So much has been talked about Windows Mobile and iPhone these days. Some new statistics show that the iPhone, which was introduced 6 months back by Apple, has overtaken Windows Mobile in sales - a mobile operating system which is available to customers for almost a decade now. (Windows Mobile started its life as the Pocket PC in the late 90s.)
The introduction of Apple iPhone, which can’t even be called as a smart phone, has driven Microsoft to its extreme that they have already started talking about the next 3 releases of Windows Mobile, which seems to be a desperate measure from Microsoft to keep the consumer interest intact. Unfortunately, these releases are almost years away from seeing the light of the day, by which time, the iPhone would have improved vastly, not to mention the upcoming SDK which would spawn a whole lot of new applications for the platform. This will result in a very healthy ecosystem of applications which will only help Apple gain a much bigger market share.
So what is wrong with Windows Mobile? To start with, there is a fundamental difference in the way Windows Mobile approaches the handset user experience when compared to mobile OS X. While the Microsoft approach to Windows Mobile is that of a mini desktop (yep, we even have the start menu there!!), the Apple’s approach is a refreshing change. Apple designed the UI from ground up, which is very well optimized for mobile usage, which gives a very natural user experience. Microsoft, only recently has started realizing that the mobile UI paradigm is totally different from the desktop.
The second most important problem is the poor road map MS had for Windows Mobile. Almost all upgrades to Windows Mobile have been incremental in the past. Since the only worthy competing platform was Blackberry, a sort of complacency set in and MS never really bothered to upgrade some of the applications on the handsets. A good example is the Pocket Internet Explorer, which is almost useless as a mobile web browser. You should’nt be surprised to hear that the core engine for PIE, even on WM6 is based on Internet Explorer 4 !! This browser has not changed in years. While competing platforms like S60 and iPhone have browsers which bring full Internet experience to handset, There are other smaller quirks, which beg to be fixed for several years.
The greatest danger is when Microsoft designs something from scratch. We saw that with Vista, Now that the WM team is talking about building WM8 from scratch, it is going to be yet another hit or miss for Microsoft. If Zune 2 is any indication, we hope that MS gets it right with WM 8 too. Till then, consumers can stick with S60 or the iPhone.
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