Under pressure from popular phones from Apple and Research In Motion, Microsoft hopes it has put in place changes that will help it meet that mobile competition faster, said CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday. “There are opportunities for us to accelerate our execution in this area,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of work to make sure we have a team that will be able to accelerate it.” Microsoft, which recently said that a Windows Mobile software update will come later this year, has been criticized for failing to improve its platform to better compete with the iPhone and other new touch screen phones.
I think they need to make their mobile platform better, not release crap faster.
You do realize you’re talking about Microsoft, right? They’re not exactly known for putting quality over quick marketing and releases.
Funny I read this when I just looked down at my mobile phone and realized the battery died overnight because some background task was running.
It is my first Windows Mobile device and it is a POS. There is not even any software to run on it since it is so locked down.
They need to re-architect it, not just spit out crap faster.
“no software to run on it”? What phone is it? I have 30-40 programs on my WM6.1 powered phone. If its the smartphone edition, theres still gobs of programs for it.
They’ve been neglecting Windows Mobile for years on end, failing to cure it’s most blatant usability problems.
Every couple years they came up with a new version, almost undistinguishable from the previous, save for new color schemes and nomenclature – Windows CE to Pocket PC to Windows Mobile. The web browser has always been crap, the contacts app can hold fantastic volumes on data, but its usability has always been crap, the note taking app is much worse than crap, Office Mobile stank and stinks, ActiveSync sucked and sucks, and so on.
And now that they feel the pressure from Apple or Android, Microsoft want me to believe that really, now, tremendous improvements in WM will to pour out at breakneck speed.
Ha.
The best they can come up with is WM 6.5: this is the same as 6.1 with a somewhat prettier face; just the same as HTC or Sony/Ericsson sell, but at twice the hardware requirements. And it is not even available yet.
They have slept on the laurels far too long, and they were not even the hare. I think they will fail after burying fantastic loads of money in the endeavor.
Lobotomik ranted…
Agreed, agreed, and agreed.
And even when they did add some new feature or another that made an upgrade worthwhile it was almost impossible to get it without having to do a hardware upgrade as well.
Lobotomik ranted…
Errm…not sure if I can agree with your conclusion though. We cannot discount Microsoft from doing what they have always done and leaveraging their monopoly to slowly buy their way back into the game, damn the costs to the industry as a whole. Look at what they did with IE, and before that directX and somehwere in the middle windows media player.
As much as I dislike with the way Microsoft has conducted itself it would be a mistake to count them out. Comeback kid indeed!
–bornagainpenguin