Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"First LG flat-out says on public record that Windows Mobile 7 is bound for 2010, and now we've gotten apparent word that the company has narrowed said release window to September of this year -- at least as far as its own devices are concerned."

This is about as reliable as HTC's now-you-see-it/now-you-don't disclosures about WM7 for the HD2 - take it with a pinch of salt. Still, this counters some of the unsubstantiated rumours about delays in WM7, and provides some corroboration of the news from LG's CES conference.

"If you don't have the good fortune of owning a Windows Mobile 5 or 6.x device that came preinstalled with a replacement UI (like TouchFLO, for instance) and you haven't ponied up for something like SPB Mobile Shell, there's a new kid on the block that might be worth your attention."

Could it be that Microsoft leaves out the cool features on purpose? Is it to give other companies the opportunities to create software to sell? If the Ageye Infinity add on was a natural part of 6.5, boy would we be talking. Instead it seems that MS throws out a minimal upgrade and let's other companies spruce it up. While this is a slick extension, it feels like Windows Mobile is still playing catch up. I want to see something innovative from the wealthiest company in the world. Apple's doing it. Google's doing it. Ok, now that I'm done ranting, it is a cool program. Hit the link for a video and more info.

LG in their press event at the Consumer Electronics Show, mentioned that they would have devices in the market this year with WM7. That's no biggie, if reports of WM7 hitting RTM by the second quarter are true. On the other hand, LG is the first major manufacturer to go on the record as committing to WM7, which is nice confirmation. The clock's ticking though - Apple may debut a new iPhone OS this year, and Android looks like it'll make huge strides in mind share and market share in the next few months. And if "this year" means the 2010 holiday season, Microsoft will have a big hill to climb come 2011.

"Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft, and Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices Division, deliver the pre-show keynote address in Las Vegas to kick off the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Coverage begins on Jan. 6, 2010, at approximately 6:30 p.m. PST with the live, streaming keynote. The Microsoft 2010 CES Newsroom will be updated throughout CES with the latest news, videos, photos and press information from Microsoft and its partners."

CES is here! Tune in to the live webcast at 6:30 PM (PST) today (world times listed below) as Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach talk the latest and greatest in Windows 7, Office, Windows Live, Windows Mobile, Xbox, Zune, and other consumer technologies. But if you'd rather digest it all in one hit, keep your eyes peeled for our post-keynote report.

• Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle: Wednesday, 6:30 PM
• Chicago, Houston: Wednesday, 8:30 PM
• New York, Washington, DC: Wednesday, 9:30 PM
• London: Thursday, 2:30 AM
• Paris, Berlin: Thursday, 3:30 AM
• Moscow: Thursday, 5:30 AM
• Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Perth: Thursday, 10:30 AM
• Tokyo: Thursday, 11:30 AM
• Sydney, Melbourne: Thursday, 1:30 PM
• Auckland: Thursday, 3:30 PM

The chart says it all - ChangeWave's report on its survey of smartphone users barely even mentions Windows Mobile, and even Palm's Web OS gets more love. The big news is the surge of interest in Android (now coming up to version 2.0) which is shaping up to be the new major competitor to Apple's iPhone. Where, oh where, is Windows Mobile 7?

"The short video segment showcases the Microsoft My Phone service which, amongst other things, allows users to locate and retrieve a lost mobile phone. Watch as host Natali DelConte tosses her AT&T HTC Pure into the back of a cab as it drives straight into the heart of New York City. Laugh Be concerned when the GPS signal fails and the phone is no longer traceable, seemingly lost forever..."

CNET's Senior Editor Natali DelConte tested Microsoft's My Phone tracking service, which helps users locate misplaced (or stolen) smartphones, by throwing it into the back of a cab in New York City and seeing how successful she is recovering it by using the service. In the end the GPS tracking feature didn't help, but the phone was returned by a good samaritan who saw a message on the phone's screen that was sent using the service. Read more...

