How to save Windows Mobile

Among Blackberry, Microsoft, Google, and Apple, Microsoft was the earliest player in mobile computing and smart phones, so why have they failed in this area?

With Windows Mobile 7 waiting in the wings, it occurred to me that I just don’t see people using Windows Mobile devices that much any more. In fact, at work, we’ve seen a shift from WinMo to Blackberry and iPhone, with the exodus split about 60/40 in favor of Blackberry. The market share shift has been swift and decisive.

Now I know this isn’t exactly news, but I was trying to figure out why.  Microsoft correctly foresaw the mobile market as being the next big thing for them and the software industry, and they had very early foresight that mobile was going to sweep our eyes away from our desktops in a major way. They had the timing right, but their solution is, and has been, inadequate.

The Value of Ecosystems

One key difference between Microsoft and Apple is that, while they both offer end-to-end ecosystems (Microsoft with XBox, Apple with iTunes/iPhone/AppleTV), they seem to use their ecosystems to different ends.  I believe Apple’s tightly-integrated iTunes ecosystem was primarily driven by the “digital paranoia” of the record industry in the early 2000′s, and it may not have been Apple’s idea to provide such a closed environment. But, in the end, consumers seem to prefer the “just works” ecosystem over the “bring your own interface” approach. For this reason, Microsoft can be seen to have failed at establishing a clear content-to-consumer delivery model based on Windows Mobile.

What’s worse, the Zune, which could have been a great launchpad for a simplified, stylus-free version of Windows Mobile four years ago, exists on yet another Microsoft island, limiting its value to the consumer. Rectifying this problem by bringing the ill-fated Zune line into the limelight of the Windows ecosystem would go a long way towards making Windows Mobile relevant again. Think iPod.

Failure to Recognize Consumer Patterns of Behavior

It was only a matter of time before the average consumer was using personal devices to manage nearly every aspect of his life. Yet Microsoft took the wait and see approach, preferring to believe that the corporate world would drive personal device adoption, where, in reality, we can see that personal, entertainment-oriented device use has driven the entire mobile industry for the last several years.  Two parts gear lust, and one part nerdification of the general populous, this movement is the exact opposite of the strategy Microsoft used for Windows Mobile.

Most People Lose Their Stylus

The user interface options available on Windows Mobile devices, until recently, have been based on resistive touch screen technology, generally used with a small, inkless pen called a stylus.  Blackberry, by contrast, has always offered its trademark “scroll wheel”, and Apple developed a slew of UI technologies, including groundbreaking iPod controls, that culminated in a stylus-free touch-screen control environment for the iPhone. Windows Mobile never employed either approach, so solving this problem (and Microsoft is solving it) will help.

Give Developers a Reason to Develop

The real trick isn’t coming up with the idea. The real trick isn’t coding the program.  The real trick IS getting people to notice.  Apple has more than solved this problem, for better or worse, with the Appstore.  You bring the code, we bring the customers.  While some web sites have served as communities of developers and consumers of WinMo apps, they exist outside the ecosystem and don’t provide turnkey delivery of content.

When Microsoft finally did show up on the scene with an official WinMo store, they stubbed their toe by naming it “Windows Marketplace for Mobile”.  Srsly?

Stop Trying to Look Like Windows

Windows Mobile shouldn’t look like Windows and shouldn’t even be called “Windows”, since a windowing environment on a 3″ screen is a useless idea anyway. Yet when we look back at the releases of Windows Mobile (and its mobile predecessors), we get the idea that Microsoft has always wanted WinMo to look as much like desktop Windows as possible. Only with Windows Mobile 7 has this pattern been broken. (See above screen grab.)

Blackberry never had this problem, as their main objective was to develop a good mobile UI, and they had no ties to an existing desktop environment.  Apple, who does have Mac OS X, decided not to bother bringing the X look and feel to their mobile device. This was a great decision, of course.

January 18, 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 35 Comments »

Why does Microsoft still insist on using crummy brand names?

“Windows Marketplace for Mobile”.

OK, does this name strike anybody else as particularly dumb?  On the syllable count alone, the marketing folks at Microsoft should’ve shot this one down before it had a chance to get into the wild.  Now, it seems, it’s going to have to stick.

Compared to Apple’s “Appstore” (2 syllables) or Nokia’s “Ovi” (barely 2 syllables) or even Blackberry’s “App World” (seeing a pattern?), Microsoft’s elephant-sized name for it’s application store clocks in at a whopping 8 syllables. Imagine the water cooler discussions that will never happen as a result:

“Hey man, where’d you get that sweet pinball game?”

“Well, I got it from Windows Marketplace for Mobile!”

