October 23rd, 2009

Ballmer: Zune services coming to 'next release' of Windows Mobile

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:58 am

Categories: Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Resellers, Windows Mobile, Zune

Tags: Phone, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Zune, Engadget, Microsoft Corp., Pink, Mobile Operating Systems, Microsoft Windows

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer really made the rounds on October 22 to help kick off Windows 7. One stop he made was the Engadget Show, which was taped live in Times Square.

Ballmer was a lot more direct than Microsoft Entertainment and Device Division President Robbie Bach, when it comes to answering questions about Microsoft’s mobile and device strategies. (Not a high bar, given Bach’s reticence to even acknowledge the existence of anything codenamed “Pink.”) Ballmer did offer a few tidbits during the show yesterday that I found interesting, though still somewhat cryptic.

In response to Engadget’s questions on when the Zune music and video services will come to Windows Mobile, Ballmer said Zune services would definitely be available in conjunction with the next Windows Mobile release.

But as the folks over at the MobileTechWorld blog note, that answer is still somewhat murky. Microsoft is strongly believed to be readying a 6.5.x or 6.7 release of Windows Mobile, which many are expecting the company to release on or around the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010. That release supposedly enables Windows Mobile to work on capacitive touch-screen phones. Microsoft officials continue to refuse to say if and when that release will be coming.

Engadget also asked Ballmer about the photos of the Pink phones (codenamed Turtle and Pure) that were leaked on Gizmodo last month. Are either of these the rumored Microsoft-branded phones that many of us heard are — or at least “were” — in the works?

“We are not shipping, pricing  or selling phones. As of today, that’s not our plan,” Ballmer told Engadget’s Josh Topolsky yesterday.

This is a more definitive statement than Bach or anyone else at Microsoft has made about the rumored Pink phones. (As I’ve noted previously, Microsoft officials have been able to wriggle out of repeated questions about whether Microsoft is planning to make its own phone because Microsoft doesn’t actually “make” any hardware. Other vendors make it for the Redmondians.

With Pink, most recent rumors seemed to indicate that Sharp was the company making the Pink phones that Microsoft and Sharp were considering they’d cobrand. Ballmer’s new statement still leaves a lot of wriggle room, but it also leads me to believe there’s a good chance that Microsoft’s phone partners may have complained so vociferously about Microsoft being involved in branding/distributing its own phones that Pink may be back to nothing more than a bunch of premium services for Windows Mobile phones. (That’s what I initially heard Pink was, before I got more tips indicating Pink also was the codename for a Microsoft-branded phone, as well.)

What’s your take? Has Microsoft scrapped plans to cobrand a phone aimed at teens and 20-somethings? And when will Zune come to the Windows Mobile platform — in early 2010 with an interim release or not until Windows Mobile 7?

October 19th, 2009

Microsoft says 'steady progress' continues in Sidekick data recovery

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:18 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Team, Data Recovery, Microsoft Corp., Team Management, Manufacturing, Management, Mary Jo Foley

Microsoft officials promised last week to provide an update this weekend on its ongoing attempt to recover the customer data and information lost during its ongoing Sidekick outage. On October 18, the company provided that update, which didn’t contain much new information.

The Microsoft/Danger team apologized for the amount of time they are taking to restore contacts, photos, e-mail and other Sidekick services to which users lost access at the start of the month. The team said they were taking their time “to make sure we are doing everything possible to maintain the integrity of your data.”

The team still is not committing to an exact recovery timetable, but is saying restoration should begin this week. From the October 18 update:

“We continue to make steady progress, and we hope to be able to begin restoring personal contacts for affected users this week, with the remainder of the content (photographs, notes, to-do-lists, marketplace data, and high scores) shortly thereafter.”

After telling users that they likely had lost all of their personal data, the Microsoft/Danger team then said they expected to be able to recover some of their data. Mid-weeklast week, they said they expected to recover “most if not all” of the missing user data.

Microsoft officials still have not provided many details about what caused the outage, other than to say it was a core system failure. The failure is unrelated to Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure and/or Microsoft’s Azure datacenters, as the company has continued to run the Sidekick back-end on the same infrastructure it has been running on before Microsoft acquired the company in 2008.

