IDG news got in touch with Microsoft’s senior vice president of Mobile Communication Business, Andy Lees to talk a bit about the future of Windows Mobile. The most interesting part of the interview is about the the Windows Mobile 7 chassis /reference designs being build by Microsoft and then submitted to OEMs/ODMs:
“Our goal is to enable maximum choice but in a way that adds an element of structure so that everybody can get on and do their own thing somewhat independently,” he told the IDG News Service during the CTIA conference in San Diego.
Reference designs define the way that various phone components work together so that hardware makers don’t have to develop that integration work themselves. “It offers them a higher baseline upon which they can innovate. It means it is significantly faster and cheaper for more innovations to come out to market from the OEMs,” Lees said.
In offering the reference designs, Microsoft hopes to replicate the development process used by PC manufacturers. Reference designs help PC manufacturers build to defined specifications yet give them enough room to differentiate their products, he said. Microsoft is hoping for the same environment in phones.
Lees would not describe specifics of what the designs might look like but said that the company would announce more details of its plan in the future.
This is what MS should have done a long time ago. OEMs/ODMs aren’t the only one to blame though, Microsoft didn’t really put any effort into modernizing Windows Mobile since WM5, so even though phone makers had some problems with display drivers, lack of ram (the WinCE 5.2 kernel has poor memory management) etc, having an OS that natively supports the latest hardware would have helped a lot (MS was relying on OEMs/ODMs to develop the majority of the new APIs and drivers). This will all change with Windows Mobile 7.
The other subject discussed is the Windows Marketplace for Mobile:
The store launched with 246 applications, a far cry from the 85,000 in the iPhone App Store and half the number the App Store launched with. There are also far fewer apps available in the store than the 18,000 that Microsoft often boasts are commercially available for Windows Mobile.
But the Marketplace only began accepting applications recently and more will come, Lees said.
Some of those will be applications that developers will port from the other competitive platforms, he said. “Most of the apps are written small and light and it’s very easy to transfer those between platforms,” he said. Developers will be encouraged to move their applications to Windows Mobile based on the size of the market, he said.
And finally:
The market should look forward to “a whole bunch more milestones coming out over the next 12 to 18 months,” he said. Microsoft is now setting the stage for success in the five to ten year period. “Microsoft has a good track record of stepping back and saying, ‘what will customers want in that stage,’” he said.
Read the whole thing here
Source: ComputerWorld thanks for the tip Marcus
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