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How Microsoft blew it with Windows Mobile | |
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| Time: 08:05 EST/13:05 GMT | News Source: Wired | Posted By: Robert Stein | ||
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But if Microsoft was the first player in this market, why wasn't the software giant able to replicate the success it had with PCs? "It was theirs to lose and they lost it," said Raven Zachary, a technology analyst and owner of iPhone app development house Small Society. "They had everything they needed to execute, to do the right kinds of carrier deals to create an app store, create visual voice mail, touchscreens and so on. They've been in this space since the beginning." | ||
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| #1 By 7754 (206.169.247.2) at 11/19/2009 11:29:59 AM |
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Any thoughts about whether they will redeem themselves with WinMo 7? I'm not hopeful. Seems like they have a confused vision around what consumers--and businesses--really want. "3 screens and a cloud" is not exactly the catch-phrase they seem to think it is. There are opportunities there, but they have to start talking about why YOU want it, not just a grand Ozzie vision.
I really don't understand when they have such smart people how they can botch this so badly. They aren't articulating vision or roadmap, which is their best bet in lieu of a worthy shipping product right now. Obviously they don't want to trample on WinMo 6.5 sales, but what's more important--the battle or the war? The iPhone has some serious security concerns for the enterprise (worthless local encryption)--capitalize on that, at least *attempt* to build some developer excitement (the PDC had virtually nothing, at least in the keynote... what the heck?!)... goodness gracious, start the story NOW. That is, if they still care about mobile. |
| #2 By 15406 (216.191.227.68) at 11/19/2009 12:45:16 PM |
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#2: I really don't understand when they have such smart people how they can botch this so badly.
There are a ton of smart climatologists and meteorologists with massive supercomputers available to them to base climate & weather models on, and they still can't predict the weather very well for very long. Having smart people involved only increases your chances of success -- it doesn't guarantee it. SO many factors get into play, and it's not unusual to see better products fail while lesser products flourish. I'm not saying that this is the case here as I have no experience with WinMobile other than the opinions of others who have used it. |
| #3 By 7754 (206.169.247.2) at 11/19/2009 1:28:58 PM |
| True... but at least the climatologists get the picture. Microsoft knows they are behind (pretty stunning admission from Ballmer, actually), yet the response is... more or less crickets. I'm not saying they're not working on something, but they don't have time to be silent on what they're doing, I think. Who knows... maybe WinMo 7 will reveal all and we'll understand, but... seems like they've forgotten their playbook. What happened to "developers, developers, developers!"??? |
| #4 By 7754 (206.169.247.2) at 11/19/2009 1:39:20 PM |
| For example... at the PDC, what do they use for the demos... an iPhone? Ballmer must be throwing some chairs over that. :P I mean, I appreciate the olive branch of interop, but seriously, when they say *nothing* about WinMo during the PDC keynotes, that's just inexcusable. |
| #5 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 11/19/2009 1:52:54 PM |
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#1 I really don't understand when they have such smart people how they can botch this so badly.
