Micosoft's Ballmer Highlights Windows Phone 7 at CES 2011

Microsoft's Steve Ballmer gave a keynote at the huge industry trade show this week - CES 2011 - and covered the gamut of all of his companies vast interests in this space. Of interest to PDAPhone / Smartphone owners were his comments regarding the current state and future of Windows Phone 7.

Ballmer started his discussion of Windows Phone 7 by talking about their biggest exclusive advantage over the competition, Xbox LIVE. Ballmer said, "People are taking advantage of Xbox LIVE on Windows Phone 7, achievements, gamer scores, your Avatar. Windows Phone 7 is the only phone that delivers all of it. It's Xbox LIVE on the go.". He then played a video of many games running on Windows Phone 7 that weren't all that impressive over similar games on the iPhone, but the Xbox LIVE factor was the main point of this. If you play a game like Fable on the Xbox, and have invested many hours on your character, being able to continue play on the go on your mobile device is a big deal. No other PDAPhone platform can offer this unless Microsoft opens it up and delivers an XBox LIVE app and game center for other devices. I don't see that happening.

Steve then went on to talk about Windows Phone 7's design principles reviewing the questions they asked themselves, " First, could we help simplify the tasks that people use their phones for the most. And, second, if more applications are released, and if phones can do more than ever, can we still make them easy to use?". I believe that they have done some things to address these questions, particularly with their information laden lock screen and search.

He highlighted the status indicating their progress, which aren't really all that impressive vs. the competition... after all, you don't even see Windows Phone 7 showing up in market share discussions yet. Remember that just a few years ago, they were a leader in this space. The key metrics that he shared included:

• 9 Windows Phone 7 devices launched
• 60 mobile carriers
• 30 countries
• 5,500 apps
• 100 new apps submitted daily
• 20,000 registered developers

Liz Sloan from the Windows Phone 7 team was invited up by Steve to share 7 Things About Windows Phone 7:

• Camera - WP7 has a dedicated button for the camera that works even when the phone is locked, so that you don't miss opportunities while fiddling with unlocking and finding the camera app. This is a nice touch, because I have had problems with the iPhone quickly taking a picture. But it was interesting that her demo resulted in an upside down picture, so maybe the phones gyro isn't working.
• Glance and Go - WP7 has "live tile" on the lock screen that are not just icons or apps, but update real information like weather, alarms, appointments, and even Facebook status.
• Voice Search - This demo was pretty nice... she searched on a restaurant and it came back with no only the map of nearby locations, but a wealth of other information courtesy of Bing.
• Bing - WP7 has a dedicated search button that uses Bing, and it
• Hubs - She demoed the "Office hub" and it looked impressive, but got a little confusing. I'm not sure I saw the value in this other than the fact that she demoed "copy and paste"
• Fantastic Apps - With a whopping 5,500 apps (compared to several orders of magnitude more from the other platforms), I wouldn't have chosen this as one of my top "7" things... but I suppose you have to play the hand you are dealt. She demoed the Amazon app... again, not the most impressive since this app has been available for several years on the iPhone, and can even do the image search. I think she just needed an app that would let her finish her "copy and paste" demo.
• Xbox Live - This is probably the one place that Microsoft can leverage their gaming leadership on the Xbox to gain crossover users. The games aren't anything special vs. other platforms, but the integration with Xbox Live may appeal to many.

So to summarize this segment, Windows Phone 7 has an advantage with a couple of these that are plain silly that are missing on some other platforms, like a dedicated camera button. They are leveraging their own search engine to better the Apple position... and Apple is the odd many out on this one since Google and Microsoft both have their own search engines. Makes me wonder if Apple should buy Yahoo to put themselves on equal footing here. The Xbox Live factor is going to appeal to a segment of folks that are avid Xbox gamers. The Glance and Go function is something I'd really like to see Apple add. Beyond that, "copy and paste" reminds me of everyone beating up Apple for not having it several years ago. Some of these features are part of an update coming in 1Q, including "copy and paste".

7 Things About Windows 7 Video



The video and transcript of the full keynote presentation may be found on the next page.