The Continuation of a Fragmented Mobile Market

[brad jones]

Pfft! It's no different than the desktop fragmentation... just on a more massive scale. Desktop development still depends on the hardware and OS - do I use Windows? OSx? Linux?

I don't totally agree with this. Using something like Java, I get a little bit more portability across operating systems and hardware. The same is actually becoming true with .NET. A .NET program can run on Windows Machines, and using Mono it can run on Linux and several other platforms. .NET is also extending to other devices as well.

Well you can expect Microsoft to exit the space within the next 2 years. Their "me too gewgaw" Phone 7 will be the death of Microsoft in the mobile market....

I agree that the WP7 will have some hurdles to overcome; however, there area few things about it that are nice. Specifically, if connected to a corporate network, you should be able to do collaboration pretty easily. I've seen demos of this that looked slick. Being able to access shared office documents and PowerPoint decks and change them from the phone is a big corporate plus in my book.

Of course, I've only seen demos. We'll see how smooth this and the XBox Live stuff is. If it isn't smooth, then the phone stands a much smaller chance of success. It is a tough battle, but history has shown that Microsoft often comes out weak, yet wins in the end.....

Brad!

[dilettante]

I agree that the WP7 will have some hurdles to overcome; however, there area few things about it that are nice. Specifically, if connected to a corporate network, you should be able to do collaboration pretty easily. I've seen demos of this that looked slick. Being able to access shared office documents and PowerPoint decks and change them from the phone is a big corporate plus in my book.

But nothing really prevented Microsoft from providing this on the existing WinMo 6.x platform, a platform that is less "toy-like" and iPhone-me-too than the relatively business-hostile Phone 7 platform.

The developer story on Phone 7 is another nail in the coffin. There are two ways you can view Phone 7 as a developer: either a closed platform you can't do anything on or a sandboxed "nursery" designed for running trivial games (a la Flash). Microsoft seems utterly unaware that people develop line of business software in Windows Mobile just as they do on the desktop.

No, this is simple greed. Microsoft wants a bigger play in the mass consumer space iPhone found success with: 14 to 35 year old females.

Nobody would even care except that the market realities prevent anyone besides a giant in the field with deep pockets from entering and competing. What we need are some massive antitrust actions against Microsoft, Apple, and Google and the phone carriers.