Windows Mobile missing the boat?

Posted September 24, 2008 at 10:33 AM by JG Mason

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile

With all the fun surrounding yesterday’s Android OS event and fondling combined with the lust still embodied by lines still at Apple stores for the iPhone, just how will Windows Mobile 7 compete?  Windows Mobile will not a have a new release for two-straight CESs according to C|NET whose sources say we’ll be waiting a full year before we see something that could possibly have been iPhone-inspired.

Microsoft spills the beans to manufacturers

Word is this delay has been announced to manufacturing partners.  After Microsoft is done with it, the OS has to go to manufacturers for their development and installation, a timely process for sure.  This lag has inspired new rumors that Microsoft may be thinking again about creating their own hardware.  Microsoft, with their proud admission that they “own” the business smartphone market thanks to Exchange integration, should have the cajones to create the ultimate business phone.  Instead, we get crippled, infuriatingly lacking phones that get email.

Open means just that

While T-Mobile defined a very specific target customer for their G1 (they said it was “everyone” ), an Exchange compatibility app is just a creative developer in his pajamas away.  So, the G1 becomes Exchange savvy and you’ve just built something like a Palm: a bulky and quirky smartphone no one is really sure about anymore/yet. But then you’ve got cut-and-paste.

Better for people to assume you are dumb, rather than release an OS and prove it.

Ouch, even for me that is harsh.  But the fact is the market is changing.  Business customers are showing that deep down, they are swayed by fun phones.  Windows Mobile has to leap frog, not just merely update the curtains like Windows Mobile 6 offered.  The world waits—but for what?

Read [C|NET]