A number of members of the Sidekick team Microsoft acquired have been working on Microsoft’s Pink premium mobile services and phones for the past year.

October 15th, 2009

Microsoft recovers 'most, if not all' Sidekick users' data

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 4:26 am

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Speech, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Channel Management, Storage Area Networks (SAN), Storage, Marketing, Hardware, Mary Jo Foley

On October 15, Microsoft reversed itself, claiming now that instead of losing all of the personal data of Sidekick users, it has recovered “most, if not all” of it.

(Over the past few days, Microsoft has moved from saying all data was lost, to some, to possibly none.)

From a note on the company’s Web site signed by Roz Ho, the Corporate Vice President of Premium Mobile Experiences:

“We are pleased to report that we have recovered most, if not all, customer data for those Sidekick customers whose data was affected by the recent outage. We plan to begin restoring users’ personal data as soon as possible, starting with personal contacts, after we have validated the data and our restoration plan. We will then continue to work around the clock to restore data to all affected users, including calendar, notes, tasks, photographs and high scores, as quickly as possible.”

Microsoft isn’t explaining beyond that what went wrong, starting in early October, that knocked out the hundreds of thousands of Sidekick users. There’s been lots of speculation, ranging from sabotage, to an attempt by Microsoft to move Sidekick’s back-end infrastructure from its current platform to a Windows-based one. (Danger, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is still running the back-end infrastructure for the Sidekick.)

One of my Microsoft sources told me

“(T)he data loss issue was caused by a hardware update on the existing Danger service that had NOT been ported over to a Microsoft platform and the issue was NOT part of a transition to an MS back end. It was an Oracle dB and Sun SAN solution that got a bad firmware update and the backup failed.”

Since then, I’ve heard from others that this scenario seems likely and that yes, Hitachi Data Systems was the company actually doing the maintenance/update for Microsoft. I’ve also heard that foul play has not been ruled out because the failure was so catastrophic and seemingly deliberate. Microsoft is supposedly continuing to do a full investigation.

Microsoft officials are declining to comment beyond the statement they posted to the Web on October 15. They are promising another update on the situation by this Saturday at the latest.

Meanwhile, lawsuits are beginning to pile up as a result of the Sidekick outage, though a full restoration of data may take the bite out of some of them, I’d think.

October 13th, 2009

Sidekick outage says more about the future of 'Pink' than Microsoft's cloud

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 5:48 am

Categories: Azure, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Speech, Telecommunications, Utility/cloud computing, VOIP, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Corp., Outage, Pink, Sidekick, Manufacturing, Mary Jo Foley

I was (trying to) unplug most of the long holiday weekend, but couldn’t help but read all the headlines about how the Sidekick outage spells trouble for Microsoft’s cloud strategy.

I’m not downplaying in the least how serious this outage is or letting Microsoft’s Danger subsidiary  — and/or any other companies involved in the loss of users’ data — off the hook. (The latest: The Danger team is now saying that “some” user data might be recoverable, after all.)

But Sidekicks aren’t running from/on “the Microsoft cloud.” In fact, there is no such thing as a single Microsoft cloud. Microsoft has lots of different remote servers in different data centers running lots of different services.

The Microsoft Azure cloud is what many Microsoft watchers think of these days when someone says “the Microsoft cloud.” But the Azure environment provides the underpinning for very few Microsoft services so far. The Sidekick services don’t run on Azure. Microsoft’s My Phone doesn’t run on Azure. Hotmail, Xbox Live,  Microsoft-hosted Exchange — nope, nope and nope. None of these are running on Azure yet.

The Sidekick outage, to me, says more about Microsoft’s Pink than it does about Azure.

The Danger team, which Microsoft acquired in 2008, is largely responsible for the Pink “premium mobile experience” (PMX) software/services on which Microsoft has been working on secretly. There have been a few recent reports that Microsoft has decided against launching the Pink phone(s) that were going to run these services, but I haven’t heard from any of my sources whether this is true. Sharp supposedly is the manufacturer of the Microsoft-branded/co-branded Pink phones, which Microsoft is said to be planning to market primarily to teens and 20-somethings.

