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. Full disclosure: Microsoft generously 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.

Here's a list of who's in attendance, and the sites they are representing: Read more...

In November I received an invitation to the second Mobius event of the year, held in Seattle just like last time. Mobius is a time where the invite-only attendees typically get to see Microsoft's road-map for future, hear from vendors and OEMs, pass along feedback to Microsoft, and network with each other. Microsoft covers the airfare and hotel stay for people who attend, unless they choose to pay their own way. Rarely one to turn down a free ride, I took them up on their offer.

The first part of every Mobius event is the meet and greet, held the night before the conference officially starts. It's always enjoyable to see my peers, and there are usually a few new faces every event. Meeting new people is a key part of what makes Mobius a fun event. The folks from Celio were present, showing off the new REDFLY products, and upon leaving we were given a nice laptop bag. I have a bit of a laptop bag fetish, so I always appreciate new bags to carry my gear in.

Mobius Day 1

The morning kicked off with an introduction from John Starkweather, and then the demos began. It's a Mobius tradition for everyone to stand up, introduce themselves, and show something off. Being the gadget geeks that we all are, there were demos of the Sony-Ericsson XPERIA, the Samsung OMNIA, and other phones and mobile devices.

Figure 1: Laptops galore, and in fact, Macbooks galore, at Mobius.

Windows Mobile Branding

Liska Rutherford kicked off a session talking about the Windows Mobile brand. Some of the challenges they face with the Windows Mobile brand include power user awareness, the significant marketing investments made by their competition, the compelling competitive brands, and the fact that software isn't top of mind for all consumers. The strengths they can bring to bear include the fact that there are 1 billion Windows users world-wide, and a large percentage of those users like the idea of having Windows on their phone. We had a discussion about the perception vs. reality of having Windows on a phone. I believe many consumers who answer yes to whether or not they want Windows on their phone are thinking of it in terms of a desktop/laptop experience, when the reality is that a phone is going to offer up a very different Windows experience than a desktop or laptop. Still, there's clearly an opportunity here for Microsoft - as long as they can address the consumer market properly, something they've historically struggled to do. Read more...