State of Windows Mobile and Windows Phone

[Jim Lewis]

Visited the Pocket Informant web site (Alex Kac, WebIs) and was surprised to see that he announced support for Windows Mobile is discontinued. He is offering all his Windows Mobile apps for free with NO support. Right now, he is only developing for iPhone, Android, and (CORRECTION) Blackberry, no Windows Phone 7 in sight. He posted his reasons for not developing for WP7 here:

Windows Phone Thoughts: Windows phone 7 Developer Q&A: Alex Kac, WebIS

Alot of discussion in Microsoft Answers on ability of WP7 to handle tasks. A lot of long time WM users disgruntled about poor interaction with desktop Outlook unless using Exchange Server and going to iPhone or Android.

Does Windows Phone 7 sync to Outlook?

[Convergent]

Wow, this is pretty interesting info... thanks for sharing. I have been a long time fan of Pocket Informant. I guess I'm not surprised that they are moving away from Windows Mobile since the platform is essentially dead, and WP7 is probably too new to have the value to a developer at this point that the other three platforms provide. This will likely be a challenge for Microsoft over 2011... whether developers have the stomach for 4 major platforms, or just 3 - Android, iOS, and Blackberry - which are leading the market in share. And lets not forget HP is about to announce a bunch of new WebOS related stuff soon and they will have an even tougher fight to get out of the "also ran" category.

[Convergent]

One last point... this is why a developer should never tie themselves to a single platform... had WebIS had all their eggs in Windows Mobile, they'd be in a very tough position right now.

[Jim Lewis]

I'm very interested to see where Ballmer's announcement at CES 2011 of putting Windows an ARM processor leads. Read blogs about how Microsoft may develop a "shell" for Windows ("meta-interface") so what you see will depend on the device, so Windows might look and behave like WP7 on a phone. The article I'm thinking about suggested that what kills WP7 may be the real Windows on a phone under ARM. That would instantly give Microsoft a tremendous developer base if there were any easy translation between the desktop interface and simpler elements of the basic program interface on a phone, kinda like Office Mobile is a very dumbed down version of Office but works with the same file formats.

Maybe Microsoft has become like the Titanic. It just sees icebergs too late and turns too slowly. In his book, the Road Ahead, Bill Gates mentioned the power of psychcological perceptions in the market place. He was talking about the fate of 80's and early 90's software products. How products may be unduly lifted up by crowd euphoria or dragged down by negativism in a way that has nothing to do with the inherent merit of the product. So WP7 needs to find a way to get out of the negative downdraft it's in.

BTW, I'm glad to see you at last have tags! I remember my wacko ramblings and suggestions on the subject long ago off in the Lounge. I find the task managemet web app Remember The Milk a particular good example of the use of tags to organize things and if I do get a WP7 phone and MS is still making it tough to sync WP7 phone to Outlook without Exchange Server may go with RTM and WinMilk on WP7 (I'm waiting to see what WP7 updates or WP8 bring and whether Vzw offers an LTE WP7).

P.S. Amazon has a particularly good implementation of tags. Users who review products get to tag them. The tags, as well as the product names, are used in the autocomplete feature of product searches made by other users. Now they are even allow users who just visit a product to vote on what tags should be used for that product. Don't know if vBulletin offers a tag voting feature but that might be something to send back to them as a feature request.

[Convergent]

Thanks Jim... I was kind of stuck with the old vBulletin for quite a while due to some unsupported mods, so it is nice to finally be upgraded. Now I just need to work on getting the traffic back up here. Thanks for your input.

What you've described is one reason that Apple is excelling right now. iOS is just a thinner version of their desktop OSX, and the development tools are common... so a developer can easily release an app on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. If Microsoft moves more in that direction it could certainly help them. And I'm sure Android is going to be going after the desktop more and more, so they will be going in one direction while Microsoft goes the other. The tablet seems to be the battleground where it all intersects. Its a fun time in this industry right now.