What Microsoft Must Do To Save Its Mobile Business

GMGruman writes "Microsoft has tossed out its mobile management team (without admitting to doing so), but is that enough to make Microsoft matter in mobile? InfoWorld's Galen Gruman argues that a lot more is needed than a management change if Microsoft hopes to have a future in the emerging mobile world. In his blog, he lays out a tough five-point prescription for Microsoft to get back in the game. For starters, Microsoft has to get out of its well-established cultural mindset that it's OK to ship crap that it might fix later on."

Comments

Just give up.

[symbolset]

I think maybe the best answer here is to just surrender. "Mobile? It's not our thing. We wanted it to be our thing - we tried. But we're not good at it." While they're at it maybe they should get out of search and online ads too.

I'm symbolset and the lack of Windows Phone 7 was my idea.

Re:Just give up.

[ErroneousBee]

Nokia can do that for themselves, they don't need Microsoft. They've probably also seen what happens to companies that try to partner with Redmond.

Re:Just give up.

[areusche]

I'm trying not to sound condescending here, but are you kidding me? Have you ever used a Windows Mobile phone before?

I've been using Windows Mobile since the 2003se days and it has been light years ahead of whatever competitor was pumping out. Things like multitasking, a somewhat open platform for development, and an interface that makes sense.

The only downside has been the long time insistance from manufactures to only use 64mb of ram. Nowadays that number is up to 256mb.

HTC has a number of drool worthy phones that spec wise pound the iphone to dust and anything that Palm can come up with.

And finally Microsoft leaves its homebrew ROM kitchen development alone. Sites like PPCGeeks.com and xda-developers are two that come to mind.

It's sad that people disregard Windows Mobile. It is nothing like the desktop crap. And seriously what major software or hardware manufacture doesn't pump out crap and fix it later? At least Windows Mobile works out of the box.

Disclaimer: My first PDA was a Sony Clie. I loved Palm and used it for many years, but it's time to use a real device and software.

Re:Just give up.

[Jawnn]

Nope.

The answer is to find a Phone giant (Nokia) and take the best of both worlds and make an OS that utterly kicks arse.

Nokia hardware rocks.

No argument. That would be a sound approach, but for one thing. Microsoft has no experience in making an OS that utterly kicks ass (as we Yanks spell it), especially from scratch, and certainly not on a schedule that would be required to stay competitive in the mobile business, where "innovation" is real and ongoing. I know this sounds like stock /. MS bashing, but it's not meant to be. Microsoft's culture and business model is a poor fit for the wireless industry.

Re:Just give up.

[TheKidWho]

Windows Mobile is alright if you're into pen based computing. The iPhone/Android devices are touch based devices though, different paradigms apply.

Note: I've been using Windows Mobile since it was called PocketPC back in 2000. Yes, I still have an original iPaq, sleeves and all.

First smartphone was a Windows Mobile device, next one was an iPhone, currently using a Palm Pre, and next month I'm about to purchase an HTV EVO 4G(Android device).

Re:Just give up.

[randomaxe]

That's funny, because every Windows Mobile phone I've ever used has had me on the verge of throwing it against a wall more times than is acceptable for any gadget that isn't still in beta testing. I've had them mysteriously lose settings, crash repeatedly, and lock up -- sometimes right in the middle of a phone call.

There may be WinMo phones that "spec wise pound the iphone to dust", but impressive hardware is nothing if the software on top of it drives users into fits of rage. There may be a lot of things that a WinMo phone can do that my iPhone can't, but one of them happens to be "piss me off on a daily basis." And I'm just fine with that.

Re:Just give up.

[MBGMorden]

That's not really a viewpoint that a company should take. "Microsoft" is a nebulous entity. To say "we" aren't good at anything from a corporate is stupid, and ties a company too tightly to it's current staff.

If the company's current staff isn't doing well in a market that they wish to be a player in, then you replace them. There's no reason to assume that merely having the Microsoft logo embroidered on their company shirts is going to make a talented group of people perform worse than if Google or Apple's logos were on those shirts.