(Microsoft officials have denied repeatedly assertions that Microsoft is making its own smartphone. They have not denied that Microsoft is working with a hardware partner to build Microsoft-branded or co-branded phones.)

What was Microsoft doing to the back-end Danger services that resulted in such a catastrophic outage? Microsoft isn’t talking. There are rumors the problem stemmed from a storage-area-networking debacle but Microsoft isn’t confirming that, either.

The services at the core of Danger’s current offering — contact management, calendaring, instant messaging, e-mail — are all running on a back-end platform that Danger doesn’t describe publicly. Here’s the platform diagram it does provide (click on it to enlarge):

Because Microsoft hasn’t yet launched Pink, company officials have refused to talk at all about which premium services it will encompass and what kind of back-end platform they’ll run on. Is Microsoft designing the Pink services to run on its own servers? Is/was Microsoft intending to allow the Pink services to remain hosted on the existing Danger back-end? Did this past week’s Sidekick outage result from Microsoft (or Hitachi Data Services, or whoever) attempting to move the Danger back-end off the existing servers and onto Microsoft’s own servers? Microsoft officials won’t say.

Now that more everyday users know that Sidekick is connected to Danger and Danger to Microsoft, this week’s outage will cast a shadow over any kind of Pink phone and/or Pink premium services launch Microsoft may be planning.

September 20th, 2009

Pink and Microsoft Tablet (Take 2): A couple of updates

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 3:38 pm

Categories: Apple, Channel, Code names, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Surface, Windows Mobile, Windows client

Tags: Microsoft Corp., Pink, Tablets, Notebooks, Hardware, Notebooks & Tablets, Mary Jo Foley

Project Pink and the rumored remake of a Microsoft Tablet are back on the rumor treadmill this weekend.

It’s been quiet out there lately on both fronts. Here’s a recap — plus a couple of small updates — that I’ve heard recently about these two skunk-works efforts. And just so it’s clear: Microsoft isn’t corroborating or even commenting on Pink or the new Tablet. This info is purely from sources.

Pink: Yes, it’s a Microsoft-branded (but not Microsoft-manufactured) phone. Yes, it also will feature premium mobile services (like the Zune video store and music subscription/purchasing). I wouldn’t be surprised if Pink looked like — or at least was targeted at the same demographic as — the Sidekick, given the Danger folks have been at the core of Pink’s development team since Microsoft acquired Danger in 2008.

Last I heard, Pink was being built on top of the Windows Mobile 7 core, which is in development, but now not expected to be available on phones until late 2010. Does that mean it’s impossible that the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010 will be the Pink launch pad,as one Mac site reported this weekend? I’d say it’s still possible that Microsoft could show off Pink (privately or publicly) at CES. After all, Microsoft already chose an ad agency to handle the Pink campaign. It’d make sense for Microsoft to start trying to build buzz for Pink earlier than it actually will ship.

Pink (or whatever it is codenamed these days) definitely still seems to be an active project. Stephen Chapman over at UX Evangelist — who is quite skilled at combing through on-line job sites and resumes — recently sent me this mention of Pink on LinkedIn:

Peo Orvendal
Senior Dev Lead
Microsoft
July 2008 – Present (1 year 3 months)

Working in the new V1 Pink team at Microsoft.

Update: 9to5 Mac has posted a link to a drawing of what it says is one of the two Pink phones due to be launched at CES 2010. This allegedly, is the “Turtle” Pink phone. There’s another that is codenamed “Pure,” 9to5 says.  I never heard there were supposed to be two Pink phones. But then again, who knows; Microsoft plans are always in flux.

Microsoft Tablet (Take 2): Like TechFlash’s Todd Bishop, I received a tip earlier this year that Microsoft was going to make another run at the Tablet. Chief Experience Officer J Allard, who has been been noticeably absent from public appearances over the past few months, is supposedly leading the charge.

