When Microsoft launched their new Windows Phone 7 Series OS a couple of weeks ago they managed to pull off something they’ve never achieved in the mobile market space, creating a buzz that’s still being talked about.
There can be no doubting that this new mobile operating system is radically different to everything we’ve seen before. Engadget columnist Michael Gartenberg writes in his column today that…
Whether last year’s mobile platforms are good enough or not is irrelevant; no platform from 2009 is good enough for 2010 and beyond, and every mobile platform will need to evolve this year
So what does he mean by this? When smart phones first appeared there was a limited market for them, with most phones being used exclusively in the business market, and then almost exclusively for push email. The iPhone changed all that with its new finger-friendly OS and now the whole market has changed beyond all recognition because of Apple’s hard work. I think Gartenberg is right, mostly anyway, about what he says and why.
Google made a huge mistake with Android, let’s face it they’re really not a software company, you only have to look at their on-line suite of apps to see that. Nice as they are, the interoperability, integrated interface and cohesion isn’t there. When they released Android they asked themselves what was it that was making the iPhone so popular, and how could they improve on it.
Google decided that the interface itself, with the grid layout of application icons, was one of the winning factors, and replicated it. They also added a desktop because some other companies like LG and Samsung were doing the same and having some success.
Microsoft, mercifully, decided that you couldn’t treat a mobile phone as having a desktop, ala Android, and a smart phone wasn’t a PC, ala the iPhone, and they went their own way with an OS designed more with being a phone in mind. There was less emphasis on the apps themselves, and more on app integration.
This is where Gartenberg and I disagree, I believe that Windows Mobile 7 Series is the smart phone OS we need going forward. Something that is a phone first and an excuse to make yet more money out of us second. But what’s my justification for saying so?
Look at the success HTC have had with their Sense UI on both Windows Mobile and Android operating systems in 2009. They’ve ported the same UI, with minor tweaks, and software to both platforms and covered up the native OS underneath. Indeed people are saying that their Desire phone, which is essentially Google’s Nexus One with HTC Sense installed over the top, is a much more polished and usable phone.
HTC Sense begins to do what Microsoft will soon be doing for us. It brings our social networking together into one place, allows us to use a smart phone like a smart phone, by easily viewing weather, appointments, the time, calls, messages and email together on a single screen, and compared to just plain Android or Windows Mobile, it’s leaps ahead of both.
Nokia also tried this approach with it’s panels, an idea that Microsoft subsumed, but it was let down by the limitation of the OSes they used underneath.
It’s clear to see now that treating a phone as a phone first and foremost is the way to win hearts and minds. The question remains whether Google and Apple are either brave enough (to risk calls of copying) or hardy enough (to make such significant changes to the main interface of their Phone OSes) to do the right thing and follow HTC and Microsoft into the future.
