Microsoft aims to be cell phone 'Survivor'

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from one wireless network to another.

"The important thing is to make sure that there is seamless roaming and handover and a consistent experience," Zhang said. "That is a critical technology that we need to enable."

Although some have said Microsoft is trying to position itself as a BlackBerry killer, company Chairman Bill Gates doesn't seem to be aiming for a knockout blow.

"There'll always be tons of operating systems," Gates said in a recent interview with gizmo site Engadget. "We're trying to make the best software we can and we have no shortage of ideas where we can make that phone way better than it is today."

The company has also made a number of deals on the mobile side that seem to reflect that view. On the one hand, Microsoft has struck a deal with Research In Motion to allow the BlackBerry to run Microsoft's corporate instant-messaging technology.

At the same time, Microsoft is trying to compete with RIM both through devices running Windows Mobile and by licensing server technology to devices that run rival operating systems. Microsoft has licensed its ActiveSync technology to erstwhile OS rivals PalmOne and Symbian.

Another area analysts see as key to being taken seriously in the cell phone business is making sure the product is attractive to cell phone carriers such as Sprint PCS and Cingular Wireless. The operators of cell phone networks, more than the device makers, act as a gatekeeper to what makes it into the hands of businesses and consumers.

"It's really important for them to align their OS with the needs of carriers," said Ross Rubin, an analyst with The NPD Group. In particular, Rubin suggested Microsoft should support making changes to its operating system on the go, as well as establishing a platform for all manner of sales.

Microsoft seems to have realized this early on. The company has struggled to get many of the leading cell phone makers to embrace its operating system, but it has managed to get devices, often made by contract manufacturers, onto top-tier carriers' networks.

Analysts also point out that Microsoft doesn't have to get everything right this time around. Said IDC's Burden, "The next edition of Windows Mobile is certainly not going to be the last one."

[Earl Benser]

No one will stop MS....

.... other than a majority of consumers who decide that MS's ideas
aren't theirs.

I just hope that there will still be providers of cell phones which are
actually cell phones, not kilobit toys trying to be gigabyte devices.

[Christopher Hall]

About phones

Do they actually make phone calls anymore, or was that a function that was dropped when "remote controlled dish washing" was added to the absolutely necessary "features?"

Illegal Competition?

It seems like maybe it is time for antitrust action in the mobile segment. After all, trying to compete with Microsoft in this segment is like (Joe Average) trying to play poker against a billionaire - he doesn't have a chance because the billionaire can just BUY EVERY HAND!

The fact is that Microsoft's mobile division has lost millions of dollars for (at least) the past three consecutive years, including $224 million this past year (see: http://www.microsoft.com/msft/earnings/FY04/earn_rel_q4_04.mspx). This alone should weigh heavily as evidence of it's deliberate intent to participate in anticompetitive behavior. After all, WHO ELSE in this segment can afford to lose $224 million in one year? Certainly not the marketshare leader - Symbian. Probably not PalmOne, or Nokia!

What is particularly upsetting is that the press' behavior is just about as bad as Microsoft's. Note that this article mentions Microsoft's REVENUE in the segment, but COMPLETELY SKIPS OVER the fact that it has lost HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS in it's pursuit of the segment. This is EXACTLY THE SAME as what happened when Microsoft was pursuing Netscape, and various others! The "news" sounds more like a Microsoft PRESS RELEASE than a statement of fact (and PROBABLY because that is where it came from!)

I don't know about everyone else, but I would really appreciate it if we could just get straight, honest, news from "news sites" instead of "will Longhorn run on your machine", "can Microsoft kick Google's butt", press releases.

[Jonathan]

Complete and utter bullbullets

Its not MS fault that Palm is lead by an incompetent bunch of fools who can?t seem to keep a CEO for more then a year at most. Hell PalmOne is seriously eyeing Windows Mobile for the Treo because PalmSource can't even release a damn OS updated. When was Cobalt suppose to be released? Spring '04 wasn't it? Since then Palm's own devices haven't shipped with anything other then Garnet or whatever OS 5.blah is. This is a company who is so desperate that they have to go out and buy Chinese Linux companies to try and turn around their cluster **** of a mess.