More recently, I heard that at least one exec from Microsoft’s Surface team is part of the Tablet effort, too. Microsoft officials have hinted before that they’re set on building a smaller Surface. At one point, that project was going by the codename “Oahu.” But the new Tablet effort is allegedly part of something that is known as “Alchemy Ventures,” according to the couple of tips I’ve gotten on it to date. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft is waiting for Apple to show its Tablet hand before trotting out its revamped Tablet.

No word on whether Microsoft will field a Microsoft-branded Surface/Tablet combo or rely on one or more hardware partners to produce multiple designs. But this job description for a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft in the Entertainment and Devices Division surely could be for the secret Tablet-remake:

Division: Entertainment & Devices Division
Excited by Xbox 360? Fascinated by the technology that powers the Surface? Ever wonder how your Zune HD got built? Bring your talent and passion for building great products to the Manufacturing Test Engineering team! Our team is where all these cool products and more come together. We are a small, high-energy engineering team that builds all the systems that make sure these great products work perfectly as they leave our factories. We literally design and build all the test system used to check our products from the beginning to the end of the manufacturing line and are literally responsible for billions of dollars of products being delivered at the highest quality to our customers.

As a Senior Program Manager, you will own a broad set of feature areas and products, working with our mechanical, electrical, firmware, software, design verification and reliability engineers along with Manufacturing to bring a product from concept into mass production. You will also develop partnerships with internal and external organizations to ensure that our products deliver a superior customer experience.

A couple of points to remember in all of this: Microsoft is a software and services company. Execs have made it clear they plan to get out of the MP3 player business after “at least one more” Zune HD device. Microsoft is more interested in making money off subscriptions. That’s why Zune is morphing into a set services are going to move to mobile phones, including Pink.

Point two: Microsoft’s plan in the mobile device space is to partner more closely with fewer vendors. That’s what the “chassis” model is all about. Microsoft creates a very detailed chassis spec and then allows partners to bid on making devices that comply with the spec.

Palm’s publicly confirmed move to get out of the Windows Mobile business and put all its eggs in the WebOS one (after marketing its line of Windows-Mobile-based Treos for a few more quarters) surely wasn’t something the beleagured Windows Mobile team wanted/needed to hear this week. But as of late, Microsoft is cozying up lately to a smaller cast of characters, including HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and a few others.

What are your expectations? Will Microsoft field a Pink phone in early 2010? Might a Surface-like Tablet PC be close behind?

September 15th, 2009

Microsoft to detail planned changes in its fiscal reporting structure

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 8:12 am

Categories: Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Windows Live, Windows client

Tags: Change, Microsoft Corp., Earnings, Microsoft Windows, Financial Accounting, Operating Systems, Software, Finance, Mary Jo Foley

On September 22, Microsoft executives will re-explain changes the company is making to the way it plans to report its fiscal 2010 earnings.

Microsoft officials mentioned these changes in passing when the company reported its fiscal Q4 earnings in late July. Next week, on September 22, Microsoft is holding a Webcast, aimed at Wall Street analysts and company watchers, to go over these changes in more depth. The new changes take effect for the first time when Microsoft reports its fiscal 2010 first quarter earnings on October 22.

(October 22 is also the launch day for Windows 7.)

The reporting changes are the result primarily of organizational changes made earlier this year. Among those changes:

• Windows Live moved from Microsoft’s online business (which is now officially known as the Online Systems Division, rather than the Online Systems Business) to the Windows client unit.
• Mobile services were moved from the Online Systems Division to the Entertainment and Devices Division.
• Certain “field selling costs” were moved from the Corporate category to individual business units.

During its earnings call with analysts and press, Microsoft officials showed off a slide in July that explained how these changes would have impacted the last fiscal year’s numbers if they had been in effect at that time. (Click on the image below to enlarge.)

Windows client revenues would have been $15.3 billion under the new reporting structure vs. the $14.7 billion that they were under the current one. The Online Systems Division revenues would have been lower ($2.5 billion under the new reporting system vs. $3.1 billion under the current one), but losses would have looked better ($1.8 billion under the new segmentation vs. $2.3 billion under the current system).

