{"id":10424,"date":"2009-11-12T22:53:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-12T20:53:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-11-12T22:53:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-12T20:53:00","slug":"windows-mobile-s-slippery-slope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/10424-windows-mobile-s-slippery-slope.html","title":{"rendered":"Windows Mobile's slippery slope"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Windows Mobile was first launched in 2000 it was known as Pocket PC 2000. A couple of years later, and a name change to Windows Mobile, and Microsoft’s mobile platform was on track to success, racking up as much as 14% market share by 2002<\/a> depending on which statistics you look at. Fourteen percent doesn’t sound like a lot but in a market already brimming with contenders, and after just two years, it was a significant achievement, although not entirely surprising considering Microsoft’s financial muscle.<\/p>\n

Today, however, Windows Mobile is in decline and faces a new, and potentially lethal, onslaught from a cluster of new mobile OS makers. And already that onslaught is beginning to takes its toll with analysts putting Windows Mobile’s market share at just 9% at the middle of 2009. Again, not a huge slide but a big enough one to suggest the WinMo decline is gathering momentum.<\/p>\n

Most industry watchers are predicting that Windows Mobile 7 will be the secret, or perhaps last ditch attempt, to reverse Microsoft’s ailing mobile strategy. The problem is that Windows Mobile 7 is not yet available and while Microsoft issues mostly featureless upgrades such as Windows Mobile 6.5, the smartphone market is booming and a host of new players are streaming in through the door.<\/p>\n

iPhone<\/strong><\/p>\n

The most obvious challenger is the Apple iPhone. The iPhone has stormed the market, launching in January 2007 and now claiming close to 14% of the mobile OS market, behind Symbian and RIM’s Blackberry [http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Smartphone<\/a>] and pushing Windows Mobile down to fourth spot.<\/p>\n

So rapid was the iPhone’s ascent that by the end of 2007 it has already eclipsed Windows Mobile in the US market (http:\/\/blogs.zdnet.com\/microsoft\/?p=1163<\/a>). And yet, while Apple’s iPhone has done most of the damage to Windows Mobile over the past three years the challenge is far from over for Microsoft. A new cluster of competitors, headed by Android and including Nokia’s Maemo, are set to make life even tougher for the Redmond software maker.<\/p>\n

Android <\/strong><\/p>\n

Android, a product of arch-rival Google, in particular looks likely to start slashing its way to the top of the mobile OS pile over the coming years. Obviously it’s too soon to predict exactly how much of the market Android will take in the next 12 or 24 months, but it does look like Android has everything going for it. Firstly there is the backing of Google.<\/p>\n

Just about anything Google touches turns into a must-have, and Android is heading the same way. Then there is the growing support for Android. Initially it was just HTC, but now Motorola is joining the Android club and pinning its hopes of recovery on Android.<\/p>\n

Right now Android is estimated to have around 3% market share. This is likely to swing quickly upwards with Motorola and HTC on board. HTC’s involvement, in particular, is interesting. Historically the mobile phone maker has been the primary purveyor of Windows Mobile-equipped phones. But over the past year there has been a steady increase in the number of HTC phones equipped with Android in place of Windows Mobile.<\/p>\n

And the most recent of these, the HTC Hero, is a fine example of just how impressive Android-equipped phones can be. In the past HTC was known to ship as much as 80% of the Windows Mobile in the world. Now that number is down to just 65% and is likely to drop even further with HTC’s continued favour for Android<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Symbian and Maemo<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is also another battle going on in the mobile OS market, and one which is still early in its life but could well see the market shaken up significantly over the coming years. And that shift is centered on Nokia and its Symbian operating system. Right now Symbian controls a dominant 50% of the mobile OS market. Which looks unassailable but may well not be.<\/p>\n

The one issue here is that the recently formed Symbian Foundation, which was meant to manage the newly open-sourced Symbian operating system, appears to be going nowhere. Despite big promises of being the world’s favourite open source mobile phone operating system, very little has happened to attract the developers required to build a proper open source community around the platform. Meanwhile Google has, in typical style, hit the market running.<\/p>\n

With the first Android phone released only a year ago, Android already has a strong developer community around it and already there is talk of Android being used to power everything from netbooks to televisions. It looks increasingly likely that Android will become the most favoured open source mobile operating system in no time at all.<\/p>\n

Added to this is the fact that Nokia has just released its first Maemo-based mobile phone, the N900. Maemo is a Linux-based operating system that has attracted significant open source developer interest. Firefox, for example, has a mobile version of its browser in beta format for the Maemo platform. How widespread Maemo will become is hard to predict but its very user-friendly interface could well win users over from Symbian-powered devices, adding to the decline of Symbian.<\/p>\n

Windows Mobile 7<\/strong><\/p>\n

In large part, however, Microsoft is to blame for the decline in popularity of its Windows Mobile operating system. Initially Windows 7 Mobile was expected to be released around the time the Windows 7 for desktops was, in the middle of October.<\/p>\n

But repeated delays have pushed this release date well into 2010 and as a result Microsoft opted to release Windows Mobile 6.5 as a stop-gap release. This, in hindsight, was a damaging decision. The response to the release of 6.5 was underwhelming.<\/p>\n

Pre-publicity and speculation for Windows Mobile 7 had promised a range of features, such as multi-touch, which would keep WinMo on the cutting edge of mobile phone OSes. Unfortunately Windows 6.5 had none of the cool features users wanted and was largely written off as a cosmetic upgrade. This at a time when the smartphone market is booming and competition is getting very tough.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Microsoft is under the illusion that users are willing to wait for the next big Windows Mobile release. The truth, however, is that mobile phone users don’t really care about Windows Mobile, unlike they do when it comes to Windows on their desktop. Users just want features and Windows Mobile is not delivering them.  <\/p>\n

Windows Mobile<\/strong><\/a> – discussion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

iPhone and Android lead a challenge that could kill off Windows Mobile<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cellular"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}