Windows Phone Thoughts: Windows Mobile Mindshare...It Has Almost None

Over on the private Mobius discussion list, Ed Hansberry pointed to this article by Walt Mossberg where Mossberg talks about the forthcoming Palm Pre. Mossberg talks about the smartphones he considers to be competitors in this space: the iPhone, the Blackberry Storm, and the Android-based G1. Windows Mobile isn't part of the discussion, even though there are phones running Windows Mobile that compare quite well with those other phones. I thought I'd share my reaction to that article here, in no particular order:

1) If Walt had one wish, it would probably be that Microsoft as a company be destroyed by nuclear attack. Expecting him to be fair toward Microsoft is like asking a cat to not eat a plate of tuna. It's just not going to happen.

2) People understand single-device models. It's easy to talk about the iPhone vs. Pre vs. vs. G1 vs. Blackberry (people use it as a catch-all term for all Blackberry phones). It's much harder to talk about a single phone vs. an ecosystem of phones. Once there are more Android phones on the market Google will have a similar problem. It's cumbersome to try and weave the platform narrative together. With HTC releasing their new phones in Europe/Asia first, most North American press don't register the fact that there are legitimate competitors out there running Windows Mobile. There's also the reality that even though there have been some great-selling Windows Mobile phones (the million+ club) there isn't really a "hero" phone that stands out from the rest and is a poster-child for Windows Mobile. That needs to change.

3) I thought it was hilarious that an app nuked Walt's Pre, took out all his data, and he just sort of shrugged it off as being not a big deal. This is the phone that's launching in a few days? And the applications aren't sandboxed in a way that prevents massive data loss? Imagine if a Windows Mobile phone did that to him - he'd have a fit.

4) Despite less-than-stellar sales, notice how the Zune has tremendous mindshare against the iPod? Other competitors rarely get mentioned, even though I'm sure Sandisk sells more MP3 players than Microsoft does. Windows Mobile has the same problem it's always had: selling an operating system or a platform is hard; selling a shiny piece of hardware is easy in comparison. It's easy to hold up a device and say "Here's our new thing". Holding up a platform and saying "Here are our 20 new things" - that's hard.

That's my take on Mossberg's article - what's yours?