September 11th, 2009

Microsoft: Windows Mobile 7 not on the PDC docket

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:25 pm

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Network service providers, OEMs, PDC 2009, Resellers, Speech, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Microsoft Windows Mobile, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Mobile Operating Systems, Operating Systems, Mobile Applications, Handhelds, Wireless And Mobility, Software, Hardware

I (and others) have been wondering and speculating whether Microsoft might be holding its Windows Mobile 7 cards close to the vest and be planning to show, or at least talk about, Windows Mobile 7 at this year’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in mid-November.

The answer is no, a company spokeswoman definitively told me on September 11. If Microsoft does talk mobile at its developer conference, Windows Mobile 6.5 — and not even the rumored interim 6.5 update designed to get Win Mobile working on capacative touch screen devices– is the only content on the docket.

Here is the e-mail from the spokesperson:

“As I’m sure you know, Microsoft and its partners are squarely focused on introducing the Windows phone brand through the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 in October [October 6], which includes working closely with ISVs and developers to add even greater value to the Windows Mobile platform and new business opportunities for its mobile channel ecosystem. To properly set your expectations, wanted to let you know that Microsoft is not planning any sessions for PDC that look past the Windows Mobile OS in market at that time.”

I followed up and asked whether Microsoft might be privately showing anything post Win Mobile 6.5, or maybe talking/showing new bits in the keynotes or hallways at the conference, which kicks off November 16. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Windows Mobile 7.0 was still expected to go to phone makers in November 2009 and show up on phones in the first part of 2010….

The answer came back again as no. The spokesperson reiterated that Microsoft would not be doing anything related to Windows Mobile 7 at the PDC.

I guess this could mean one of two things:

• Windows Mobile 7 really isn’t going to debut before the end of 2010, after all. If Windows Mobile 7 phones were coming out in the first part of 2010, as originally expected, wouldn’t Microsoft be working now with developers to help them write apps for the new mobile-phone operating system?
• Microsoft is not planning to use the PDC to communicate with the Win Mobile developer community but could be holding some other public/private conference where it will share more on Win Mobile 7.

What will be on the PDC 2009 docket? So far, there are sessions for those interested in/working with Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, .Net 4.0, Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010 and Windows 7. Those are the primary topics planned for the PDC, which is slated from November 16 to 19 in Los Angeles.

There were a couple of other interesting Windows Mobile tidbits this week. Long Zheng over on istartedsomething.com got Microsoft officials to acknowledge that the company is attempting to speed up the delivery of new Windows Mobile releases by working toward allowing updates to be downloaded directly to users’ phones (some time in the future), rather than requiring OEMs to preload the new bits.

And IT Pro UK managed to get Microsoft to confirm what I had heard months ago: That the Mobile team’s plan is to work more closely with fewer handset makers by providing them with chassis specs to which they can build. One such chassis spec: The Windows Mobile 7 one that a source provided me a few months back.

September 9th, 2009

I don't want an MP3 player/camera/ebook reader/gaming device. Do you?

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 2:27 pm

Categories: Advertising, Apple, Corporate strategy, Gaming, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Speech, Telecommunications, VOIP, Windows Mobile, Xbox, Zune

Tags: Phone, MP3 Player, Microsoft Zune, MP3, Camera, Media Players, Digital Music, Digital Media, Telecom & Utilities, Consumer Electronics

Common wisdom says we’re hurtling toward a world where a single portable device will be all you need to handle a wide variety of consumerish tasks.

But the further we approach that end goal, the less I want to end up there. Today’s Apple music announcements reminded me of that fact.

I am not an iPod/iPhone/iMac user. I have a Sony Walkman MP3 player, an LG (non Windows Mobile) phone and a Windows PC. I also have an Amazon Kindle and a Panasonic camera. I carry a big bag which usually contains at least two or three of these devices at any given time.

I’m willing to cart all this stuff around because I want my phone to be a good phone. I don’t care if it can browse the Web or hold hundreds of pictures that I can flick through at a moment’s notice. If it’s not good at making and receiving calls, it’s not worth having. I want my camera to be a decent camera. I don’t care about capturing video clips on it. I want my ebook reader to allow me to purchase and read books. Even though it has built-in wireless and a browser, I have used it to check the Web once in four months or so.

