Will Microsoft Catch Up In Mobile?
Microsoft has unleashed a slew of arsenals this week at Mobile World Congress. Just a quick recap of the various announcements made on Monday:
- Windows Mobile 6.5. Pictures of WM6.5 have been circulating around for a while now, but Mr. Ballmer officially announced it earlier this week. Except phones with WM6.5 by the end of the year. CNET has a very nice photo gallery of WM 6.5 here.
- My Phone Sync Service. This service allows Windows Mobile phones to sync contacts, calendars, e-mail and other documents into the cloud and across your other devices. This is similar to Apple’s MobileMe, except it’s free! My Phone is currently available for an invitation-only Beta.
- Windows Marketplace. A unified storefront for Windows Mobile applications. This is just like iPhone App Store.
- Re-branding of Windows Mobile. Don’t call it Windows Mobile anymore. Microsoft is now rebranding all Windows Mobile phones as “Windows phones”. This is purely a rebranding exercise and does not imply that the new batch of phones are running the real Windows OS.
Big Deal with LG. Microsoft signed a deal with Korean electronics maker for LG to use Windows Mobile as its primary mobile phone OS. We are not sure what primary means, but LG committed to releasing over 50 Windows Mobile based phones by 2012.
The folks from Redmond are serious about competing with Apple, RIM, Palm, Nokia and Google in the mobile space. The announcements this week show that Redmond is still very capable at flexing their product, marketing and partnership muscles. We think the announcements this week are definitely right steps toward the right direction, but Microsoft will need to bring more in order to compete with others.
Windows 6.5 is largely a baby step towards competing in the new era of large-screen, touch-friendly phones. The new OS only supports resistive touch, which is less accurate, and it still does not support multi-touch. The user interface is a huge leap from previous versions of Windows Mobile, but we can’t say that it beats the competition hands-down. There are certainly elements of the UI that we like, such as the clever use of the lock screen to show the user useful information (see first WM6.5 screen shot in this post), but it’s also inferior to other mobile OS in many ways. Device makers may be happy that they don’t have to do as much work to mask the old Windows Mobile UI, but will need to find other areas to differentiate.
Judging from the number of Windows Mobile handsets being announced this week (and the lack of Android-based handsets announced), it looks like Microsoft still has some time to get their act together to win the mobile phone space. Microsoft will need to stop just following the competition and bring some real innovation in order to be the leader in this space.
Windows Phone promo video below. It will give you a good sense of the WM6.5 UI as well.
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:05 am
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