I don't know what to think about this whole thing and maybe it is a perspective I share with many MS engineers - not that they/we have not given it a lot of thought. I've read the same complaints about Windows Mobile as I am sure others have and I just don't get it - it being what the problem is and that perspective is driven by several factors. First, I use a mobile smart phone a lot and have since the first i600 model came out and CE devices like the Jornada years before that. We've watched, used and hosted all the items that most seem to use - ActiveSync, Direct Push, etc.. and things like Bluetooth/UConnect wireless in-car have become great and seamless - hand offs of active calls are just fine. We're sycning everthing as we have and the various Moto Q and now HTC Ozone devices have been really stable and competent with great battery life (especially the Q's before Motorola discontinued them). Devices, while not "sexy" have been fine and work without having to look at them much. All this is good and WinMo and the carriers and server systems around are all great, evolved and east to manage centrally. Since the SFP update in 5.2, all things have been super - especially on E2K7 and 10. WinMo versions of apps that we actually use, and /m versions of Sharepoint are all fine. Perhaps they are so far behind in the eyes of many is due to how so many engineers, perhaps like myself, simply do not get what all the media and social stuff is about. Perhaps MS's engineers are like we are and while we think the new devices and touch interfaces are interesting, we just don't find ourselves using them and similarly, where we do already support the back end, like ActiveSync for all of them, we really don't care beyond that point. I just bought two new Droids for two young devs and designers in an effort to gather some perspective about what the draw is. I mean, I get all the portable computer stuff, but always end up needing more... like a real laptop, or real PC to not only do stuff, but enjoy doing it. As powerful as the new devices are, they are still small and still feel cramped - no matter how slick the UI is, or how good the screen is. I got a new Zune HD and despite really liking the slick UI that is gutsy in an artsy sort of way and being amazed at the screen clarity, I just can't seem to get into watching a show on it and don't use it for any more reasons than I did the Gen III gum stick it replaced and as cool as it feels, I do worry about dropping it. Perhaps the problem, if there is one, is that for so many of us, there isn't one - and that "is" the problem. Maybe I'll see what it is once I understand how the young ones are using the Droids I just bought. We'll see. |
| #6 By 7754 (206.169.247.2) at 11/19/2009 3:28:21 PM |
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#5: you don't think the MIA status during the PDC keynotes is a pretty sad state of affairs for WinMo?
ActiveSync works great--and pretty well on the iPhone also. I think the problem with the WinMo devices is that is the Win CE heritage--not so much the OS internals, but what is essentially a UI for a "pocket PC." For a niche audience, it's nice--you can tinker with just about everything, like you can with a PC. The UI metaphors are very similar, and in fact, Microsoft thinks that's a selling point--that it works/looks "just like Windows." But it never really set the world on fire, because most people don't want that on their phone. It's pretty embarrassing that the iPhone has over double the market share in such a small amount of time, but it's telling. Aside from the UI, though, Microsoft just doesn't have a story to tell with their platform, and thus people are basically ignoring it. The iPhone, the Droid--they tell a story. What is it for WinMo? They can't rely on marketshare to drive the WinMo developer and customer stories. They had their developer audience captive at the PDC, and they wasted it. They even demoed on the iPhone. Unless they have something mind-blowing up their sleeves (and need to keep it secret) for WinMo 7, that's inexcusable. |
| #7 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 11/19/2009 3:36:01 PM |
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#6, you don't think the MIA status during the PDC keynotes is a pretty sad state of affairs for WinMo?
I'm saying I don't know and based upon one limited perspective, offered why, and perhaps why MS engineers may not know. Perhaps I just don't get it and since so many seem to think there WinMo is so bad, I've funded an effort to help show me why. |
| #8 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at 11/19/2009 8:39:15 PM |
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I use an HTC WinMo 6.1 smartphone on Verizon. Overall, it's an OK phone. I'm so used to WinMo's quirks that I can use it very effectively.
The HTC "Flo" overlay is a world better than the confusing native WinMo home screen. I never use ActiveSync, I personally don't like it at all even on Win 7. Google's nifty free cloud Exchange Server for calendar and contact functions is nothing short of amazing. Funny, that the best thing going on a WinMo phone is a Google add-on. |
| #9 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 11/19/2009 8:49:51 PM |
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Oldog, you don't like ActiveSync? I mean, one never sees it. It's just there doing direct push as new mail items and objects like appointments are made, etc...
Once a few settings are applied, it just runs in the background when connected to an Exchange. Did you use it manually, or in some other way? Thanks, L |
| #10 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at 11/19/2009 9:23:09 PM |
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Ketch,
I use ActiveSync with a USB cable attached to my home computer. AS really doesn't like to sync to two (god forbid more than two) different PCs and I'm constantly fussing with it to sync properly i.e. soft rebooting the phone. The integration with Hotmail requires me to continue to plug the phone into my home PC to update my online stuff. What a pain. The Google thing works in the background on my phone. No muss no fuss. Verizon pushes me email if I so desire (I don't). (I don't work for a large company and I don't otherwise have access to an Exchange Server.) |
| #11 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 11/19/2009 10:11:38 PM |
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ahhh - gotcha, Oldog. I figured it had to be something like that.
