Microsoft to Attack RIM with Magneto

An anonymous reader writes "At this week's Mobile and Embedded DevCon (MEDC) in Las Vegas, it's anticipated that Microsoft will finally unveil 'Magneto', widely expected to be dubbed Windows Mobile 2005. Magneto is rumored to merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile into a single platform that combines smartphone and PDA capabilities. Consistent with that strategy, Pocket Office will reportedly be renamed Office Mobile, with other key apps similarly redesignated Word Mobile, Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile, and Outlook Mobile."

Comments

Great

[Anonymous Coward]

And now how long before my cell phone provider won't allow me to buy a mobile phone that doesn't have windows in it.

God dammit I just want a fucking ordinary phone that makes phone calls. Why is that so much to ask? Because my cell provider doesn't give that option, and neither do some of the others. I'm going to have to just hope like crazy my old phone, made back in the stone age where cell phones were cellular phones, doesn't break.

Re:Great

[BristolCream]

You shut the fuck up. I'm also of the camp that beleaves that a phone is, and should remain, a phone.

Listen, the simple fact is that unless a new interface is brought out that changes how we can use our phones, then 'features' such as 3g will remain expensive white elephants.

We've had video phones in the uk for years now, and no one uses them. Yet we are still pitched the service by dogged companies who's managment cannot accept or admit that they spent billions on dead in the water lisences.

I've been waiting for this to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberry is a great product. Not quite mainstream enough to be interesting to the 'big boys'. RIM isn't big enough to fight off Microsoft. If Microsoft decides to take a loss on this for a while then RIM is toast just like WordPerfect and Lotus.

Too bad. RIM just got through fighting, losing and paying for a patent law suit. Yet, I don't think all the patents in the world will protect them from Microsoft.

Re:I've been waiting for this to happen

[whistl]

I used a rim two way pager for years, and the things that will prevent macro$loth from taking much of this market with pocket pcs:

- short battery life
- large heavy unit
- crappy keyboard
- no vibrating pager alert.

A busy rim pager can last nearly a whole month on 1 AA battery. They are tiny and light. That little chicklet keyboard is easy to use.

People don't mind keeping them on their belt, and can discreetly use them at meetings (we used to refer to that position as "the BellSouth prayer"). It's not going to be as easy to do that with a big chunky pocket pc. Bosses will quickly get pissed off when the everyone in the room gets a message, and 16 different "wav" files start playing.

Re:I've been waiting for this to happen

[hey!]

- short battery life
- large heavy unit
- crappy keyboard
- no vibrating pager alert.

Yes, and Microsoft never gets anything right enough to knock of a superior competitor who is first to market with something that people like.

I mean, figuring out what features you really need to copy in your knock-off, and which of your own ideas is lame shit would take two, no maybe even three generations of product. To manage this while maintaining the losses you'd sustain is utterly unreasonable from a business proposition. You'd need practically unlimited supplies of cash, for one thing. Or a willingness to bully business partners and distribution channels in a way that has dubious legality. Maybe both.

So, rest assured, we live in a world where superior product with first mover advantages is unbeatable.

Yeah! More powerful WinCE devices!

[wertarbyte]

This is a good thing, since it will bring more devices to the market Familiar runs on. At least I hope so.

Marvels trademark

[Anonymous Coward]

Marvel sued WWF/E for using "Hulk" in Hulk Hogan and won.
I can not help but wonder if they have TMed "Magneto" too.

Re:Marvels trademark

[www.sorehands.com]

Even if they didn't file a trademark, but the use should be pervasive enough to have earned trademark protection. But a trademark applies to a field, Ford can be trademarked for Models and Cars without infringing on each other. Hulk Hogan is a character in both situations. Magneto is a character in one situation, where it is a phone in another.

The key issue is trademark is the issue of confusion.

MS jokes and animosity aside...

[slobber]

I've been waiting for MS to merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile for a while. Having used Dell's Axim x50v, I have to say that it is a great (and relatively inexpensive) PDA. It is very fast, has a large screen and offers many expansion choices. Also, it runs a ton of WinCE apps. One major drawback - it lasts only a fraction of time compared to an average cell phone. However, if "Magneto" (ok, the name is cheesy) were to add a "hibernate" funtion which wakes PDA up on incoming phone call, that would really make battery last *much* longer (so you don't need to keep it on to receive calls). I think that MS is in a good strategic position to take on RIM because it recently became the #1 PDA OS shipped. http://www.physorg.com/news4003.html

Re:Wow

[Frizzle Fry]

The interesting part isn't the renaming it's where they "merge the Pocket PC and Smartphone versions of Windows Mobile into a single platform that combines smartphone and PDA capabilities". Needing to come up with a name for the new combined product is just a side effect.

Re:Mobile what?

[wfberg]

The way things are now, the air interface doesn't matter much; for things like data, TCP/IP is the standard, whether it be over GPRS, 802.11b/g, 3G/EDGE or whatever.

SMS and call-setup is usually handled by device-specific AT-commands to a virtual COM-port.

Seeing as this is essentially an embedded market, i.e. the OS comes with the device and you won't be replacing it with an upgrade that's provided by anybody else than the hardware supplier, this is really a non-issue.

It's more troubling that most all hardware is produced by the same company; High Technology Corporation of Taiwan (HTC). They make iPaqs, XDA/iMate, basically almost all MS smartphones, Palm Treos etc. The only real competitors are Nokia and SonyEricsson.

The problem with all these platforms is that they pretty much suck. They're nowhere near as userfriendly as the ancient epoc32 platform that symbian had developed for their psion 5. PDA sales are mostly driven by GPS-PDA combos that come with navigation software that basically is a GUI onto its own, not relying on the underlying OS for many widgets or functionality. The functionality provided by Microsoft "smartphones" is not that much more than bog standard calendaring etc. No need to have a mobile OS for that; especially Nokia has been bunging a tiny calendar on every handset they produce for years.