Conflicting opinions on Windows Mobile: Open source or open FUD?
Last night in reading through my RSS newsreader I came across these two posts - one from CNET's Dave Rosenberg and the other from Funambol's Fabrizio Capobianco - and had to laugh at the odd juxtaposition of two seemingly diametrically opposed ideas:
So, which will it be? Open-source Windows Mobile or proprietary Windows Mobile, continuing to be sold at an outlandish $8 to $15 per phone for software that Businessweek's Stephen Wildstrom calls "awkward to use after a decade of tweaking by Microsoft."
It sounds like Windows Mobile should be free, and not because of any strategy to counter open-source Symbian (Nokia) or open-source Linux (Google). No, Microsoft should be giving it away because its Windows Mobile operating system is potty, despite a decade of effort to improve it. Microsoft has tried to replicate the desktop Windows experience on the handheld. Big mistake.
Microsoft's strategy? Well, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer notes, it's pretty much the same as ever: FUD the competition rather than beat it:
It's interesting to ask why would Google or Nokia, Google in particular, why would they invest a lot of money and try to do a really good job if they make no money. I think most operators and telecom companies are skeptical about Google. Handset makers are skeptical of Nokia, operators are skeptical of Google, I think by actually charging money people know exactly what our motivations are.
Just because people know that Microsoft wants to screw them doesn't mean they like it, Mr. Ballmer. First mistake.
The second, and more egregious mistake, is in assuming that Microsoft has discovered the only way to make money from software and that its 20th-century licensing model is God's divinely-appointed way for the next millennium.
I suspect Google and Nokia have a clear strategy in play, just as Apple does (which relies not on licensing the software on a separate basis, but rather in creating a compelling end-to-end experience, which Microsoft hates one day but loves the next).
It could very well be, Mr. Ballmer, that the world will continue to ignore Windows Mobile, with its 12 percent global market share, in favor of new ways of licensing and delivering value. Or didn't you get the memo?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
How much for a good Internet Sharing tethering app?
How much for a full bluetooth stack.
In the end, if you want to monetize your software through advertising, you still rely on people wanting to BUY something in the end, and sometimes that thing is software.
And BTW, since when is having software tied to hardware a desirable thing? Why should I be forced to buy a RIM phone to get their e-mail app? Why should I have to buy an iPhone to get the Safari browser?
Sometimes you come across as foolish socialists who did not really think everything through.
How is $8-15 "outlandish" for a smartphone operating system that has more power and capabilities than any other smartphone OS out there? Do you know that a bottle of water at many NYC clubs costs $8?
Do you have any substantial reasoning to back your opinion that Windows Mobile is "potty" or difficult to use? Are you unable to understand what the Start menu does? Are scroll bars confusing to you?
How is replicating a desktop computing experience on a handheld a bad idea? Isn't that exactly what the iPhone and Google's Android are trying to do (and in pretty much the same way Windows Mobile has already done)?
Isn't Google's Android operating system practically the same as Windows Mobile? It has icons with text labels. It has a title bar with drop down status info bar. It has applications that you launch. How is that less confusing than the same icons and applications in Windows Mobile?
Anyone?
Here's a hint: Carriers subsidise the cost of phones - which generally cost about $400-800 - so $8 to $15, even if true, does not a difference make.
Summary: Red herring. No-one cares.
Remember the HP iPAQ that run on Windows Mobile? It never took off. at the same time
people liked Palm based devices.
Windows Mobile is not a exciting OS. Its like Mainframe OS among cool OS like OSX.
P.S. Phones have moved on since the iPAQ. No, really, they have.
As CrashPad mentioned, there's nothing wrong with a business making a profit. There's a big difference between being profitable and screwing somebody, and it's sad that Matt doesn't seem to get that.
As for slickuser, you have no idea what you're talking about. While the original Windows CE devices didn't fare well against Palm, Microsoft coming out with the Pocket PC OS was the beginning of Palm's (near) demise. While Palm was nay-saying things like preemptive multi-tasking, color screens and media playing, the Pocket PC had them -- and eventually Palm added them (well, except for multi-tasking, which they're still trying to get right). Doesn't Palm licensing Windows Mobile tell you who won that battle?
As for the original iPAQ, that was probably the device that got people interested in Pocket PCs. When it first came out, people were paying *above* list price for it. Microsoft stopped supporting three different processor architectures in the Pocket PC 2002 OS and only supported ARM -- the processor the iPAQ used.
Try a little research next time.
My partner works in a cellphone store and I maintain the mobile device synchronization stuff for Mandriva. So I have quite a bit of experience with phones. I really don't get why some people are so down on Windows Mobile. It works quite well, in my experience. The important apps are well designed, and it's always been pretty stable for me. Its API is a hell of a lot more open than Apple's, leading to the development of genuinely useful third party apps (like tcpmp) which you don't have to download through the One True Way (like a certain Jesus phone).
It's a damn sight better than desktop Windows, anyway. It's less flashy and a bit clunkier than the iPhone interface, sure, but I'd probably rather have WM than an iPhone at the end of the day, and believe me, I'm not biased that way.
And the Google phone? Sheesh. They're hardly any better. Their revenue model is pretty obvious: lock you in to Google and Google's advertising and don't let you go. You can't use the bleeding Google phone without a Google account, which is used to track *everything you ever do* on the phone. Count me out.
On philosophical grounds I'd love to love OpenMoko, but in practical terms I can't, because they've been bashing on it for three years and the dialer doesn't work yet. I mean, COME ON. I don't care if you can run Debian on it, I want to make a bleeding phone call.
I'd rather have a Nokia, Blackberry, or Windows Mobile phone than an iPhone or T1 any day, when it comes down to it.
(And 12% is a damn sight better than the iPhone's doing.)
Are you kidding? Are you saying that you think trying to produce a product and sell it means you are trying to "screw people"? Microsoft is just a company trying to earn money like everybody else. Whether you like their products or not, you should recognize that it is necessary for businesses to earn a profit. If they did not, we would all be out of work! We could all go back to bartering chickens, but do we really want to do that?
- by SururD October 1, 2008 11:46 PM PDT
- Dont be an idiot. How is selling something less honest than trying to force people into buying an expensive data plan before even contact syncing will work? Do you really think free is just FREE? You are paying for it in some way in the end.
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