In short Palm made their bed back in 2001. I remember at CES when there was a PDA roundtable and Palm's CEO of the year announced that users don?t want sound/color/high res screens/etc. They just care about Palm's ease of use and the whole Palm Zen thing. Palm did this to themselves.
In hindsight I think I know why they said what they said. They?ve been drifting on the coattails of the original Palm OS way back when they first bought it. Updating it, refining it, but never reinventing it. I think the horrible truth is upon us. Palm is incapable of releasing a real update. All they seem to be capable of doing is bolting on crap to a completely obsolete and out of date OS.
One thing that I want to make perfectly clear..I'm no lover of MS's business practices and how they develop their software. I?ve ranted many a time over the Pocket PC and its lackadaisical forward momentum that is only a couple steps ahead of Palm. The difference being that MS out of the box with Pocket PC (I try to forget that whole Palm Sized PC nightmare thing.) they had the core architecture ready to go. Just like Apple and OS X, Pocket PC 2000 had potential but was really rough around the edges. By PPC 2005 that will be debuting this summer the edges are buffed, polished, and ready to go. You can fault MS for many a thing but you can't fault them for Palm committed Hari-kari.

Right ON Microsoft!

As a developer and user of mobile phones I find the current total absense of standardization hard to cope with. Microsoft is the only company capable of setting a real standard. This will long-term mean that mobile phones will be like PCs. That is, vendors can only play with price, performance and packaging, but rather little with function. For the majority of users, developers and IT-support this is only beneficial.

Symbian suffers from two major problems:
1. It is a "commitee" product defined by competitors (=slow process full of compromises and politics)
2. It only offers C++ which makes it much less useful for enterprise (in-house) applicatons than Microsoft's .NET. The Java (J2ME) add-on is a seriously crippled system, not in any way comparable to .NET.

Please wait while I reboot my phone

Anders Rundgren said, "Microsoft is the only company capable of setting a real standard."

Oh, really? Palm isn't capable? Well, Mr. Rundgren, for the record, I'm on my fifth Palm phone. And I have apps on the fifth phone (a Treo 600) that came on the first phone.

Also for the record, my FIRST handheld, which was prior to my first Palm phone, was a Casio "Casseopia", which ran Windows CE (2.0). It wasn't capable of running 1.0 apps, or any version after 2.0. NOTHING worked well on it. And Microsoft has revised the OS 15 times since then! And EACH revision is incompatible with the others! And you're going to tell us that Microsoft is the only one capable of setting standards? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

BTW...

BTW, Mr. Rundgren, Palms (and Palm phones) run Windows (Office) apps better than Windows handhelds! (They also do everything else better and have 5 times the battery life!)

Reality Check

Microsoft is only a player in this market because of their promises and our hopes. I have given the IPAQ 6315 the benefit of the doubt for the last 9 months and it just does not do the job. And I think it is the Pocket PC software that is the weakness. Their new upgrade will only help them try to catch up. I'll be swithcing back to a Blackberry soon.

Cell Phones PDA's Palms and GPS's

If I could get any of these huge companies to buy my patents or lisence them from me, They would be able to gain access to a huge market share. I own the patents that include any type of magnification for Cellphones homephones PDA's, Palms and GPS. To be built into or added as an accessory. There are over 150 million persons in the US in the groups of seniors, babyboomers and vision impaired. This would also make these cell phone and personal data corporations compliant with the American Disabilities Act. Who thought it would be so easy to gain majority of market share.

[Edited by: admin on May 6, 2005 3:06 PM]
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Put simply...

Put simply, if a company is losing 200 million a year on a product (such as Windows Mobile), the company is OBVIOUSLY selling BELOW HIS OWN COST. That is clearly anticompetitive. Especially, if the company is one that has already been tried repeatedly, on multiple continents, for anticompetitive behavior!

Troll?

The article says that last year they made $80million. Can you back it up when you say the company is losing $20million a year or is just the usual troll crap that is taking over the internet.