I think a lot of perceptions about Windows Mobile and Smartphones and for that matter, Outlook, are offered by a lot of tech writers that also have not experienced messaging and collaboration services that until a short while ago, were really only practical for larger companies and enterprises. It's unfortunate. My company focused on small businesses and sharing enteprise resources that they could not otherwise afford and by doing so, extended the best of services to small companies. For example, hosted MAPI services without a VPN nearly ten years ago via forced encryption over TCP. It is much better today with the full power and fidelity of the enterprise, without the complexity, or expense. Think of it as services over software, vice the reverse - where unlimited Exchange accounts, with external commercial filters keep things clean and fast, and integration all the way to the desktop with hosted/managed collaboration, presence, secure IM, VoIP, video, Voice, and rich business decision control panels integrated to business applications. It's all very possible, affordable and coupled with remote management and help desk functions, very hard to beat. I would seek out a really good integrator and explore how you can leverage low cost hosted solutions and experience what the full potential is. When done right, everything is managed proactively, and you can focus on business decisions and growth coming out of your own operations and business data, as it rides atop a services stack built on a shared and federated platform. For example, unbreakable hosted Exchange where your cloud, my cloud and their cloud, becomes our cloud and hosted services as we offer (where it is all high touch and close to the customer) are federated to MS based hosted secondaries. The federation means I can, or they can roll an Exchange server, or move stores and end users keep on without a hint that there has been an outage, or scheduled maintenance. It is why I wonder and am so puzzled when I hear so many speak so poorly about it all. It has to be seen and felt before it can be believed. http://blogs.msdn.com/jvast/archive/2007/07/11/hey-hey-get-off-of-my-cloud.aspx When done right, configuring a client - mobile or otherwise, goes like this: tell customer to go to autodiscover.yourdomainname.com and enter your user ID and password. At the client, confirm the elevation and supply admin approval mode credentials and walk away. The rest is done automatically. For mobile devices, hit the link in the SMS TX mesage, log in and go about your business. An autodiscover XML answer file contains all the settings and writes to the client. You keep your lower cost, lightweight systems and retain your domain and full local autonomy, but you leverage my cloud as though it were your own and I federate it, so I can maintain a lower cost, lighter weight fleet, yet beat Google's brains in when it comes to reliability, features and cost. Oh, and EVERY PC, regardless of how many, or when/where, all remain exactly the same. Exactly. Read it once. Write it once. Do it once. Use many. |
| #12 By 1896 (68.153.171.248) at 11/19/2009 10:54:21 PM |
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#7: Try to approach the issue from a different angle:
Is Autocad a bad piece of software? Not necessarily, probably not; I do not know because I do not use it. It is software aimed to a small amount of users, a niche if you want. WM is good to do certain tasks and it does them well but the vast majority of users not necessarily want to trade off eye-candy UI, intuitive and friendly menus etc. just to be able to complete those tasks. Another example: in the good old times when a PC booted up what you got on the screen was "C:\" . Now the majority of the people here would know what to do but the other 95% of potential users would not and this is the reason why Windows became so succesfull: the OS allowed people with no clue about how a computer works, what directories and commands are to use a computer without learning something completely new. I began experiencing with electronic agendas in 1992; I had several Casio's, at the time they were the best, and I was amazed to be able to have all my contacts listed and editable, have an electronic, colored calendar etc.. The fact that I had to enter all my contacs manually did not bother me at all.... at the time. Today I would find it completely unacceptable. The Motorola M 200 that I bought as soon as it was available was an amazing piece of hardware+software when it cam out, today is laughable. What the article states is true: at a certain pints, after Palm imploded, MS found itself as the only player and they.... missed the train. They did not kept investing, pushing the envelope, try to forecast what the users would look in a smartphone 2/3/5 years ahead and, although unvoluntarily, let the door open to other companies to fill the vacuum. Simply put they lost momentum and did not size the initiative; they became reactive instead of proactive. Of course they still could regain market shares but no matter how we turn the facts drop the ball and leave the initiative to your enemies is a big mistakes both tactically and strategically. This post was edited by Fritzly on Friday, November 20, 2009 at 06:33. |
| #13 By 13997 (32.158.213.166) at 11/20/2009 7:09:29 AM |
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I think everyone is missing the point of what Microsoft does and why they would not have tried to be the iPhone, at least not in the past.
