Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Monday, October 23, 2006
Windows Mobile growing fast, from almost nothing
Yearly doubling the sales of mobile phones with Windows Mobile sounds like a great feat, until you realize the estimated 12M units for 2006 should be compared to 1B of phones estimated to be sold in total this year.
Also, the definition of smartphones mentioned here confuses things: "which can run software applications such as email, mobile TV and games". All phones released now can do email and games, and not more smartphones than mass market phones can do mobile TV (faked/streamed or via e.g. DVB-H).
Microsoft is fighting with RIM, Palm etc for a very small part of the market, and it seems Microsoft wants to stay there, as it's got almost 10 years now to refocus to the mass market, but seemingly has decided to not go after that market at all. The last mass market phone with Microsoft software was probably the Sony J5. That software platform was for some reason dumped and replaced by the very heavy Windows CE based platform now called Windows Mobile.
As always RIM is mentioned as one of the players Microsoft competes against, but also RIM is in a very tiny segment of the market, and is not likely to ever achieve large volumes (read: 10s of millions of units).
I wish Microsoft all the best, but it's not a stretch to predict Microsoft will not be an important player in the mass market this side of 2010.
When you look at the amount of media attention RIM and Microsoft get you might think they together dominate the market (and at least the business market). That's the effect of successful marketing, and the fact that journalists are in the target group.
Microsoft sees fast growth in Windows phones: report - Yahoo! News
Also, the definition of smartphones mentioned here confuses things: "which can run software applications such as email, mobile TV and games". All phones released now can do email and games, and not more smartphones than mass market phones can do mobile TV (faked/streamed or via e.g. DVB-H).
Microsoft is fighting with RIM, Palm etc for a very small part of the market, and it seems Microsoft wants to stay there, as it's got almost 10 years now to refocus to the mass market, but seemingly has decided to not go after that market at all. The last mass market phone with Microsoft software was probably the Sony J5. That software platform was for some reason dumped and replaced by the very heavy Windows CE based platform now called Windows Mobile.
As always RIM is mentioned as one of the players Microsoft competes against, but also RIM is in a very tiny segment of the market, and is not likely to ever achieve large volumes (read: 10s of millions of units).
I wish Microsoft all the best, but it's not a stretch to predict Microsoft will not be an important player in the mass market this side of 2010.
When you look at the amount of media attention RIM and Microsoft get you might think they together dominate the market (and at least the business market). That's the effect of successful marketing, and the fact that journalists are in the target group.
Microsoft sees fast growth in Windows phones: report - Yahoo! News
