In a striking admission, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience of venture capitalists that Microsoft had "screwed up" with the Windows Mobile operating system. And that the group responsible for the OS had been restructured recently to address those shortcomings.
Computerworld's Matt Hamblen reported the comments after he picked up a Twitter stream on Ballmer's comments, from VCs attending the conference. According to the tweats, Ballmer also acknowledged that the about-to-be-released Windows Mobile 6.5 was not the release he had hoped for in 2009. According to one tweat, Ballmer said he wished version 7 of the OS was ready now, instead of next year.
The 6.5 release, due out in a few weeks on a new crop of Windows phones, has a subtly retooled user interface, with more emphasis on making the UI easier to use. There is also much greater support for multi-touch screens.
But the major innovation may prove to be the inclusion Internet Explorer Mobile 6, the first Microsoft mobile browser to incorporate a full HTML rendering engine, based on desktop IE 6. That alone may make the new crop of 6.5-based phones more usable and more popular. Though as critics have pointed out, the udnerlying IE 6 engine is now several years old, while mobile browsers from Apple and Mozilla and others are based on the more recent, highly regarded Webkit code.
Ballmer didn't go into details about the organizational changes. But that will be important to signal how ambitious and how determined Microsoft is to be a mobile platform player.
Anlaysts have pointed out Windows Mobile is only a tiny fraction of the company's revenues and profits. And some pointed to the recent Microsoft-Nokia deal as evidence that Redmond was playing to its strengths -- enabling easier, smoother access to its wide range of server-based products and services for mobile workers and consumers.
Cox is a senior editor at Network World.
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More brains please
Having a lot of green matter has never meant having a lot of grey matter. The amount of waste in corporate America is just plain obscene. The bigger a business get the more dim-witted they become. It is obvious that is how nature intended it. The smallest Brains-to-Body ration is a Dinosaur. In the business world? GM, AIG, Lehman Brothers…next… Microsoft?....More brains please. And it ain’t in India or China. Look in our own backyard. Incompetence has become the preferred child of Greed and Short Vision. Keep up the sloppy work Corporate America!!
An active unconventional Business and IT Consultant.
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Silverlight on Mobile
Although the MS-Nokia deal offers a glimmer of hope that MS gets that Mobile (and as a result Smartphones) are where a significant amount of growth will be over the next few years, it is evident that MS has only come around to this and has not expended necessary resources to embrace mobile. A significant example of this is that Silverlight for Mobile is STILL non-existant, even though it was announced for Windows Mobile and S60 (Symbian/Nokia) platforms over 18 months ago. Silverlight is supposed tobe MSs "best thing since sliced bread", but they can't even get that working on Windows Mobile !
Windows CE/Pocket/Mobile has been bad for a long time...
First it was Windows CE. Then it became Windows Pocket PC. Now it's Windows Mobile. But from the beginning it's been treated as the poor stepchild. Especially damaging was the Compaq - later HP - iPAQ series of PDA's. The hardware was buggy & never fixed. Windows simply didn't work as advertised. Amazingly, Pocket Word and Pocket Excel couldn't load anything over a half-meg in size without blowing out, oftening corrupting the OS and requiring a hard reset.
People now have what they wanted - a small hand-held that is easy to use, loads and runs apps flawlessly, works as a telephone when needed, and doesn't need to be hard-reset because the OS was corrupted. Unfortunately for Microsoft, it's the iPhone, not the iPAQ.
M$ B and B
It seems to be that Micro$oft has always been of the opinion that Big and Bulky is equivalent to Big Bucks. Their corporation is a perfect match for their operating systems. A small side point, Computers really didn't need a reset button before Microsoft became a part of them. Windows Mobile is still the also ran of the smartphone market because Microsoft has the reputation for greed for any resource be it money, ram, CPU cycles etc. And it will take a major downsize before they can even dream of "getting it" as far as phones and PDA's are concerned.
Windows mobile
Microsoft's leadership needs to wakeup to the reality that business as usual does not an innovator make. As a developer and SMB partner I've found it a humbling experience when I test Apple's IPhone versus "smartphones.". Talk about a misnomer.
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