Will WindowsPhone 7 dent the iPhone, Android, Blackberry oligopoly?
WindowsPhone 7 : Too little, too late? (Photo credit: CNET Networks)
The decline of Windows Mobile in the last few years is one of the most confusing, frustrating and inexplicable tech stories of the past decade. After becoming *the* smartphone operating system, besting Palm, Handspring and even RIM, Microsoft apparently went into a coma. They failed to keep up with emerging competition, like the Apple iPhone, and while competitors refreshed their platforms quickly, Microsoft couldn’t churn out a single meaningful update to the Windows Mobile OS. Apple went from zero to about 30% market share in a few short years and launched 4 major updates to its hardware and software platform. In all this time, Microsoft’s Mobile division could barely muster a sickly 6.5 upgrade forWindows Mobile and a few misdirected projects such as Microsoft Kin. A project which, frankly, was destined to fail from day one due to its complete lack of a well defined audience, the absence a single meaningful differentiator and its uninteresting implementation.
The problem that plagued the Kin speaks to a larger malady that now afflicts Microsoft. What vision is the company executing to? Who forms the focus of the company’s products? Earlier on in their history, Microsoft did amazingly well by executing to the crystal-clear mantra of “A computer on every desk”. They mercilessly drove down prices of computing platforms by commoditizing the hardware and allowing customers to experience an equivalent experience regardless of whether their machine came from a no-name whitebox supplier in China, or an over-engineered IBM workstation class system. They fueled media, information and workflow convergence on a single platform and made the PC the most important tool of the post-industrial age. Remember Bill Gates’ aggressive push for technologies such as CD-ROM? Microsoft, though never a bleeding edge technology leader, was definitely an efficient engine that churned out release after release and quickly caught up, embraced and extended and made things fit in its overall vision.
So, where is the Microsoft we knew and loved (or at least feared)? What we have now appears to be a lumbering behemoth that is undoing itself by refusing to make important bets and executing to them ferociously, as it once did. While Windows 7 on the desktop is a welcome change from the perpetually-under-assault Vista, a *lot* more needs to be done. Windows 7 hasn’t made the PC interesting again… and unless Microsoft wants its bread-and-butter business to whither away, it will need to figure out a way to do nothing short of that. The PC has to be cool again. It has to be unique and different again. I can check my email on my smartphone, and watch streaming video on an under $100 set-top box. I can browse the web on an iPad and keep up with friends on Facebook on a host of devices. What major capability does my PC give me? As it stands today, it is limited to being a content creation system based largely on its larger form factor, and increasingly less so due to its performance advantage over other devices. This is not enough. The PC must do something no other platform can do. And whatever that unique set of features are, they should apply uniquely to the PC, at least for some period of time.
As things stand today, it is becoming clear that the mobile platform is the primary device of interest for consumer and most business people. Almost all information (or content) consumption - which probably occupies 80-85% of our time - will be done on these devices. PCs may continue to exist for a while of course, but as devices best suited for content creation… a task that occupies a small segment the the time an average user spends interacting with information devices. So what has Microsoft been able to do for this growth segment? As I earlier pointed out, their early success might as well never have happened since they frittered it all away and basically have to start from scratch. The promised WindowsPhone 7 is, in fact, just that sort of a product reset. What remains to be seen is whether Microsoft can win back some interest and start to build a viable Mobile business again. So far, from what I see, the feature differentiators are minor and much of the functionality that existed in the old Windows Mobile (6.5 and before) has gone away (e.g. cut and paste) simply because WindowsPhone 7, as a complete re-write, has nothing at all to do with the versions that were released prior. WindowsPhone 7 has to do something amazing either in software, or in conjunction with hardware, that no other mobile device can do. And without that, it just won’t be noticed in the flood of Android, iPhone & Blackberry devices.
Here is an example of how Microsoft is attempting to position WindowsPhone 7 - as a more efficient presenter of information. But does this sort of differentiation have any real merit? Isn’t this just like a custom home screen, also available in dozens of open source and paid apps?
When I see weak attempts such as the above, it makes me cringe. I just don’t think you can push a new Mobile OS - and a non-free one at that - based on trivial features like these. Wouldn’t Microsoft have been better served by something completely ground-breaking… like integrating a Photosynth client on the phone and launching a flagship handset with a built-in micro-projector? Can you imagine the sort of buzz that would create at a launch event? You would take pictures with your phone, Photosynth would use the 1+Ghz processor now commonly found in handsets to immediately stitch the images together and then the integrated pico-projector would show the stitched synth on any flat surface. It would wow the audience no end! And that’s the sort of thing that gets you into virtuous cycles and domino effects. Also, Photosynth is uniquely Microsoft’s. A lot of work has gone into it and its . Plus, the integration of a pico-projector would have been a bit harder for everyone else to follow suit with at least for a few months.
But no, Microsoft is instead betting the future on a slightly better home screen. Ok, then. Let’s see how this plays out.
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