Quickies August 18, 2009

Is Windows Mobile dead?

Gear Diary Is Windows Mobile dead? photo

Windows Mobile 6.5 is coming this fall, and Windows Mobile 7 is coming in 2010. But is it too little, too late?

According to Jack Gold in Businessweek, Microsoft should exit the smartphone market and cede the enterprise world to RIM. Microsoft has taken something of a beating in marketshare lately, but is it so bad that they should throw in the towel?

Personally, I think it’s far too early to declare any OS gone; we’ve got revamps of Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian and Android, not to mention the ongoing yearly iPhone updates!

What are your thoughts? Is Windows Mobile ready to ride quietly off into the sunset like the classic Palm OS, its one-time rival? Or does it still have a bright future ahead?

Tags: Android Phones and Tablets, BlackBerry Apps, HP Palm WebOS Apps, Microsoft Windows Phone Devices, Mobile Phones

Look Ma, No Hands… Using Jott Instead Of Typing

Quick Apps – AniGif

About Carly Z

View all posts by Carly Z

Carly has been a gadget fiend for a long time, going back to her first PDA (a Palm M100). She quickly went from researching what PDA to buy to following tech news closely and keeping up with the latest and greatest stuff. She loves writing about ebooks because they combine her two favorite activities; reading anything and everything, and talking about fun new tech toys. What could be better?

http://www.s-consult.com/index.php Wayne Schulz

I’d like to see Microsoft pick up an OS like Palm Web OS and run with it.

I think the huge problem that Windows Mobile has is that it relies on so many partners to distribute and support it.

If you think about RIM and Palm and iPhone — they don’t have the problem of worrying about their partners because their phone OS goes on their own hardware.

There’s some concern in my mind that Android may slip into this problem of having too many phone models that start to be tough to distinguish and support (OS wise) — witness the G1′s possible obsolescence that Joel just posted on the other day.
bugsy

I don’t think so, although it is in desperate need of an interface update that makes it more finger friendly. We have some great devices out there like the Touch HD that would greatly benefit from an interface overhaul. The reality is that if you use exchange, there is no better device for remote use. A good interface overhaul while maintaining the underlying capability would go a long way to making it relevant again. One thing the iphone has done is make eye candy relevant.
Carly Z

My one concern about the “one company, one OS” strategy is that it means your entire mobile platform is at the mercy of the company that designed it; in some cases you have a benevolent master (RIM), a dictatorship (Apple), or an unknown quantity (Palm). Yes, there’s very tight integration, but there’s something to be said for the flexibility that can be offered when multiple companies are involved…touchscreens, non touchscreens, hard keyboards, soft keyboards…it gives you the choice to buy the OS you want and the form factor you want.
http://www.grabaclue.com/perry Perry

I don’t think you can count out Windows Mobile. While they’re not making news like Apple, Palm, and Google lately, they still have a large installed base and are working to improve the OS. I’ve been running WM 6.5 for some time now and it is generally finger-friendly (though not perfect) and pretty nice. Add to it a custom UI from HTC or similar and you’ve got a good experience.

I do think, however, that Microsoft waited FAR too long to start making improvements and they’re paying for that now in terms of market share and mind share. That’s a hit that going to hurt them for some time as they’ll have to try to claw their way back up in the face of stiff competition.

I also believe that, should WM not recover, Microsoft has an excellent second chance in the form of the Zune, especially with the Zune HD coming out. Like WM, it is built on top of Windows CE, and it is very finger-friendly, supports modern tech like capacitive touch, has a good browser, and I think would make a good phone platform.

Perhaps Microsoft will do both, positioning WM for business users and Zune for consumers. Personally, however, I think that would be a mistake, since the trend seems to be going for converged devices that will work for both. As someone who carries a Blackberry for work and an old HTC Vogue (aka Sprint Touch) for personal use, I can see the advantage that the Palm Pre and others bring in a single device that can handle both roles.
http://www.geardiary.com Michael Anderson

I have a standing resentment back from the HPC2000 days when they obviously hobbled the mobile apps to placate the computer makers who were afraid of overlap …
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Christopher Gavula

It’s funny, because in many ways MS has been actually been removing features from Windows Mobile all along. Remember when we used to be able to sync over WiFi? Yeah – that’s gone now. And they still haven’t correctled the underlying memory management problems they introduced in WM 5 – they simply hid it all with more RAM.

There are more than interface issues with Windows Mobile. MS needs to take a very hard look at the OS and give it the attention it needs and deserves. Perhaps the new ZuneHD will offer a partial path, we’ll see, but Window Mobile, as it stands today, is ultimately a dead end. It’s the only major mobile OS that saw a marketshare percentage decrease – and that in a growing smartphone market. Not a good thing. Driver-related items, like dealing with Bluetooth, are STILL way to messy for many users and it’s so unecessary!

I know MS has some plans for WM7, I just hope they are soon enough and significant enough to make a difference, because WM 6.5 is already later that it should be and doesn’t really fix the underlying issues.

MS needs to take control and stop letting the carriers drive the platform – that was the OLD way – when there was no choice. Apple and RIM have shown there are other paths to success – now let’s do it the smart way.
alese

WM is not dead unless Microsoft decides it is. They can, if they want to, recover the market share, after all we are talking about the biggest software company in the world with enough resources to develop and support mobile OS.
The question of course is, does Microsoft want’s to continue with WM – given the snail pace WM is evolving. They could just provide/licence applications (Mobile Office) and technology (Active Sync) to others – but that would probably be a mistake. At the end I still think they can’t afford not to have mobile OS and I hope WM7 will be something like Windows7 on desktop, but we’ll see.
On a side note, I still think that from current smartphone operating systems, Palm’s WebOS is the one with the least chance of surviving, Palm is just too small to compete.
The next two that I doubt will survive at the end are Symbian (recent news about Nokia rethinking their OS strategy shows that possibility) and RIM – I know Blackberries are very popular in US and they are quite popular in Europe too, but I just don’t think RIM will survive in the long run as independent company and platform.
At the end, I think it will come down to Android, Apple, WM and potentially something Linux based from Nokia – the question here is will Apple’s concept of controlling everything prevail or will (my guess) the more “open” approach of Android and WM (different HW vendors with a lot of HW options) win the market share.
Carly Z

@Alese: You might be right about Palm, but RIM was just named the fastest growing company in the world. Their star is still rising, so I don’t think they’ll be going away anytime soon…what are your reasons for believing they’ll fail as an independent company?

Here’s the link: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/18/fortune-names-rim-fastest-growing-company-in-the-world/
http://www.geardiary.com Michael Anderson

I think a year or two ago there were legit concerns about RIM, but they have amazingly overcome all of those issues and become a hit in the consumer segment as well as the business market.
alese

About RIM. I don’t know really, maybe it’s just a feeling from few years ago, but mostly it’s because they are still dependent on one “product”. I know they have Server/platform for delivering mails and the devices, and all that is nicely integrated – but do people/companies really buy Blackberries for any other reason than for mobile mail?
And the other thing is, regardess of the growth they are still relativelly small compared to others (except Palm) and even bigger companies have problems developing and maintaining operating systems – I’m afraid they just won’t be able to compit fast enough against the others…
Maybe they will just migrate their mobile OS to something like Android, but I doubt they will stick with their system in the long run.
doogald

Well, I do not know about its long-term viability, based on the upgrade schedule that has WM7 out late next year, but I do know that for me, WM is dead. I will never own another WM device. Microsoft lost me, that’s for sure.