old CE/Mobile base. It’s brand new. This however means that it’s lacking a little functionality in some areas – there’s no Cut-Paste for example, neither does it support multi-tasking. I seem to remember a certain other device being lambasted for such shortcomings byt Windows Mobile users… times they do change!
- Application development and management. Int he old days, anyone could pick up a copy of the Windows Mobile SDK and write themselves a little application – and lots did, there are quite a few, very specific, applications out there running to provide monitoring updates and information feeds written by and for technical teams (I’m sure there are many others too). Now though, all applications will have to be put through a formal approval process before – wait for it – being made available to install through a Microsoft owned and controlled portal! I’m having weird flashes at this point and the rest of the room are chuckling and exchanging glances too!
- Windows Mobile Phone v6.5 will remain supported an available “For the forseeable future” to allow for applications to be ported over and to cover the lower end of the market, the sub £200 devices.
- WP7 outfitted devices will, at launch, be pitched as “Premium”, this in price terms is £250 plus.
Well, well, well there is much hay to be made here isn’t there?! The comparisons are obvious and not a little invidious too and I for one can’t see why I’d buy something which looks and works like and iPhone but has – at launch – far inferior functionality. And it’s not just the iPhone either, Googles Android on top of HTC’s hardware is looking more and more like a platform people can relate too and ‘own’.
I left Windows Mobile 6.1 behind because, frankly, it simply failed to work properly. My TyTn II wouldn’t obey the backlight settings and I had to repeatedly switch the thing on if I needed the keypad during a call, even to hang up at the end! I eventually resented even having to pick the thing up and use it. Am I therefore likely to return to something unproven, with less functionality? Well of course not. I got an iPhone last month – my first one – and to over-use an over-used phrase, it just works.
Reasons to change to WP7 demonstrated so far = 0.
It used to be said that Apple created and maintained a niche market of brand-fans and I’m sure this, in some respects, was true but it was interesting to note a couple of things from the day. On my train to London, 3 out of 4 of us at the table were using iPhones, the 4th had a BlackBerry. At the event itself I’d estimate that a good 50% plus were touting Apples device too, if you factor in the BlackBerry horde and a good sprinkling of Nokia’s the Windows Mobile presence could not have been high. Are Microsoft then pitching a device at a hard-core fan base? Are we looking at MS-geeks replacing Apple-geeks? Perhaps…
My feeling is that Microsoft got stung, very badly too, by the iPhone and by Android. The very fact the WP7 is a brand new OS shows an acknowledgment that the old OS along with Microsoft “We do software” position simply wasn’t right. The death of the Windows phone has been predicted, it may happen, but it’s going to have a struggle to take ground back from the empires of Apple and Google.
