How Microsoft Will Win in the Mobile Phone Space

It’s no joke. Microsoft is finally in a place where they can and will compete hard with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android platform. As possibly the first company to figure out what it means to compete in this space – and certainly the first with real dollars to back their game – Microsoft has a big chance to win with Series 7.

Lessons from Xbox

Microsoft came to the table with a gaming system in 2001 with some good juice. More than anything, they wanted to focus on making the developer story better than what was out there. They faced criticism on the size of the console, on the noise, on the size of the controller (which I loved, btw), on pretty much everything…but slowly they won developers over.

By the time the Xbox 360 hit the streets, developers were singing the praises of development on the platform while Sony executives were just waiting for “smarter” developers who actually understood their technology to come along. In the first months of the Xbox 360 release, it became apparent that Microsoft was going to be the console that catered to the people who made games.

Interestingly enough, it seems as though Sony’s going to abandon the technology of the PS3 on their next console because we developers just ain’ts gots the smarts.

The biggest win was differentiation with the 360, not from other players, but from themselves. They reinvented what a product could like coming out of Redmond and it paid off in droves. It was rumoured that early designs were tested against focus groups without the branding, and almost no one was able to identify the manufacturer as Microsoft.

Lessons from Windows Mobile

You can can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Especially if the water is acid and no one in the world wants to ride the horse anyways. And even more so because if you did want anyone to ride the horse, you had to make your own saddle and figure out a way to distribute the saddle on your own. And don’t expect any revenue.

RIP, Windows Mobile.

The development story was crap. Web service (cloud) integration was turd. Some level of expectation for hardware was non-existent, and you were just short of a demi-god if you could figure out how to get your app found. And unless you were a wizard-code-ninja working at HTC, good luck at making anything look good.

While Apple was making millionaires out of fart-generator authors, there were very few success stories in the fragmented, challenged development story on the Windows Mobile platform. Too many devices. Not enough support for developers. Little to no ‘dogfooding’ of the devices and content. Limited interim builds. Late and abandoned features and release dates. Inconsistent programming libraries.

And they’re leaving it all behind. I hope.

Where the Winner Is

I give it two years. In two years Microsoft will be shipping as many units as Apple. I am pretty confident in that number because of the lessons Microsoft should have learned from above.

That sentiment is furthered because of how they came through with Windows 7.

The argument is strengthened even more with the working prototype they put forward at Mobile World Congress.

Hubs are the new pages and clean is the new UI. Apps will be alive and the touch will be a productivity feature and user benefit rather than a scrolling gimmick.

What most people don’t realize is how much work Microsoft has actually done in this space. Apple didn’t invent the wheel here (I’m not say MS did, by the way). Tablets, touch screens, mobile devices…Microsoft has done so much wrong in this space for over a decade that they’ve learned everything you’re not supposed to do, and the very few, straight-forward things you need to do in order to compete.

But where they will really shine is in supporting developers.

By moving to XAML and enabling millions of developers already on the .NET platform to develop media-rich, touch-rich, dynamic applications from within the world’s number one IDE, Microsoft is set to roll a new story for what mobile applications can be (hint: not just fart generators).

Oh yes, if you want to develop applications that will run on millions of phones with an incredible user experience, standardized hardware and an open development platform, there’s an app for that.

It’s called Visual Studio 2010, and it will be the Achilles heel of the iPhone development story.

Microsoft Just Seriously Kicked Apple in the Nads

I am not joking.

If you’ve used a Zune HD – not just mocked it because it’s from Microsoft and because you love your iPod and have never actually used a Zune HD but it must suck because it’s not from Apple (all hail Steve) – then you know that they (Microsoft’s Zune HD team) have seriously got a pulse for how things should look and feel and work.

Well, that’s what they are bringing to Series 7, the new name and face of Windows Phone. It is freeking nuts.

The concept is a paradigm shift for anyone…well, anyone who uses a phone. We’re talking multiple pages of any-direction scrolling that actually makes sense and gives you a complete sense of being awesome.

Plus, it’s awesome.

The user interface is arranged as a series of canvases that allow you to finger your way around them. The canvas is bigger than the screen, and you just push it around to get where you’re going.

It is elegant, modern and by all early signs it is also fast, responsive and built to compete. Hard.

Another way to think of the user interface is the Xbox Live dashboard, optimized for touch. Heck, why stop there? IT HAS XBOX LIVE BUILT THE FREEK IN.

A good review of the upcoming game-changer is here:

http://gizmodo.com/5471805/windows-phone-7-series-everything-is-different-now?skyline=true&s=i

Here’s a snip:

The result is a feat no phone has performed before: Making the iPhone's interface feel staid.

Apple Will Ruin the World

A very startling realization came to me yesterday: Pixar Animations Studios has prophesized that Apple Computer will spell the end of Planet Earth.

By now, you’ve likely seen the movie Wall-E. The story takes place 700 years into the future where humans have lived in the outer reaches of space for several centuries, mostly unaware of the plight of the planet they once called home.

We are introduced to the main character and join him as he makes his way through a typical day, compacting garbage, making building replicas and collecting interesting bits of junk.

So…what is Apple’s part in world devestation?

You might be wondering how this ties into my theory. Who cares if a little robot is left here to clean up our mess? And what does that have anything to do with Apple? Well, let’s look at it from another angle:

• Why did the humans leave Earth? There was too much garbage.
• Why was there too much garbage? Because Buy-n-Large convinced consumers to buy into a perpetual model of perceived obsolescence (“Wear red, it’s the new blue!”). Everyone replaced everything without caring about anything. Buy-n-Large had them trained perfectly.
• How did Wall-E learn about humans? He watched videos rigged up with an iPod.
• Did he know a lot about iPods? Of course, he had it wired up to not only view stored content, but indirect input from VHS tapes and players. This cat had intricate knowledge of the device…he almost knew it’s inner workings too well…
• Did he have a deeper connection to iPods at all? Well, maybe not, but he makes the Apple start-up sound when he wakes up.
• Wait! The Apple start-up sound? Yes, one in the same.
• But I thought Buy-n-Large made all the Wall-E units to clean up planet Earth?!

…and then BANG! You get it! Apple IS Buy-n-Large. Just as many people I know are on their second, third (or more) iPod or iPhone, Apple is already convincing people that the things they buy are legacy the moment it comes home.

It’s easy to see what would happen to Earth if Apple becomes the conglomerate, all-goods store that they do in the movie Wall-E. People already buy into their model of things becoming junk in just months or years.

Long gone is a time when people would patch jeans or take shoes to a repair shop. There’s a whole new class of disposable electronics – DVD players, ink-jet printers, MP3 players – and we’re pretty much headed on a crash-course with garbage overload.

Just as Pixar suggests, with Apple hiding behind a name as blatantly anti-Earth as “Buy-n-Large”, by purchasing Mac Products you will help Steve Jobs bring an end to this planet.

There, glad I got that off my chest.

:oD

…and by the way, this is the most tongue-in-cheekiest post I’ve ever made. Play along, it’s just for fun! ;o)