"Microsoft is in significant disarray, fettered by its destkop dominance as the world goes mobile. Would this have happened anyway, or is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to blame? Ballmer, after all, knows how to sing to developers, but he doesn't really speak their language. Former Microsoft CEO and co-founder Bill Gates did. Now, more than ever, Microsoft needs to get in front of developers but finds itself playing catch-up."

Matt Asay has posted an article on CNET about the future of Microsoft, and whether he thinks Microsoft has lost it's way since Bill Gates left the company and Steve Ballmer took over.  It's an interesting opinion and one that does raise some valid points. I personally feel that Microsoft is stuck in a rut and is not adapting quickly enough to the way technology is changing and in particular, the way we users are using that technology.  Windows Mobile is a good example of how Microsoft have fallen behind, and how developers are now focusing their efforts on iPhone apps and Android apps. What about the desktop, will that go the same way?  Does Steve Ballmer have the same creativity and vision that Bill Gates had? With Microsoft under attack from the likes of Apple and Google, is he the right man to lead the battle? What do you think? Do you think that like Apple, Microsoft should entice their talisman, Bill Gates, back to try and drive Microsoft forward?

"If our kindergarten skills haven't failed us, then this data shows iPhone usage surpassing the once mighty Windows Mobile OS for the very first time. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Google's Android OS is set to accelerate significantly by the time the February 2010 data rolls in as is WebOS just as soon as Palm can bring its fledgling OS to Verizon's subscriber base."

Well, it was on the cards and had to happen sooner or later - Windows Mobile is now third in terms of actual handsets in consumer hands in the US, with just 7.1 million units compared to Apple's 8.9 million and RIM's 14.9 million. I'll forbear to comment on the obvious implications for Microsoft. Read the original FierceDeveloper scoop here and the press release from comScore here (incidentally, comScore's actual tagline focused more on Android's gains rather than Apple's). The real kickers are some of the supplementary survey questions that were published in the press release - out of the thirteen specifically mentioned handsets most users were planning to purchase, only one was a Windows Mobile device (AT&T Tilt), at just 2% of respondents. The media consumption results are also pretty damning. Where, oh where, is WM7?

"It hasn't been a good day for anyone working on Microsoft's Windows Phone team. This morning, IDC made the ridiculous prediction that the number of iPhone/iPod touch applications would triple to 300,000 by end of 2010. Later, here at Betanews, Carmi Levy slammed Microsoft's Windows mobile strategy. Yes, Windows Mobile is down -- really low -- but the operating system isn't bad. The mobile OS is good at the core, meaning the kernel, and multitasks pretty well. It's the user interface and partner model that needs a makeover -- and awfully fast."

Joe Wilcox over at BetaNews has written an article on the state of Windows Mobile, and he implores Microsoft not to give up on Windows Mobile as some are suggesting, but to instead "call for help" in changing things. There's not much I can comment on here except to say that it's not a coincidence that the latest version of Windows Mobile is 6.5, two and a half years after Windows Mobile 6 was announced. Microsoft may have been in the dot-release-doldrums for the past couple of years, but they have their eye on the future and are moving towards it in a big way. Though I know many will find that hard to believe, listening to the past few speeches from Steve Ballmer it's clear that he admits as a company Microsoft has stumbled with Windows Mobile.

There's synergy between the Zune, Xbox, and Windows Mobile teams - check out this job listing for a place called Pioneer Studios and read the description. Then read between the lines of that job description and think about what that means. J Allard is driving this bus, and all those teams are aboard. It's hard to be a fan of Windows Mobile right now, no doubt about it, but I've seen a glimpse of the future and I really liked what I saw.

Just a quick note to say that my Mobius 2009 article has been updated with day two happenings, and some photos, so check it out - I think there are a few items in there that are conversation starters. I've also included my first take on the HTC Touch HD2.

Hi there OS X fans! If you're coming to this site from the Fake Steve Jobs link or the Daring Fireball link, I'd encourage you to check out Apple Thoughts and join our community there.

