Thursday, February 26, 2004
CommWeb: "Microsoft Touts Mobile Progress in Europe, but Sceptics Remain "
Posted by Jason Dunn in "NEWS" @ 03:30 PM
This is an article about Microsoft's efforts in Europe, and how two new European carriers have adopted Windows Mobile solutions. But here's that part that made me raise an eyebrow:
"Microsoft continues to promote to the mobile industry proprietary Microsoft technologies originally developed for the PC environment, including Windows Media, MSN services, instant messaging and Digital Rights Management (DRM). However, with mobile phone penetration in the global market far greater than that for PCs, there is a growing resentment among Europeans at Microsoft's efforts to call the shots. They wonder, for example, why PCs should define mobile systems and services."
The carrier culture is an interesting one - they prefer to exist in walled gardens, and for years tried to keep their customers off the Internet and inside their billable realm with technologies like WAP, SMS, and MMS. What's interesting here is that Microsoft has tooled the Pocket PC OS to be as friendly as possible to carrier technologies - the latest Pocket PC Phone Editions today have support for SMS, WAP, and MMS. But they also offer Internet technologies like email, HTML Web browsing, instant messaging, and rich WAV/WMA ringtones - many of which use GPRS/1xRTT, which drives up carrier ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). Yes, IM is a debacle right now, with competing IM clients struggling for dominance, but ultimately consumers have the ability to install other IM clients on their Smartphone and use whatever service they wish. There's no "lock in" from Microsoft here.
What do you think? Do the carriers have legitimate gripes with Microsoft, or is this a case of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome?
"Microsoft continues to promote to the mobile industry proprietary Microsoft technologies originally developed for the PC environment, including Windows Media, MSN services, instant messaging and Digital Rights Management (DRM). However, with mobile phone penetration in the global market far greater than that for PCs, there is a growing resentment among Europeans at Microsoft's efforts to call the shots. They wonder, for example, why PCs should define mobile systems and services."
The carrier culture is an interesting one - they prefer to exist in walled gardens, and for years tried to keep their customers off the Internet and inside their billable realm with technologies like WAP, SMS, and MMS. What's interesting here is that Microsoft has tooled the Pocket PC OS to be as friendly as possible to carrier technologies - the latest Pocket PC Phone Editions today have support for SMS, WAP, and MMS. But they also offer Internet technologies like email, HTML Web browsing, instant messaging, and rich WAV/WMA ringtones - many of which use GPRS/1xRTT, which drives up carrier ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). Yes, IM is a debacle right now, with competing IM clients struggling for dominance, but ultimately consumers have the ability to install other IM clients on their Smartphone and use whatever service they wish. There's no "lock in" from Microsoft here.
What do you think? Do the carriers have legitimate gripes with Microsoft, or is this a case of NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome?