I thought I might be in the minority in my views about device convergence — until I asked folks on Twitter if they were fans of the single device ideal. Most who replied were not. Some cited battery-life issues as the reason they weren’t keen on the single-device-does-all idea. Others said they weren’t interested in devices that were OK at lots of tasks but great at none of them. I don’t need a camera that posts to Twitter, one of my Tweet-buddies quipped.

I’ve been playing lately with the Zune subscription service. (Hey, I never claimed to be an early adopter; in fact, I’m typically a “wait for at least the third version” one.) With the Zune Pass, for $15 a month, you can download a lot of music and keep 10 tracks a month. The Zune Pass service works nicely with my Sony player — not surprising given Microsoft’s growing emphasis on Zune as software and a service and deemphasis of it as a standalone MP3 player. Yes, there are new and much improved Zune players coming on September 15, but I’m far more interested in the non-hardware-specific components than the Zune HDs themselves, especially given my Sony MP3 player is still working well two years after I bought it.

Maybe those of us who would feel more affinity with a portable rotary phone (thanks for the link, Jake) than an all-in-one multi-touch phone/videocam/ebook reader/gaming/photo display/browsing  pedometer/voice-recording device should stop focusing so much on the next cool gadget and pay more attention to the software/services that make them tick.

(Update: As one reader noted, an all-in-one MP3 player/camera/ebook reader/gaming device also could be called a PC. In fact, Apple almost seemed to be repositioning the iPod Touch as a rival to a full-fledged PC as part of its September 9 announcements.)

July 30th, 2009

The Windows Mobile-Windows continuum: The plot thickens

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 1:54 pm

Categories: Channel, Corporate strategy, Financial Analyst Meeting, Google, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), OEMs, Resellers, System builders, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, Windows client

Tags: Phone, ARM, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Analyst, Microsoft Corp., Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows CE, Operating Systems, Telecom & Utilities

One of the most interesting question-and-answer exchanges between Wall Street analysts attending Microsoft’s Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) and company execs has been around the convergence/divergence between mobile devices and PCs.

Wall Street analysts attending the July 30 confab had a number of questions about how Microsoft intends to address the new CPU and GPU architectures that are emerging in all kinds of mobile devices, ranging from phones to netbooks.

Up until now, Microsoft has maintained a clear division. Mobile phones run Windows CE/Windows Compact at the base level (with the Windows Mobile environment layered on top). PCs run Windows.

But the Windows and CE lines have been starting to  blur — and the effects are being felt not just by Microsoft, but by its competitors, as well. (Gizmodo reported recently that there has been talk that Google’s Chrome OS may end up on mobile phones and not just netbooks. And Google’s Android is being ported to both phones and PCs, as well.)

As one Wall Street analyst attending Microsoft’s FAM noted, Intel is working on new lower-power x86 processors that could find their way into phones and other consumer-electronics devices.

Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie had a ready response. He noted that Microsoft has been supporting for years a variety of processors with Windows CE and Windows Mobile, “so the technical transfer is not a big leap for us.”

“For us, the X86 environment is one that we know well and have an easy time supporting. Clearly, adapting that to the environment that we have in the embedded and the phone business would take some work. But it is not a monumental amount of work as it would be if it was an architecture that the company didn’t already have a heavy investment on. So I think our view and (Entertainment and Devices President) Robbie and the business team will have to make the call as to how we see that evolving.”

Bach, for his part, hedged a bit more.

“If they (new x86 processors) go into phones, there is probably work for us to do. but we have a pretty good handle on the X86 environment and we can make a business decision based on volume and our operator customers are looking for.”

Interestingly, no one asked Microsoft during the FAM Q&A about how, when and whether it might make a version of Windows available on ARM processors. Microsoft has said that Windows 7 has not (yet) been ported to ARM processors, which some company watchers have viewed as leaving the door wide open for Linux on ARM netbooks. Windows Compact, however, does work on ARM processors.

