Windows Phone… the future is coming
October 21, 2009mike Comments OffThe Windows Phone? What do you mean you haven’t heard of the Windows Phone… its basically the slickest thing there is. Ok maybe I wouldn’t go that far, but is an interesting notion. Right now one could make a case that the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry are the leaders in the smartphone industry. (Yes I’m sure someone will tell me that the Symbian OS is the world leader, but we’re talking US and recent handset sales, not some Nokia candybar-style phone from 1999). With Android coming into the fold as the up-and-comer… though will those stats include Asus Netbooks or the Barnes & Noble nook? lol. Palm is talking its rightful place with the webOS, Pre and soon Pixi as the black horse of the bunch, the underdog everyone roots for and might just suprize us in the end (read: wait till the next US carrier gets webOS).
The major phone OS member I didn’t mention was the big guys in Washington… MSFT. Yes good old Microsoft and their Windows Mobile (whatever happened to Pocket PC anyway?) They can’t decide whether its a good idea to tell people it has something like desktop Windows only nothing like it, ten times more confusing in their smartphone, or to just let Samsung, HTC and whoever still makes phones for Windows Mobile since Android came to be market the stuff themselves with a fancy UI on top of it to actually attempt to make the phone user friendly.
One day someone at Microsoft marketing said… there’s no such thing as bad publicity (Henry Ford coined the concept I believe) and said…. everyone on Earth has Windows (many try not to have it) so why don’t we use that idea to sell phones. The Windows Phone was born. It was kind of a premature birth initiating the concept with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5, the band-aid attempting to fix the lacking major features that every other modern mobile OS has, rather than waiting for Windows Mobile 7 and actually show us something new, but they did it and some people may have even seen the commercials!
The people who did see the commercials probably said… WTF? I didn’t know Microsoft was making a phone… wow that’s interesting. Well not to burst anyone’s bubble, they aren’t (or are they? for the conspiracy theorists out there). What they are doing is what Google should do with Android (but is trying its darnedest to do anything but by limiting the use of the term “with Google” and all that jazz) is saying, hey we have this platform and a lot of different manufacturers make a lot of very different products for it, come check it out. Basically they’re saying the Windows Phone may have nothing in common with desktop Windows except that a lot of manufacturers make hardware to run it, just like the only major thing the iPhone has in common with Apple Macintosh’s, besides the pretend OS X and Safari names, is that only one manufacturer makes one (ok a couple ever so slightly different) variants. Variety is good right? If MS plays its cards right perhaps Windows Mobile 7 could really give us something to look at… I’m curious to see.