Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft To Add Yet Another Smartphone OS This Year

Posted by timothy on from the 5th-time's-the-charm dept.

GMGruman writes "Someone at Microsoft either really loves mobile operating systems or can't make up his mind as to which to use, because Microsoft Thursday announced yet another mobile OS, its fifth. The new Windows Embedded Handheld OS will succeed Windows Mobile 6.5 and run on at least some existing Windows Mobile smartphones. It is not the same mobile OS, known as Windows Phone 7, that Microsoft earlier this year said would replace Windows Mobile and break with it in terms of compatibility so Microsoft could better compete with the iPhone and Google Android OS."

15 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Steve Ballmer is an idiot by ttldkns · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seriously. Steve Ballmer laughed at google on stage at D:8 for having both android and chrome OS and now microsoft has 3 current, all slightly different mobile operating systems. I mean come on.

    Heres an Ars Technica link as I can't find the exact video on the all things d site.

    --
    How many computers are too many?
    1. Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot by TheKidWho · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Ballmer also laughed at the iPhone and the Wii. I wouldn't take his advice personally.

    2. Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot by ttldkns · · Score: 3, Insightful

      this is kinda what I'm getting at. I seriously wonder why nobody on the board at MS is questioning his leadership.

      --
      How many computers are too many?
    3. Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot by Tha_Zanthrax · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ballmer is a personal friend of Gates and already was one before MS was founded.

    4. Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot by chrish · · Score: 4, Insightful

      1) Watch for new videos of/interviews with Steve Ballmer.
      2) Note what products he dismisses and/or laughs at.
      3) Purchase stock in the makers of those products.
      4) PROFIT!!!

      I think we've finally nailed down step 3...

      --
      - chrish
    5. Re:Steve Ballmer is an idiot by UnknowingFool · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's one thing to criticize a product. We here on slashdot do it all the time. In the case of the iPhone, Ballmer boldy predicted that "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." It only took a year for the iPhone to exceed WinMobile's marketshare. Three years later, WinMobile's share is in a downward spiral while iPhone and Android gain. If you read the full article, Ballmer also quotes facts are figures which turn out to be wrong. It reminds me more of the Iraqi Minister of Information more than anything else.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  2. Re:They're all proprietary pieces of shit. by TheKidWho · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, maybe in your fantasy world no one would use it. If the OS is good enough, one of the phone device manufacturers will leverage that advantage to make a larger profit over the others.

    Unfortunately it isn't.

    The Market does decide, why do you think Android and iOS are leading the pack when it comes to growth? Why do you think all the other phone manufacturers are scrambling to keep up?

    Besides, Android is fairly open and the iOS is standards compliant.

  3. Er what??? Android is 100% open source by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Android is 100% open source. Don't like the Market? Replace it. Don't like the keyboard? Replace it. Don't like Google integrations? Remove them.

    If you think all of this is somehow difficult or discouraged, I think you should take a closer look at the forums at xda-developers.com, or even at developer.android.com, where you can check out the entire OS source code with git and re-build it from scratch and re-flash your phone, if you want.

    All this talk about Jailbreaking Android phones is for people who want root access but *DO NOT* want to re-flash their phone. There is no such problem for people that are comfortable replacing the software. And in fact this is what you have to do with most open source projects running on specialized hardware.

  4. Getting nostalgic... by jimmydigital · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reading these stories about MS lately is making me all nostalgic for when what they did mattered. I can't quite put my finger on it... but at some point they lost their big and scary status.. and have just become more of a joke.. to me at least. There was a time when their whims could shift the whole market.. these days I wonder if the masses even notice their flailing attempts to 'compete'.

    --
    Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats. -HLM
    1. Re:Getting nostalgic... by gbjbaanb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I know when that was - it was when the big Unix vendors decided that you had to buy the very expensive kit and software then allowed you to have, if you bought a large support contract and training to manage their overly-expensive bloated stuff. Then this little upstart company was selling PCs that did most of what the big guys were doing but at a significantly lower price and with a lot more flexibility over what you could or could not do with your IT system.

