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Microsoft's Looking To Reboot Mobile with New Software and Hardware: Sources (thurrott.com)
Long time Microsoft watcher Brad Sams, reporting today: Two independent sources inside of Microsoft have told me that there is a new hardware device being tested internally and that there is also a separate branch of Windows Mobile for this device. I have been hearing about the software update for some time and the added hardware component makes sense as the company is pursuing "new experiences" with this device. Additionally, the UI is expected to be different than what we know today as Windows Mobile but the exact changes are still evolving as we are in the early days of development of this experience. There may also be another 'cut' in the support for older applications with the new mobile experience. I have heard, but am not able to fully confirm at this time, that Silverlight applications may not longer work with the updated OS.
Google, is actually on its second, and a third is in production. It bought Android and had a version in development before it did. They have another one in development now.
I figured somebody would say that, and that isn't accurate. An unreleased product isn't a product, it's a prototype. It's perfectly normal for prototypes to go under major revisions before they are released. As for Fuschia, nobody really knows whether that will see the light of day, and if it does, it's more than likely going to retain app compatibility.
When I say iteration in this context, I mean they broke compatibility with existing implementations. And with that in mind, Microsoft is currently on iteration number 4 (windows mobile with PE binaries, windows phone 7 with an early pre-RT framework, windows phone 8 with an incompatible but newer RT framework, and windows phone 10 with the UWP framework) and it sounds like they're about to have iteration 5 soon.
What makes this particularly embarrassing is that they've gone through 3 of these iterations within the last 5 years, whereas iOS is 10 years old and Android is 9 years old. That, and the fact that they knew the transition from 7 to 8 was going to break things long before they even released 7, which is a mean thing to do to your own fans.