Microsoft has always been a company about producing 'frameworks' that then allow developers and their partners to connect the 'frameworks' to create things. If you even take Windows, what it was designed to do was be a common framework for a fragmented development and device platform, the DOS based PCs. With Win 3.1 they gave developers a rich API (for the time) standard CUI that developers could use or not and a solid hardware framework for printers, video, sound, etc. (BTW This is why Win 3.x was successful, because developers could 'easily' create applications without having to write a printer driver for every brand of printer in the world, or create applications without a video driver for every video card in the world, etc etc. It is also where the *nixes of the days were not standard enough to say, this library for printing, this library for controls and GUI elements, this library for video, etc.) If you look back at Microsoft over the years, and pick any product you can see that they tried to create these frameworks and an ecosystem instead of creating final solutions. Apple on the other hand has always been about packaging and creating a from the door to the user appliance, and that is their mentality. This is why they control the hardware and 90% of the software Mac Users run on their computers. They are NOT developer friendly and even discourage a lot of developers - ask Adobe for example, where Apple dropped frameworks that were promised and even took work from Dreamworks to create competing applications to Adobe. |
| #14 By 13997 (32.158.213.166) at 11/20/2009 7:10:17 AM |
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(Continued)
Microsoft only started the 'complete' packaging idea with the XBox and few side projects, and even the XBox was designed as a platform to make creating console games easier for developers as they could use DirectX and other MS Development tools easily instead of untested and crazy development tools like was the norm from Sony and Nintendo. Even the Zune was a last minute push by one of the XBox creators and managers inside Microsoft, as prior to the Zune, Microsoft only created the PlayforSure and Windows Media Player Store API sets for companies to create stores and easily plug in MP3 players, they were not in the Music store business other than as a model (MSN Music). So when you step back and look at what Microsoft always has been about, of course they never considered controlling the entire WinMo ecosystem, especially the way Apple does with the iPhone. They instead created a solid OS that ran well on phones with pre-emptive multi-tasking, security and then gave developers TONS of tools to create applications easily. (A kid can take VB and write their own applicaitons for WinMo in a few minutes and have it running on their phone - this is how freaking evolved/elegant the frameworks Microsoft provide are.) Also as you see the Zune Marketplace and other more 'competitive' technologies to provide point-to-point solutions to end users, you still see Microsoft, as 3rd party development is still the #1 goal and structure for this new ecosystem. (Look at the games on XBox live that are created by average developers using XNA and other tools for virtually free, and rather easily considering the complexity of the XBox 360 console - and you will see this also with the Zune HD, as it has high end XNA 3d support and is a model that encourages developers instead of Microsoft providing all the technology themselves.) Even Office, as 'complete' as it is, is also a 'development' framework for building applications for businesses, to where you can literally code games in Excel and do advanced accounting and business 'solutions' that tie into Office for companies. (Also this is something the OpenOffice proponents don't 'get' when they think everyone should dump Office, as business uses Office for more than what the base applications were designed for, and Office has always been this way. In 1992 I wrote a GIS mapping application in Excel. I hope people really step back and look at this and what Microsoft is about and does, especially compared to Apple. (Not that Apple is bad, just different and more directly provide products to users instead of worrying about creating technology ecosystems.) |
| #15 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 11/20/2009 10:47:48 AM |
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#14, yeah, but Net, you and I both know that so often too little is done well by those in the channel opposite the ecosystem and its potential.
