Windows Mobile 7 — More Brand Dilution Coming
I have been harsh in the past at the Windows Mobile lack of a specific brand. I’ve detailed why that is – the many partners of Microsoft that want their specific phone to be unique. I’ve heard some say that Windows Mobile 7 would usher in a new era of a consistent user interface and rescue WinMo from “more of the same.” Istartedsomething just pointed out something that dashes what little hope I had for Windows Mobile 7.
“On one hand, every OEM and operator in the ecosystem wants to differentiate their product and this allows them an easy way to do so without resorting to changing the hardware which is more expensive. At the same time however it also means the same device across operators and all devices under the Windows Phone brand will have even less in common – adding more complexity to an already diluted ecosystem.”
Long’s comment comes after he discovered that MS has advertised for new talent to work on Windows Mobile 7 toward the following goal:
“The final responsibility of our group will be working with mobile operators to deliver a unique windows mobile experience that seamlessly integrates the mobile operator’s services (such as voicemail services, video-on-demand services, and navigation services for instance). Microsoft experimented with this back in 2007 with the introduction of the T-Mobile Shadow. That was a great success and with WM7 we will be expanding this effort to more operators. Because of this we will be working heavily on creating custom user interfaces, so passion around UI and graphics programming is a must.”
You’ve lost all hope because of a lack of consistent branding? That makes no sense.
Lost hope in seeing a consistent Windows Phone brand, yes.
I actually agree strongly with MS’ policy here. Imagine GM trying to sell the Chevy Mustang, and only the Chevy Mustang to millions of people. GM would never come close to satisfying the car market’s varied tastes. The trick is for MS to have rich, diverse, high quality differentiation among mobile operators, while making it not too difficult to move from one Windows phone to another (much like with motor vehicles) and to ensure mobile third party apps work consistently well, and also blend well with all these phones. If MS does this, Windows phone will be able scale far better than its competitors.
The main beef I had with Windows Mobile 6.5, was that the base UI seemed underworked and subpar compared to its competitors’. However I really, really liked the UI differentiation that was seen across Windows phones.
Douglas, I’m not sure Ford would be happy with Chevy for selling their Mustang!
Joking aside, I agree with what you’re saying. I’ve never been happy with the idea of “one size fits all”.
Oops! It appears you have discovered the extent of my car expertise! That’s so embarrassing! I think I need a paper bag!
I have become convinced that the ‘brands’ you will see from Microsoft will be Silverlight running everywhere, Silverlight applications including Office apps, and cloud services. I think you will see a gigantic marketing wave from them in summer 2010 that will make this transition in the market.
From a Microsoft perspective, they need to protect the Office brand and make sure it runs everywhere. To do this, they will make sure that Silverlight runs everywhere and deliver office client apps that run in Silverlight.
They also need to protect the infrastructure brands like SQL Server, Search (Bing), SharePoint, and Exchange. I believe these will be protected by delivering them as a cloud services and as products that support customer-managed, intranet cloud services.
BTW, I really enjoy your analysis of the mobile market. I spend a lot of time trolling for the availability of new mobile phones. It would be really cool if you had an RSS feed that was specific to new devices as they hit the market
Keep up the great work…