Microsoft’s mobile woes

Everyone knows mobile is the next-big-thing. Everyone except Microsoft, that is.

The company which has dominated technology for decades has systematically moved over the course of the year from having a deeply flawed mobile strategy to having no strategy at all.

Meantime Apple, which has a very aggressive mobile strategy, is snapping up customers left, right and centre.

An example of Microsoft’s so-called strategy is the Kin debacle.

Earlier this week Microsoft confirmed that it was killing development of its Kin phones. That’s just six weeks after it first launched the phone.

The spin from Microsoft is that it is focusing its efforts on is Windows Phone 7 operating system. The more likely reason for canning the Kin is that the company has sold only a handful of the devices since launch. Some estimates suggest that barely 500 phones were sold, while high-end estimates put sales into the low thousands.

Apple, on the other hand, sold 1.7 million iPhone 4Gs in just three days of launching the new phone.

Stuck with WinMo 6

The Kin disaster aside, Microsoft is doing almost as badly with the release of Windows Phone 7, the much-delayed successor to Windows Mobile 6. Despite CEO Steve Ballmer announcing the new OS in January this year, consumers are still waiting to see a device running the new operating system. And at the current rate it may be Christmas before Windows Phone 7 is finally available.

Which is another nail in the coffin for Microsoft’s mobile strategy.

Windows Phone 7 may well be all it is cracked up to be when it is finally released but it will be too late.

Users are now stuck in what one Gartner analyst terms a “sort of software Alcatraz”. Nick Jones says that users currently using Windows Mobile 6 now face a dilemma. With Windows Phone 7 nowhere in sight and Windows Mobile 6 ageing fast, businesses are stuck between holding on to their old WinMo applications or start looking for new platforms.

On the one hand, says Jones, users could “hang on and hope”. Users that rely on Windows Mobile 6-specific applications could sit tight and hope that things work out. Windows Mobile 6 will continue to be supported into the future on embedded handheld devices, which will give users some leeway before making a decision on where to go next. But ultimately, says Jones, they are headed “into a technological cul-de-sac”.

The other option is for corporate users to switch platforms to something like the iPhone or Google’s Android. Applications will need to be rewritten for the new platforms but they probably would have to have been anyway for Windows Phone 7.

It’s almost as if Microsoft is purposefully driving users away from its mobile platforms. On the one hand delaying Windows Phone 7 repeatedly creates uncertainty while on the other hand killing off the Kin after just six weeks doesn’t do much to convince anyone that Microsoft is clear on its future in mobile.

The uncertainty is also likely to be doing untold damage to the Windows Mobile developer community. Developers looking to build applications for mobile platforms have a good number to choose from now and until Windows Phone 7 is actually shipping on phones it’s not profitable to develop for the platform.

As Gartner’s Jones says, Microsoft “ought to provide some better escape routes [from WinMo 6] for users,” but right now it is not doing that.

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