In fact, in most cases it is so bad that even when one is really good, it is hard to sell in initially, because people have been burned so badly in the past. We see that all the time and eat costs on the front end in order to demonstrate that we are an expection to the not always so good norm. While the reverse is also true, and there are great companies out there, there are not enough of them in all market segments and the SME's take it on the nose. |
| #16 By 1896 (68.153.171.248) at 11/20/2009 2:43:13 PM |
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#14: Actually Office evolved from being a packaged application to a complex system as it is today.
While I overall like MS products I have no problems to accept that they make mistakes too; the way the company is handling the WM division being a clear one. |
| #17 By 13997 (98.246.101.184) at 11/22/2009 6:46:14 AM |
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#16 Technically true, but they were not successful.
Also if you look at Word and Excel even the versions that shipped for Windows 2.0, they had very robust programming/script systems in them, and this is long before VBA that turned them into a full development platform. The example of a GIS applicaiton in Excel I noted was before VBA in Excel and was written using the older Excel scripting/Macro engine. #15 Microsoft should have played the end to end role more or provided more proof of concept 'products' outside of the development world. There a few times they did this and shoved the industry, although I do wish they would take these steps more often rather than leave things to the channels/market/developers to patch together. The first time I remember Microsoft doing this was with the Windows Sound System, it was made to shove the hardware industry to support the Win 3.1 multimedia features and default to 16bit stereo audio quality. The product had no longterm lifecycle ever planned, it was basically a demonstration product that had some market success. If you remember the old BASF commercials, this is more of what Microsoft is and why they didn't jump up to control an entire market, even though they had the technology and the ability to do so. If Apple had been more 'open' and not strong armed both consumers and the music industry, they would look a lot like Microsoft in these markets as well. But Apple doesn't mind stepping on toes if they think they can control the entire package, they will. |
| #18 By 1896 (68.153.171.248) at 11/22/2009 8:47:23 PM |
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#17: I wonder why you think they were not succeful; Word and Excel obliterated the Kings of the time: WordPerfect and QuattroPro. Wordstar remained popular, mostly with Law Firms in Europe because a special paper format used there to write legal acts, for a while but then it disappeared too.
Regretfully MS dropped a lot of software and hardware too that was excellent to say the least. The software that shipped with the MS cordless phone was the best that I ever used but they dropped it; same with their line of routers: ecellent hardware, extremely easy to setup. The latest example of this behaviour is "SBA": not completely matured yet but light years better than QuickBooks and it is gone as well as Money. They have basically left the small business segment in the hands of Intuit. Maybe I am looking at the inssue from a wrong perspective but I do not understand the reasoning behind these decisions. |
| #19 By 23275 (68.117.163.128) at 11/23/2009 1:14:45 AM |
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#18, Good points, Fritzly.
I think the truth is that Microsoft does not want to serve the small business market at all - not with software, or even platforms. The truth is, as I see it, this is part of Microsoft's larger, long-term strategy to slowly kill off big parts of the channel and move all the small business users to their own online/hosted offerings. I think they see huge potential in forcing small businesses onto their own cloud and killing off platforms that work so well for the SOHO/SME market is how they plan to do it. |
| #20 By 9589 (75.183.116.232) at 11/24/2009 11:25:37 PM |
| What I can't understand about Microsoft's foray into mobile phones is why didn't they build something like an "apps store" from the beginning. After all, the reason why most of the planet uses Microsoft's OSs on their laptops and desktops is because of the stupendous variety of applications. Something that none of the contenders can even hope to match and of which they seem as blinded as Microsoft is to this issue. |
| #21 By 958138 (175.44.4.92) at 12/20/2012 9:14:04 PM |
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