> Windows 7 might as well be Vista when it comes to interacting with
> mobile devices. Microsoft's total mangling of this mobile opportunity
> reveals a number of major flaws that the company must address if it's
> going to continue to dominate the OS world.

> Microsoft must embrace the mobile space if it wants to get its act
> together. The company has a bunch of semi-independent units that don't
> seem to talk to each other very much: Windows, Windows Mobile, Xbox,
> Zune, and whatever has grown out of their acquisition of the Danger/
> Sidekick team. As Apple has shown, you create compelling experiences
> by acting as one company, not as five. Unfortunately, it looks like
> Microsoft still isn't talking to Microsoft.

> The silo situation was likely born during the bad old antitrust days,
> when Microsoft had to avoid looking like a monopolist. But now that
> Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on anything, it just looks like a
> mixture of confusion and incompetence.

> Too Many Microsofts

> One of Microsoft's fatal flaws is that it thinks in products, not in
> ecosystems. It builds a lot of attractive pieces, but it doesn't snap
> together the puzzle. For instance: what's up with the Danger/Sidekick
> thing, anyway? They bought Danger way back in February, 2008. Rather
> than folding that expertise into Windows Mobile, they shunted the team
> off into a mysterious "Premium Mobile Experiences" group that has so
> far produced nothing except a horrifying server crash. The latest
> we've heard is that something might happen next year. In any case, PMX
> seems to be competing with—rather than enhancing—the work of the
> Windows Mobile group.

> Windows Mobile and the Zune have incompatible app stores. The Zune
> doesn't automatically work with Windows 7's default media player. At
> least the Xbox works as a Media Center Extender. Once again, we've
> heard that better integration between units may happen with Windows
> Mobile 7, which is coming out…someday.

> Having an ecosystem doesn't mean not having partners. You don't have
> to be Apple and make your own hardware. You just have to make
> integration between teams a priority. Windows 7 misses an integration
> opportunity by appearing to abandon Windows Mobile, and it misses a
> market opportunity by not syncing with the billions of other mobile
> devices out there.

> An Empty Device Stage

> Most mobile platforms are now moving towards cloud-based syncing
> solutions. That's fine for a lot of things, such as e-mail and
> contacts. But large files like video, photos, and music still work
> best over a local connection, and local syncing is still relevant for
> folks who can't—or won't—rely on the cloud for all of their data (such
> as, say, once-burned Sidekick users).

> Smartphones typically require heavy, clunky, proprietary software to
> sync—and I'm including iTunes for Windows in that list. Feature phones
> either don't sync at all or use extremely clumsy options. Apple tried
> to provide an easy syncing path with iSync, but it doesn't support
> most of the phones Americans own.

> Windows 7's approach to mobile devices is something called "Device
> Stage," which looks fine on paper; it's a set of XML-based spec sheets
> that are like device drivers, but are much, much easier to write. The
> problem is that nobody supports Device Stage. Microsoft shunted off
> our questions about this by saying that it's up to phone manufacturers
> to adopt their new platform.

> But I can't see partners giving a lot of love to Device Stage
> considering that Microsoft doesn't even support it themselves.
> Microsoft controls two mobile OSes: Windows Mobile 6 and their Danger/
> Sidekick platform. Neither works with Device Stage. I'm not convinced
> the Windows Mobile people and the Windows 7 people have even had a
> conversation about Device Stage.

> We've seen the whole "we'll put hooks in, you use them" thing before.
> Remember Windows Vista Sideshow? That was supposed to let mobile
> devices act as remote controls and as information windows into Vista
> PCs. Never happened.

> The smartphone market is booming, and Microsoft isn't doing too well
> in that space right now. Windows Mobile 6.5 is basically a
> placeholder, an interim update to a painfully ancient OS that's being
> left in the dust by Google and Apple. A strong link between the well-
> reviewed Windows 7 and the somewhat-creaky Windows Mobile 6.5—or
> between Windows 7 and mobile devices in general—could have given
> Microsoft some juice, given Apple some pause, and pushed the state of
> the art forward. Instead, Microsoft has missed yet another mobile
> opportunity with Windows 7.