Microsoft Still Doesn’t Get Mobile

I thought I’d take today to rant about Microsoft a little bit regarding their mobile strategy. After all these years of Microsoft making Windows Mobile and it’s predecessors, one might think that they “get mobile”. That Microsoft has the design and engineering know-how to take the best of what’s currently out there and put it into one device and take the spare time to innovate – bring us new and exciting idea.

Take something as simple as the alarm on a “Pocket PC” or Windows Mobile Smartphone. One might expect that in this day and age, given that these devices are touted as the all-in-one converged device, that it could support more than one alarm clock and could work reliably. One look at all of the alarm programs out on Handango and SmartPhone.net, and you’d see that CLEARLY there is a gap here that Microsoft has served poorly. Many posts on sites such as PocketPCThoughts.com will tell you that people continue to have problems with failed alarms. That’s just not acceptable – you need to be able to trust your “system” to do what you need it to do. If your “system” is a smart-device, than that alarm needs to go off when it should.

Or how about audio & video? How about giving me a device that I can use to listen to audio where it remembers where in the track I was when I exited the program so I can pick up where I left off?

Fortunately for me, I can afford to purchase third-party applications that allow me to do these things. And one might argue that Microsoft is intentionally not creating these features in their operating system so as not to step on the developers toes. And that would be good, except for the fact that a vast majority of Windows Mobile users will never visit the third-party application sites or install an application unless provided by their carrier or employer. Buy the developers if necessary, but get these features into the next version of the OS. Its time.

Microsoft has been accused of copying other people’s software features in the past and incorporating them into their products. Why stop now?

Recent sales figures show Apple, being in the mobile phone market for little more than 6 months at this point, eating Microsoft’s lunch. That is, Apple, as a single developer and manufacturer, BEAT all other Windows Mobile-based smartphones for the last half of 2007. Microsoft needs to DO BETTER at creating devices that the average consumer can easily and predictably use. Only then will they increase their market share. They’ve been at the game long enough. Now its time to play to win.