In response to another analyst question about Microsoft’s mobile-OS plans, Bach did note that the Windows and Windows Mobile team are working more closely together.

“Today we actually already share components between what we do in the Windows space and the Windows Mobile space. You are going to see more of that share continue over time and you will see us accelerate it and do more,” Bach told analysts. “Understand historically that was tough because the underlying architectures were actually quite different. But to Craig (Mundie)’s point about GPUs and CPUs and the underlying chip architecture, as those get more similar, it absolutely makes it easier to share more. You will see that whether it is work in the browser, on development tools, a number of other places where we will be able to do more of that sharing. That’s baked into our plan.”

Reading between the Q&A lines, do you foresee Microsoft releasing Windows (and not just new versions of CE/Windows Mobile) for future smart phones?

More from the analyst meeting:

• Ballmer: Ultra-thin PCs will be the answer to netbooks
• Microsoft’s Project Natal for business: In your dreams
• How will Microsoft fix Windows Mobile? The Softies still aren’t saying
• Larry Dignan: Ballmer: He knows when you’re using a Mac
• Ballmer on the Microsoft-Yahoo deal: ‘Nobody gets it’
• Slide of the day: Laptop Hunter ads working?
• Yahoo costs: The slide Microsoft didn’t want you to see

July 30th, 2009

How will Microsoft fix Windows Mobile? The Softies still aren't saying

Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 12:02 pm

Categories: Apple, Channel, Corporate strategy, Financial Analyst Meeting, Mobile services ("Pink"/"Rouge"), Network service providers, OEMs, Resellers, Telecommunications, Windows Mobile

Tags: Phone, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Mobile, Microsoft Corp., Unit Volume, Microsoft Windows, Telecom & Utilities, Mobile Operating Systems, Operating Systems, Mobile Applications

Microsoft execs speaking to Wall Street analysts at the company’s annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM) have been up front about the fact that Windows Mobile is a problem child for Microsoft. Unit volumes are slighly up but Microsoft’s share of the mobile-phone operating system market is down.

I thought officials might drop a hint or two about Windows Mobile 7, the company’s next big release of its mobile operating system, to show that innovation really is possible in the WinMo business. Or maybe offer up a quick demo of the Microsoft “Pink” phone.

(Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made sure to repeat that Microsoft won’t be developing its own phone; it’ll be providing the software and services, he said. But he didn’t go so far as to say there won’t be a Microsoft-branded phone, built by a third-party phone maker, which is what the “Pink” phone supposedly is.)

At the July 30 FAM event, Entertainment and Devices President Robbie Bach didn’t provide any new answers to the many questions company watchers have about Microsoft’s mobile fix-it plans.

Bach mentioned Windows Mobile 6.5, which will be showing up on the first phones this October. But beyond that, he remained vague about how Microsoft is going to fix its Windows Mobile business, beyond committing to what company officials have promised already.

“The fundamentals of our strategy are based on the idea of choice and selection. It is our view that one model, one type of phone is not going to build volume into that critical mass that we think we need to make the business successful,” Bach told FAM attendees. “We have people who are going to want Qwerty keyboard, touch keyboard, big screen, people who want small screens. People who will make trade offs on battery life to do media. So it is our view we need to work closely with Samsung, LG, HP, HTC, Sony Ericcson and others to build a broad selection of phones with different price points and different functionality.”

Bach threw in the gratuitous reference to the iPhone, but, again, no mention of Windows Mobile 7 — the first real competitor Microsoft is expected to have to Apple, in terms of multi-touch support.

“You will have a very rich browsing experience on 6.5 devices that will give you access to more Web sites than you will be able to get to on an iPhone that will work actively and work well,” he said. “It really is a much better experience.”

Bach reiterated that Microsoft will be moving to the already-announced “Windows Phone” branding with its advertising and marketing, starting this fall.

Last I heard, Microsoft is quite far along with Windows Mobile 7 and will be providing its phone partners with code this fall. The first WinMo 7 phones could show up by spring 2010, unless the Softies’ schedule slips.