In my last post, I discussed why I hope Microsoft is successful in everything they do. It’s not personal – the more computing devices that run Windows, the more targets for SPAINB Development software.
But not everything Microsoft does is successful. And near the top of that list is their whole mobile and smart phone effort. Let’s just say they’re screwing this up so bad, you can hear the crickets and see the birds circling in the mid-day sun.
Hiding out in the same neighborhood as Windows phones is Microsoft’s music player device, the Zune. Don’t be afraid if you’ve never heard of the Zune – most people haven’t.
Microsoft’s performance in the smart phone market is giving them the type of challenge they’re not used to fighting. According to Gartner, their market share dropped from 11% in Q3 2008 to 7.9% in Q3 2009. The big winners in the market are Apple (now at 17.1%), RIM’s Blackberry (now at 20.8%) and Google’s Android (now at 3.9%). All of Microsoft’s hardware partners – HTC, LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson – are developing on Android, and Palm and Motorola no longer ship Windows phones.
When Microsoft holds big conferences with software developers, the Kool-Aid they try to get you to drink reflects the areas they think are important and strategic to them. Windows 7 and Cloud Computing have received a lot of visibility over the last year. In the meantime, they’ve been embarrassingly quite on what’s going on in the mobile world.
This is expected to change at the Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona in February and at Microsoft’s MIX conference for developers in March, where details of the next version of Windows Mobile (“Windows Mobile 7”) are revealed. Nothing official has been released, but rumors have started to swirl based on anonymous leaks.
Expect Windows Mobile to get a major user interface upgrade. Plan on iPhone-like multi-touch support. Expect different editions of the OS, one targeted to the business market, and one targeted to consumers. Expect integration of features from the Zune. Expect requirements for hardware platforms so that application developers can plan on minimum capabilities such as memory, processing speed and display size.
But don’t expect any phones with Windows Mobile 7 to ship until at least Q3 this year and more likely Q4, or maybe early next year for all the capabilities to available at your local phone store. This puts Microsoft on the hot seat to stem its market share losses during 2010 while hyping the capabilities of an OS that won’t be shipping until late in the year.
Personally, for Christmas this year, I got a Zune, the under-rated MP3 player completely overshadowed by Apple iPod line of music players. I like the Zune and its best feature – a music download service that has some real advantages over iTunes.
But when I put both my BlackBerry and my Zune in my shirt pocket at the same time, I really wished I had a Zune with a phone in it. You know, like an iPhone. Take the design of the Zune, stick your windows phone in it, and you’ve got a legitimate competitor to the iPhone in the consumer market and the BlackBerry in the business market.
The stakes for success of Windows Mobile 7 are high. The Windows Mobile team at Microsoft is now in the same division as the Zune and the Xbox. Microsoft has become a hardware manufacturer in markets where for a variety of reasons it made sense for them to do so – like the Xbox for gaming, and the Zune for portable multimedia. If phone manufacturers are unable to generate the success in the market for Windows Mobile 7 that Microsoft needs, don’t be shocked if a year or two from now we’re discussing the next model of Microsoft’s own phone.
