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Windows Phone 7, Can It Save Microsoft’s Mobile Bacon

Windows Phone 7 is coming closer to coming to the market. Microsoft has been sending the OS for their brand of mobile phones into the carrier’s labs to get tested. They’ve additionally sent it to application developers for those phones and they are expected to hit the market before the holiday shopping season. One report states that the technical preview that was given of the Windows Phone 7 is about what Microsoft had promised earlier in the year.
After attempted creation of a unified mobile user experience with their own hardware ended in complete and total disaster Microsoft made the decision that with this mobile OS version to achieve their go through the getting tough with the software and hardware manufacturers. This has been done through making them adhere to a fundamental standards set for the new phone ecosystem. For instance, applications have to be sold only in the Microsoft Marketplace.
There are some additional hardware requirements as well. The phones have to have a bare minimum of:
•   256 megabytes of RAM
•   4 gigabytes of flash memory storage
•   Wi-Fi support
•   GPS and touch screen capacitive
Additionally, they must have an:
•   Accelerometer
•   Compass
•   Proximity sensor
•   Light sensor
Every single phone must have the same buttons in the same locations. This includes having a Bing button in order to encourage anyone that’s buying the phone to use their search engine, Bing, to find things.
With their attempts to emulate what RIM and Apple have done by the encapsulation of their new ecosystem in a silo Microsoft is hoping that they can also emulate their success within the mobile marketplace. It could be a shortsighted mission though. There are a lot of analysts that believe the reasons that the phones which are based on the Android OS by Google have actually surpassed the iPhone due to the fact that it’s an open ecosystem.
The analyst’s state that with the partially closed systems, like that of Apples, are going to have to open if they plan on staying competitive. If that proves to be true the Windows paradigm could be behind some steps in the market before it’s even out of the gate.
Additionally, regardless of how the Windows Phone 7 mobile actually turns out Microsoft is going to face some very serious and real challenges in the market:
•   They have to overcome the bumbler reputation due to the past with failures and products that have performed quite poorly
•   They are facing very formidable market leaders that have the ability to get things right the first time through (iPhone 4 not included in the getting things right department)
Microsoft’s reputation is that they need many reiterations of their products before they get it right. HP is the 800# gorilla in the room with their acquisition of the Palm platform. That’s likely to put them in as the wild card when it comes to the divvying up of the market share. It’s unclear whether or not Windows Phone 7 is actually going to save Microsoft’s mobile bacon but it should be interesting to find out.

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Tags: iphone, Smartphones, windows mobile

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 11:47 am by Bryan Bradshaw and is filed under Cell Phones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.