Once again, it's Mobius time! Mobius is an invite-only event, hosted by Microsoft, where the invited guests are shown what Microsoft is doing in the mobile space. The 2009 event was held in downtown Seattle at Pravda Studios. Full disclosure: Microsoft covers our flight and hotel expenses, and keeps us well fed during the event - though there are some attendees that pay their own way to get here, and pay for their own hotel. I'm not one of those people - if a company is willing to pay for me to fly out to see what they're up to, I'll take them up on the offer. It won't change my opinion about what they're showing me.

At every Mobius event I've been to in the past, the content has been a mix of presentations that we can talk about, and some that we can't. This event so far has been radically different - the entire day was made up of presentations that we've agreed not to talk about. There was some truly eye-opening stuff; stuff that reminds me again that so many of the rumours we read about online are utterly and completely false. I think if every blog or news site went back correct the rumours they've been wrong about, they'd be too embarrassed to publish rumours...for at least a day or two. I lump myself in this group as well; hot and highly-speculative rumours are always fun to ponder, but they often bear little resemblance to reality.

Figure 2: Out of the 25 attendees, 13 of them were using OS X. The other 12 were using Windows. Interestingly, many of the Windows users were from Europe or Asia; the vast majority of the OS X users were from the USA. This is the only place on the planet where OS X has 53% market share.

Here's a list of who was in attendance, and the sites the represent: Read more...

"According to ZDNet Taiwan, the mobile OS is now on track for a release to OEMs for testing (the so-called "Maldives" program) sometime in the first quarter of 2010, and will be launched publicly sometime in the third quarter of the year (or about a year after the release of Windows Mobile 6.5) -- all of which more or less lines up with earlier rumors of a release to manufacturing in Spring 2010."

To quote Inigo Montoya, "I hate waiting". While WM7 is still on track for a late 2010 release, that seems like a lifetime away especially since the code will be more or less complete within the next 3-4 months. The competition is getting more formidable by the day, and Microsoft risks losing relevance in a fast expanding market space. Will the improvements in WM7 make up for being Johnny-be-lately? One can hope.

"Holy. Crap. I don't think we have any unbruised skin left on our body to take any more lumps regarding our mobile strategy. The Microsoft Mismanagement theory is in full force as we throw any willing body into the Mobile effort...Look. Let's talk about device loyalty. I first started with owning PocketPCs. An HP Jornada. I loved it. When upgrade time came, HP had bought Compaq and abandoned the Jornada for the iPAQ (what, they had the iThing first?). So, unable to upgrade to the next CE, I cursed a little and bought one of those iPAQs. But HP decided not to allow it to be upgraded. So I switched to Dell to get their latest Axim PocketPC. Dell would be a safe bet, right? And Dell gave up on the line. My latest act of company loyalty: getting a powerful HTC WinMo 6 device. It was cut-off the 6.5 train, and soon, I'm going to be buying a new phone. And I'm going to buy an iPhone."

The blog run by Mini-Microsoft has always been a fascinating read, though I confess I haven't checked it out in quite a few months - I really wish there was an RSS to Email subscription form because I'm RSS-phobic now. But I digress...Mini-Microsoft is a Microsoft employee, likely in a fairly senior position, who uses anonymity to write some very poignant things about the state of Microsoft as a company. His (her?) take on the state of mobile at Microsoft is particularly accurate - Microsoft's decision years ago to completely cede authority to the carriers has resulted in a long string of bad decisions and poor treatment of customers. The carriers may want customers to think of their expensive smartphones are being disposable, but most customers don't think that way when they've spend $200+ (or much more unlocked) for a high-end smartphone. Mini-Microsoft correctly pegs this problem as one of leadership - and while I hear things are getting better, these new leaders have a lot of damage to undo.

