Microsoft plays the heavy in the smartphone wars
If Apple (AAPL) is the elephant in the room this week in Barcelona, dominating the cellphone industry's annual showcase without having to show up (see here), Microsoft (MSFT) is the 800 pound gorilla — throwing its weight around and scaring all manufacturers.
That's the conclusion of Daniel Eran Dilger in a long Roughly Drafted post entitled "Did Microsoft Kill Android at Mobile World Congress 2009?"
"How does one sell an aging mobile operating system lacking the multitouch sizzle of the iPhone and the addictive messaging savvy of the BlackBerry in a world where Google is butting in with a free, open source alternative that allows manufacturers to freely customize it as they like?" he asks. (link)
Dilger's answer, delivered in a closely reasoned 1,800 word diatribe, is to crush the competition that scares Microsoft most. That's not the iPhone, which CEO Steve Ballmer has repeatedly laughed off as an over-priced toy, but Google's (GOOG) Android, the smartphone platform that competes directly with Microsoft's own offering, Windows Mobile.
Android is anathema to Microsoft for many reasons, but the chief one, says Dilger, is that it is an open source platform running on Linux.
"In 2001, Steve Ballmer referred to Linux as a 'cancer,' specifically citing its open source license as the most troubling part. Software that allows manufacturers to customize it themselves anyway they choose is more threatening to Microsoft than software offered for free." (link)
According to Dilger, Microsoft has orchestrated a behind-the-scenes attack on Android, using its considerable leverage with manufacturers up and down the supply chain to discourage them from promoting Android devices too enthusiastically.
He blames this campaign for the surprising paucity of new Android-based phones in Barcelona this week, despite the presence of most of the founding members of Google's Android Open Handset Alliance. Where, he asks, is Samsung's Android phone? Or LG's? Or Motorola's (MOT)?
Even HTC, the first company to ship an Android phone and one of the alliance's most enthusiastic supporters, wasn't displaying its successor — the HTC Magic — and instead showed off two new Windows Mobile phones. The journalists who gave the Magic such glowing reviews had to seek it out at the Vodafone booth.
Microsoft, meanwhile, was grabbing headlines with the announcement that by 2012 LG will build 50 different smartphones that run on Microsoft's latest version of its mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5 — by most accounts a major improvement on the original Windows Mobile that comes none too soon.
"Without that flag waving distraction," writes Dilger, "someone in the tech media might have also noticed the fact that the top three Windows Mobile vendors [Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Palm] are scrambling away from the platform as quickly as possible…. When Windows Mobile 6.5 does show up, it will be competing against the second or third update to iPhone 3.0, as well as Android and Symbian, both sporting nearly another year of improvements."
UPDATE: In a report published Wednesday evening, AppleInsider's Prince Maclean added more detail to the Barcelona backstory, including Microsoft's inadvertant revelation that although 50 companies have licensed its mobile OS, 80% of all Windows Mobile phones so far have been manufactured by one company: HTC. See here.
Windows Mobile was an early entrant in the smartphone operating system market, but has lost ground lately. Its share of the worldwide market shrank from 23% in 2004 to somewhere between 12% and 14% in today (link). Dilger believes he knows why:
"The problem with Windows Mobile isn’t that it lacks a catchy name or a layer of cheesy UI [user interface] frosting, … but that it’s a really terrible platform. It has a weak foundation in Windows CE and gross technical deficiencies that run up from its feeble graphics architecture through its brain-dead, archaic Win32 APIs and its horribly designed desktop windowing system shoehorned into a mobile screen."
To find out what Dan really thinks, read the full story here.
This post was interesting. I would never have a window's mobile phone. I prefer the really "whiz-bang" smartphones that don't use WM.
If you want to read more, check out my blog about GPS misadventures,:http://youcanneverbehappy.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/garmin-gets-what-garmin-wants/
For better or worse, MS will keep at the mobile platform, and keep improving it until it actually is a good platform to develop for, and use. This is what they did with directx, and Windows.
OK, Vista is the exception to the rule (maybe it was just premature), but windows 7 looks pretty good.
This is the advantage of having deep pockets and a company culture that will persevere.
"In a report published Wednesday evening, AppleInsider’s Prince Maclean added more detail to the Barcelona backstory"
You seem not to realize that Appleinsider's Prince McLean and Roughlydrafted's Daniel Eran Dilger are the same person.
ex ped: Learn something new every day!
Microsoft has never been about innovative, high quality products. They are about intimidation & back room deals…the "mafia" of the software industry.
Hopefully, this time around, the rapid paradigm shift in the computer industry will unseat them, once & for all.
"Microsoft, meanwhile, was grabbing headlines with the announcement that by 2012 LG will build 50 different smartphones that run on Microsoft’s latest version of its mobile operating system, Windows Mobile 6.5 — by most accounts a major improvement on the original Windows Mobile that comes none too soon."
That sounds good, Microsoft is proud to tell people that by 2012, LG will be building 50 different phones on an operating system version that will be 3 year old. So microsoft has no plans to work on Windows mobile in the next three years. That sounds very promising. They may have the bugs worked out of it by then. Of course they will be more than 3 years behind the trends by then but that's all right, they don't need to stay current.
Microsoft is just such a depressing company all around. Too have so many resources and people at your disposal and continually churn out sub-par products. It must stem from a serious lack of organization and communication within the company.
John Tantillo has a
marketing blog and typically does weekly winner/loser posts. Microsoft has been the 'loser' multiple times, but last week, with the announcement that Microsoft would be opening retail stores and that David Portner would be heading up the effort,
he named microsoft the winner…for at least realizing that they need to make some changes…I have a hard time imagining the stores as anything other than a way for Microsoft to over-extend itself, but it will be a place for their phone to at least have a chance to sell…or perhaps just fail more dramatically.
FreeRange, you *assume* that what the article indicates Microsoft's "behind the scenes" behavior to be true.
I'd be willing to bet a dollar that it was more like "what can we do to get you to drop Android and use our new mobile platform?" rather than "use our product or we'll squash you like a bug".
Keep in mind that if what the "analyst" asserts is true, then Microsoft will get investigated and then slapped down and fined a huge amount of money. I highly doubt there was any coersion on Microsoft's part in these deals.
One more thing: There's a reason 'analyst' is spelled that way, mostly because a lot of them suffer from rectal/cranial co-location…
MSFT needs to be further investigated for anti-competitive practices. By throwing around its weight, as this analysis implies, it continues to try to crush competitors, all the while delivering inferior products.
It's just impossible. The iPhone is unbeatable. People should just walk away from their studies, jobs, and research trying to get better than apple products. You can't. BTW Steve Jobs is a genius.
Jordan.
Here's my new blog:
http://theriverjordan/net/stop-fighting