I just think that whatever group that goes in, needs to understand - WINDOWS does not translate well to a mobile device. The world doesn't need a Mobile Windows OS. What they need to do is develop a completely new Microsoft mobile OS from the ground up, with mobile in mind.

And for goodness sakes, get some good UI people on board. Their latest attempts - those damned "Kin" phones, look like the UI people were playing around while designing it and thought: "I wonder just how much we can fuck with this and get away with it?" My 2 year old niece has Leap Frog toys with better UI's than those phones.

Bullshit

[drinkypoo]

For starters, Microsoft has to get out of its well-established cultural mindset that it's OK to ship crap that it might fix later on."

That is pure bullshit. It works for literally everyone else, including Apple. Or is all the stuff in iPhone OS 4.0 that Steve said wasn't included because it would make the iPhone suck not sufficient evidence for you? How about all the functionality in Android 2.1 that seems mandatory? This story is (-1, Troll).

Re:Bullshit

[RKThoadan]

I think your Apple example is counter to your point. They new it would make it suck, so they didn't ship it. The article is asking for any software that ships to be well-designed and to leave it off otherwise.

Re:Bullshit

[Uksi]

Bullshit back on you. False comparison. Lacking features != a crappy product. It just means a product that does less. First iPhone OS version didn't have exchange integration or copy/paste, but what was there worked well and was designed to work well. In fact, until Apple was convinced that it could do copy/paste well, it didn't release that feature. That's just not biting off more than you can chew.

There's a gulf of difference between shipping something that's limited in functionality to something that is crappy. Have you ever used the PocketPC PDAs back in the day? I've used a Palm OS-based Handspring and a PocketPC Dell Axim, and let me tell you, the Handspring, with its limited feature set and a slow CPU, did the core PDA things (calendar, todo) a lot better than the Axim. The Axim felt slow (despite a several times faster CPU) and it was harder to work with the calendar (more taps to do things, weird options I didn't need). I hated using it and wrote off PocketPC after that (which is why I never bought a Treo with Windows). That's what "shipping crap" means.

Re:Bullshit

[intheshelter]

If you hate Apple then just have the balls to say it and move on, but your rant is not relevant to the discussion. Apple shipped a very good initial iPhone OS. It may not have had the features you wanted, but it was solid, stable and worked well.

You're just a hater, and that's alright, but at least be honest about it. You're equating a buggy, shitty product with a product that doesn't have the features you think it should have, and to you use your own phrasing, that is disingenuous.

They need to find a marketplace for themselves.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't help but feel Microsoft has been wedged out of the mobile market by competitors that are specialized at doing everything better then they do.

Wanna be a cool kid with a pretty phone?
Apple has you covered.

Need something uber business savvy but easy enough for a monkey in a suit to use?
Get a blackberry

Want a phone that doesn't hold you down?
Get an Android phone

Want a phone that runs on POS hardware and can barely handle anything?
Oh crap, umm...no.

What they do have, however, is excellent proprietary stuff like ActiveSync that's integrated into all these other cell phones. If I was them, I would focus on developing technology like that. Let the mobile market work for you, not the other way around.

The Kin is an interesting attempt to wrangle the teenybopper market but I think they've already fallen to the iphone.

Re:They need to find a marketplace for themselves.

[sunderland56]

Since most businesses run Microsoft servers, and use Exchange for email, it should be easy for a Microsoft phone to rule the business space. A phone with built-in versions of Word/Excel/PowerPoint, and of course Outlook, would be easy to market. Put specialized phone management capabilities in their server-side tools to make the IT department happy (right now, IT usually detests supporting iPhones).

One huge disadvantage of a Windows phone today - the OS cannot be upgraded. Apple and Android come out with new versions every few months, with shiny new features, and people download and enjoy them. Since Microsoft doesn't sell Windows Mobile to consumers (it sells to phone manufacturers) when Microsoft releases new version of the OS, you are usually out of luck.

Re:Or maybe not

[TheKidWho]

They certainly don't use iPhones to bill your credit card for purchases anyway

Yes, yes they do. When I went there to purchase my iPad, the entire sale was done via an iPhone. They have little printers underneath the tables that print out your receipt too.