I read recently that one of the reasons why Microsoft hasn't done better in the mobile space is because the revenues simply don't amount to much - Microsoft never took this space seriously in the past because it wasn't making enough money off it. They entered this business because they felt they should be in the space rather than let their competitors completely control it - just look at the Zune for another example of this - but ultimately, they didn't really care about it. Given what we've heard from Steve Ballmer over the past 12 months about Windows Mobile, I think that the leadership finally does care about the mobile space. The question is, what are they going to do about it?

"Microsoft must embrace the mobile space if it wants to get its act together. The company has a bunch of semi-independent units that don't seem to talk to each other very much: Windows, Windows Mobile, Xbox, Zune, and whatever has grown out of their acquisition of the Danger/Sidekick team. As Apple has shown, you create compelling experiences by acting as one company, not as five. Unfortunately, it looks like Microsoft still isn't talking to Microsoft."

Sascha Segan at PCMag delivers a stinging critique of what's wrong with Microsoft's mobile strategy. It's not that we haven't heard all of this before, but the lost data disaster at Sidekick, rumours of trouble at Project Pink, and the relative modesty of the updates brought in by WM6.5, kinds of brings it home. A year's a long time in the mobile space, and with WM7 slated to be released only in late 2010 (RTM is supposedly in about six months time), MS is going to lose even more ground in the mobile sweepstakes. Android has really come on strong in the past six months with a bevy of sexy devices hitting the shelves and the backing of some major names, and no bets that Steve Jobs has something more up his sleeve for the coming year. Will WM7 be enough to turn the tide? Sound off in the comments.

"Most of you probably know by now that Windows Mobile 6.5 is not the be all end all Microsoft mobile operating system. However, what you might not know is that Microsoft has already up its sleeves another revision of Windows Mobile 6 - unofficially dubbed by the enthusiast community as 6.5.1 - that's faster, sleeker, more touch-friendly and in my opinion, a much better upgrade than 6.5."

Windows Mobile 6.5.1 screenshots courtesy Patrick/OSNN.net

It seems that when it rains leaks, it pours leaks - and above we have what is rumoured to be Windows Mobile 6.5.1 - or, really, it's 6.5.next. No one knows the version number, but it's clearly an evolutionary step from Windows Mobile 6.5. And now that I finally have my hands on a Windows Mobile 6.5 device - thanks to AT&T and HTC - I can see first-hand how badly this is needed. When I powered up the device the first thing I did was change the time zone - and was dismayed to see the same tiny user interface I've seen for over a decade. Over a decade you might be saying? I kid you not, the size of the drop-down menu and other UI elements are the same as they were on the Phillips Velo 1 twelve years ago in 1997. That's beyond ridiculous, but Microsoft seems to have been caught unaware by this whole "finger" thing and now they're playing catch-up in a big way.

This is nothing short of a complete and utter disaster. The only way this could have been worse for users is if after losing all of your data, Microsoft servers issued a self destruct code on the Sidekick causing it to blow up and burn down your house.

"T-Mobile and Danger, the Microsoft-owned subsidiary that makes the Sidekick, has just announced that they've likely lost all user data that was being stored on Microsoft’s servers due to a server failure."

How in the world could Microsoft allow this to happen? They have owned Danger now for 18 months. I have been involved in over a dozen acquisitions in my career and one of the things we always ask the IT department is "Do you perform regular backups of all company infrastructure and data?" You'd think that would be a key question Microsoft would have asked given Danger stores all of the Sidekick users data on their servers. Unlike Windows Mobile, there is no PC side sync possibility nor programs to back your data up to a storage card.

Makes me wonder about the reliability of things like Live Mesh (still in beta) and My Phone. What is more disturbing is the deafening silence from Microsoft and Danger on this. When Google has a cloud computing fail, usually centered around GMail, they are very quick to update the public on the status and once resolved, the cause. Microsoft has instead chose to let T-Mobile be the primary point of defense even though T-Mo doesn't do much but sell the devices. When RIM has an outage, the carriers don't get involved. RIM steps up to the plate by acknowledging the problem and gives a status update.