      How times have changed!

      (Ok, there was a time in the middle when their stuff wasn't that good, but you still wanted it - ad every time an upgrade came out, you knew you had to have it because it would fix a load of problems with the software. Today that time is pretty much gone, unless you've bought sharepoint, so no-one really feels the need to grab the upgrade immediately)

    2. Re:Getting nostalgic... by nyctopterus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, it's interesting isn't it. I think it's because it's become clear that the kind of big-ticket software that Microsoft has built itself on just isn't where the real money's going to be in a few years. It's reached a peak complexity-wise, features-wise, and usefulness-wise. Instead, collaborative service software (i.e. Google) will be the way a lot of businesses go, and consumers will go with small, cheap, and cheerful (i.e. the Apple App Store), and social network type stuff (Facebook and its successors). Portability is where it's at, and Microsoft has missed so many beats it can't catch up, especially because it means essentially cannibalising they big-ticket software business.

      I'm a little wary of this trend, even though I can definitely see its value. I'm a heavy user of said big-ticket software myself (Adobe products mostly), and I don't want to see it stagnate. That said, I think it's pretty stagnant already, and needs a serious shake-up. Microsoft and Adobe's products are absurdly complex and bloated these days; there simply has to be a simpler way. And a cheaper way too!

    3. Re:Getting nostalgic... by nyctopterus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think your post is indicative of what's holding Microsoft back. The whole ground is shifting, and it's Apple and Google that have managed to move into (or even create) this new world, and Microsoft has not.

      Here's what I think a lot of people think the "computing" landscape will look like in a few years: most people will have a phone or iPad-like device instead of a laptop or desktop computer. They will probably dock with a big screen and keyboard for serious work. Most documents will be held in 'the cloud', with local cache. The software to work on them will either be web-based or small and cheap.

      This trend will be most noticeable in developing markets, where people will use their phones for what rich countries were using desktop PCs for up until now. For example, in Africa I noticed huge numbers of people have phones (not the latest and greatest, but not old crap either), but virtually no one owned their own PC. They will probably skip the PC step altogether, because in a year or two their phones will do most of what they would find useful in a PC anyway. They will go to Wifi hotspots and use their phones, in much the same way as they go to internet cafes now.

      Apple is obviously a major contender (and driver) of this landscape. Google too.

      Microsoft will retain its stranglehold on (some) business for quite a while, but that will be seen as a small part of a much larger marketplace. It will continue to exist and make money for a long time to come, but it won't have much pull over the general direction of computing.

    4. Re:Getting nostalgic... by Luscious868 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, it's interesting isn't it. I think it's because it's become clear that the kind of big-ticket software that Microsoft has built itself on just isn't where the real money's going to be in a few years. It's reached a peak complexity-wise, features-wise, and usefulness-wise. Instead, collaborative service software (i.e. Google) will be the way a lot of businesses go, and consumers will go with small, cheap, and cheerful (i.e. the Apple App Store), and social network type stuff (Facebook and its successors). Portability is where it's at, and Microsoft has missed so many beats it can't catch up, especially because it means essentially cannibalising they big-ticket software business.

      I think you're spot on in your analysis of where the consumer market is heading but when it comes to the business side of things office life is still dominated by standard desktop / laptop computing using big ticket software for most workers. I don't come across many businesses in my line of work where users don't have a desktop or laptop running Windows and Office in addition to one or more big ticket industry specific software applications with the one large noticable exception being the health-care industry where more and more providers are moving to tablets, which for doctors and nurses who aren't stationary makes perfect sense.

  5. Incompatibility by StormReaver · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If this Microsoft operating system is going to be incompatible with the other Microsoft operating systems, why not just switch to something else now and be done with it? Compatibility is the only advantage Microsoft software has, and that is being thrown out with the bathwater.

  6. Re:They're all proprietary pieces of shit. by Dragonslicer · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If they're such pieces of shit, where are the open standard wondrous operating systems?

    Perhaps here? Or maybe even here?