Microsoft has never been one for holding its collective hands up and admitting it made mistakes, but that's precisely what's happened, with one MS exec lamenting the failures of Windows Mobile to compete with the iPhone.
Microsoft UK's Head of Mobility, Phil Moore, told attendees at a recent conference in London: "It's true, Apple caught us all napping. It launched something that was very iconic, new and unseen with a very good user interface."
Playing catch-up
Going even further and comparing the iPhone directly with Windows, Moore said: "We're still playing catch-up. When Apple came on to the scene a couple of years ago, it threw away the rulebook and reinvented it. We unfortunately don't have that luxury."
So, considering that Apple's share of the smartphone market is already about twice that of Microsoft's, one might expect that means the next-generation of Windows for phones is a priority.
Too little, too late
Expectations, however, seem made to be dashed – Moore also admitted that Windows Mobile 7 won't be ready until the end of next year, more than three years after Apple's first iPhone shook up the smartphone market for good.
Your comments (6) Click to add a new comment
duskrider
December 22nd 2009
6. So let's get this straight: It will be 3 years after the iPhone launch that MS prepares their answer to it, so that would mean that either a)they were doing nothing prior to the iPhone launch, just hangin' with what they had or b)they missed the boat so badly that the iPhone made them ditch any/all work they had already done on the next major version of Windows Mobile and start over from scratch.
How can a major OS company either take so long to write a small OS, or get it so wrong that they had to start over completely?
Does not compute! I'm baffled.
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mikedevenney
December 21st 2009
5. @optimaximal
If you read that more closely, you'll see he was referring to the desktop. They can't tear up the rule book for the desktop version of Windows because so many enterprise software packages rely on, and conform to, that rulebook.
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jbmetrics
December 21st 2009
4. Microsoft doesn't invent, reinvent, or "tear up the rulebook". They acquire technology and publish and market it. The last Microsoft invention was the concept of licensing, and that was over 25 years ago.
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jcdickinson
December 21st 2009
3. @optimaximal - unfortunately Windows 7 was evolution. They managed to evolve the operating system while still ensuring [most] application continued to run.
The thing with WinMo (from a programmer's perspective) is that it's a big architectural mistake; it's horribly designed and I can't see them making anything anything more of it.
Hopefully the talks about them rewriting the entire thing for WinMo 7 are true.
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shambolic2000
December 19th 2009
2. Windows 7 didn't exactly tear any rules up, it's just Vista done properly with some user interface tweaks.
I think Microsoft are going to lose too much market share by the time they release WM 7 to be a serious player on mobiles. I see Android and the iPhone as the two main market leaders by the end of next year.
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optimaximal
December 19th 2009
1. "When Apple came on to the scene a couple of years ago, it threw away the rulebook and reinvented it. We unfortunately don't have that luxury."
What the hell? It's their platform - why can't they tear up the rules and make something decent? After all, it worked for Windows 7!
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