And yes, this is Microsoft's fault.

When are companies going to learn? Silence is not golden in these cases. Evernote had a server meltdown for a chunk of its users a few weeks ago when the 3.5 Windows update came out. Total silence from Evernote. Affected users were left to figure out what was going on in the user forums. No data was lost, but it was being held hostage on their servers for nearly three days. Evernote lost a lot of respect from me when that happened. Not the service issue, the lack of any communication. Microsoft - is your PR person on vacation?

"We're currently at a multi-purpose Microsoft event right now -- an event touring the company's holiday lineup, as well as today's launch of Windows phone devices (AKA, Windows Mobile 6.5). We had a chance to sit down with Robbie Bach, President of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division, and ask him some questions about where the big M is headed with its recent lineup."

While the conversation with Robbie Bach had some interesting points on Windows Mobile and Windows Phones in general, in light of the recent Sidekick fiasco, I found the following point slightly ironic:

Peter Rojas asks about the company's acquisition of Danger. Robbie: "There were clear reasons for us to acquire Danger -- I think in time that will pan out. It wasn't another OS, it was services... the Sidekick isn't our brand, it's T-Mobile's brand."

Oh how I bet many at Microsoft would love to keep repeating that mantra over the next week...

"Earlier this week, an anonymous tipster leaked the news that Microsoft's top secret Pink project, aimed to take on the iPhone just as the Zune targeted the iPod, was "near death and probably will be canceled." Another source has now spilled even more details about the internal crisis brewing within the company and how the failure of Pink relates to iPhone, Google's Android, and Windows Mobile."

Normally you wouldn't see me linking to something at AppleInsider, let alone something by Apple ultra-fanboy Daniel Eran Dilger, but this article has the ring of truth to it - at least, insofar as anything about Microsoft can be reported truthfully at an Apple blog. I know a couple of people on the Premium Mobile Experiences team, and they've remained tight-lipped about what they've been working on - but it seems clear now they've been working on Pink given some clues that are now obvious in hindsight.

If the article is accurate about all the trouble that Pink is now in as a product (or platform), it would certainly explained the fragmented and dazed strategies from the Windows Mobile team - if a company can't come together with a cohesive plan for mobility, they're not going to come up with what they need to compete with the likes of Apple, Google, RIM, and Nokia. Was Pink merely a ploy to motivate the Windows Mobile team into kicking it into high gear? No, I don't think so - the people I know on the Premium Mobile Experiences are smart and talented, and wouldn't waste their efforts on something unless they felt it would have an impact on that market. So what exactly is the future of Pink? Time will tell...

On the eve of the biggest concerted launch we've seen from Microsoft's mobile side since, well, ever, comes a bit of less than optimistic rumor about the fabled "Pink" project. Mobile Crunch cites an anonymous source that spells out major trouble in the Pink camp.

Having worked in the corporate world my whole career, this tale sounds awfully familiar. Looks like Microsoft didn't really have any firm idea of what to do with their Danger acquisition, and more importantly the whole project didn't have a champion at senior management level. Overlaps between Pink and Windows Mobile probably didn't help matters either. Which is a shame, because with the right kind of vision and leadership, Project Pink might have opened up new markets for MS. One more case study for business school types.

"I think the intent of the Windows Mobile 6.5 release was to provide a more finger friendly user interface on touch screen devices, while non-touchscreen devices remain pretty much the same. I believe there were some backend updates and improvements, but there were not readily apparent. There are four main areas where end users will see changes and these are in the Start menu, lock screen, Today screen, and menus. Let's check out each area in more detail."

My friend the hyper-productive Matt Miller - seriously, how DOES he do it? - has his take on Windows Mobile 6.5. And it's about the same as most of the other reviews we've seen today...there's a general feeling of "Really? This is it?". Apple and Google have shown that significant updates can be made to an operating system on a regular basis, and they've raised the bar of expectation. With 6.5, Microsoft has done the limbo right under that bar...without needing to lean back.