Riiiight.  Who seriously is going to call it that?  Microsoft’s history of self-defeating brand names hasn’t been on display this starkly since “Microsoft Windows Server Base Operating Systems Management Pack for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005“.  Srsly, who uses this wordy terminology?

With Apple having already coined the de facto term “Appstore”, why doesn’t Redmond take advantage of the growing strength of the Zune brand and call their wordy app store something like “Zune Store” or “Zune Place” or even just “Mobile World”?  Even HandMarket, a third-party app store for Windows Mobile, beats Microsoft to the punch in succinctness.

August 5, 2009 | Tags: , , , , | 1,548 Comments »

Where does Symbian move leave Android and iPhone?

In an article today at the Register, Andrew Orlowski posts (my comments interspersed):

The smartphone wars once devoured a great deal of attention and energy, particularly during the long PR war that took place in the first four barren years – from the birth of the venture exactly ten years ago, to the first mass market consumer handset appearing in 2002. Today, apart from a few gadget fans, nobody really cares any more.

(In my best Luke Skywalker voice: “I care”.)  Seriously, anybody in business today is using a smartphone.  And people who aren’t in business don’t use them, almost without deviation.  The reason the first four years sucked was because smartphones sucked during the first four years.  Today, we’ve got better ones (though doing personal info management on a 2-inch screen still blows).

[...]

Even five years ago, it was apparent this was a war in which there would be no winner.

The winner is clearly Apple, as Andrew later points out.  Nokia’s lack of consistency and scattershot approach to applications and platforms is what kills Symbian devices.  Microsoft is better about this with Windows Mobile, and Blackerry and Apple are better than both Nokia and Microsoft.  Plus, where Blackberry has ‘quiet librarian’ excited, Apple has sex appeal and sheen. So I think, for now, it’s pretty obvious who the winner of this war is.

How did “smart” phones lose their luster? While they were bigger, slower and harder to use than phones based on older closed platforms, they didn’t offer the value that persuaded most people to put up with the pain and use the extra “smartness”. For example, Google Maps runs on any midrange phone today very capably – and like Google itself, it does the job well enough.

Disagree. Who do you know that actually runs Google maps on a non-smartphone?  Right, I didn’t think so. Just because a device CAN do a thing does not mean a device SHOULD do that thing.

But even then it’s doubtful that Nokia and Symbian executives would have opted for Exile in Freetard Street, had it not been for two competitive factors. One is the diminishing cost of smartphone OS licenses, which reflects their market value. Google is giving away its smartphone OS, Android. As Bill Ray correctly pointed out today, that makes Android utterly pointless.

Disagreed. Google is trying to carve out a platform ecosystem by becoming a technology provider as opposed to an application provider.  It’s the next logical step for any serious software company to become a tech licensor instead of an appmaker, which is what they’ve traditionally always been.  Android gives Google a vehicle to accelerate its control into areas where the competition is either stagnant or too wet to know what hit it: like the wireless industry.

Lack of 2.0-style innovation and consumer accessibility has pissed on the explosive growth we all want in this sector, and Android seeks to address this. Really, aren’t consumers sick and tired of being nickeled and dimed by Bell for every little feature they want to use? No wonder people don’t adopt new stuff. The cost and claustrophobia of the licensing experience shun people from adopting.   So, it’s not pointless to Google to give away seat licenses for free (it may’ve been for old school Symbian).  It eliminates one barrier to access: cost, while working on the solution to the other barrier: outdated telco business models. Increased demand for the open platform, Android, puts pressure on the network operators to stop banging consumers over the head with micro-fees and contract hoops.

There’s another factor, too. Symbian’s founding CEO, Colly Myers, the father of the OS formerly known as Epoc, used to talk of the “enchantment” factor. Tech wizardry wasn’t enough, he said, but the devices had to charm.

It’s largely Nokia that must be blamed for failing to make Symbian phones remotely “enchanting”. Nokia’s UI is cumbersome (Symbian doesn’t do UIs); the hardware was for years underclocked, making it slow. And Nokia’s legendary marketing has appealed to nerds, outcasts and social freaks – and been guaranteed to confuse everyone.

Today it’s the iPhone which has the enchantment factor. How could it not – it comes straight from the Dream Factory. And Apple must now see a clear road ahead for world dominance.

Symbian has done everything its original designers asked of it – a twenty year lifespan is not bad at all. But it’s now Apple’s business to lose

Absolutely agreed.  Apple is driving now.  The problem is, they’ve got to get out of the creepy deal they have with AT&T. That’s their #1 barrier to entry for business adoption in the United States. Solve that problem, and I think Apple may just run away with the business Android was designed to capture.

June 25, 2008 | Tags: , , , , , , | 28 Comments »