Windows Phone Thoughts: Magneto and the Menagerie of Mobile Operating Systems

"We have already seen Microsoft, with its recent integration alliances with Symbian and BlackBerry maker RIM, shifting towards trying to dominate the middleware platform rather than, necessarily, the client operating system. This recognizes a trend already fully appreciated by Symbian's main supporter, Nokia, with its heavy focus on positioning its higher level software, . . . as a standard platform for enterprise and consumer devices. Three years ago SymbianOS and Windows Mobile – with PalmOS and Linux on the sidelines – were lined up for a head-to-head war. Now that war is increasingly irrelevant, and the battle has become one focused on a broader software platform that is largely neutral to the client device"

This thoughtful Register article looks at how the mobile market is gearing up for the launch of Magneto and how the battle may shape up in the future. Bill Gates said that the phone is largely becoming a software device, which obviously plays to Microsoft's traditional strengths. He also mentions a few interesting snippets about about the future development of Microsoft Mobile platforms, involving automation, OCR and speech & visual recognition. One thing is sure, there's a lot of good stuff in the pipeline. So, how do you guys fancy a 'ubiquitous device' that apparently will automatically do most of what you want it to?