Why is Microsoft even pretending it's player in the smartphone arena?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Until approx 6 months ago I had a Samsung “smartphone” i760 for 2 years with Windows Mobile 6.1. It was possibly the worst POS OS I have ever used. Clunky, slow, incredibly limited. Net browsing was a bad joke. The only saving grace was the seamless MS Outlook connectivity. And over 2 years it was updating very slightly only once with a 6.0 to 6.1 minor upgrade.

After sitting with their thumbs up their rear ends for years, and years now MS decides it wants to play in the smartphone sandbox with a new OS of their devising and is prepared to spend some money to get in the game.

I can’t seem them having any credibility at this point. They are just burning stockholders money.

2

Windows Phone 7 actually seems to be a pretty nice OS and a huge jump over they’re previous incarnations. The problem is it’s going to be a hard market to get into. Android had an advantage of being the only real iPhone alternative. Now they have Android and Apple to go against in the consumer market and Blackberry to go against in the business market.

3

I seem to remember people saying almost this exact thing about the xbox.

4

And the Zune.

MS trying to capitalize on isuccess. But without the marketing iteeth.

5

Yes, Microsoft’s marketing has always been their weak spot.

I’m thinking seriously about the Windows Phone 7. I kinda have my heart set on an iPhone but I’m not willing to use ATT and I’m tired of the whole “Verizon’s getting the iPhone!!!” dance.

The big thing for me will be how well Phone 7 integrates with Office 2010. I can access the web apps via Safari (as I understand it) but I’d rather have something that ties in directly. The interface for Phone 7 looks gorgeous but I’m not really sure I want all the swooping in my face all the time.

As a gamer without an xbox, I’m also seriously intrigued by being able to run xBox games on it. (An xBox is on my wish list, but not at the top.) I’m not entirely sure I want to, but I’m watching it closely.

So I’m looking forward to getting my hands on one this November. I think there’s a real market here for a slick phone with strong integration into Microsoft’s existing products. If they do it right, they can make a huge move with their current business customers.

I think a bigger question is why Microsoft is still trying to make Hotmail happen.

6

An Android based phone (mine is the Droid) with the “Touchdown” exchange application is the closest clone of MS Outlook I’ve ever seen. The onboard exchange functionality on the Droid is fine, but Touchdown ($20 w free trial) is the bomb.

See

Exchange support improves in Android, but TouchDown still sets the bar

7

That looks really usable. Does it maintain Outlook categories? Ideally, I’d want a phone that could be aware of filters I have set up in Outlook but that’s asking a lot, probably.

I’m open to an Android phone but I’m in that dead space where my old contract is up and I’m waiting to see what the Microsoft phone looks like before I commit to something new. I’m tempted by a phone that could run Google Voice.

8

The real answer is because they have to. When everyplace has Internet access, and the cloud really takes off, tablets are going to replace laptops the way cellphones have replaced landlines. The way things are headed now, they are going to running Apple software or Android software. If Microsoft doesn’t get in there, they will become irrelevant - a big player, sure but without the margins they have now. They will still make money off of Office, and server OS’s, but can you charge the same for a cloud based word processor that you do for a computer based one?