What iPhone Means To Microsoft: How About The ZunePhone?
Hardly mentioned in all the whoop-de-doo this week over the iPhone is how Apple’s move into the wireless handset market affects Microsoft.
Windows Mobile, the operating system behind many of the hottest new-generation smartphones (Cingular’s Samsung Blackjack, T-Mobile’s Dash, Verizon/Sprint’s Motorola Q and Treo 700wx) is, according to Phone News editor Chris Price, a victim of groupthink. Price says Microsoft allows the phone carriers to dictate what happens, instead of Microsoft taking the lead.
iPhone, Price suggests, is an opportunity for Microsoft to do what Apple is doing with iPhone - take control of the Windows Mobile operating system. And he makes another radical, or radically brilliant, suggestion: Lift the source code for Zune and transplant it into Windows Mobile.
In one fell swoop, it would take out a lot of the “wow factor” (Price’s term) from the iPhone. At the same time, it would enormously broaden the Zune brand’s reach in the marketplace.
The iPhone we see right now is high on user interface (the fabulous screen, the multitouch capability) and not so high on smartphone-type capabilities, particularly the ability to sync with the Microsoft Outlook and Office world that business lives in. Microsoft’s world.
Microsoft has the power not only to enhance the Windows Mobile devices already out there, but to help create new devices with a user interface that rivals or exceeds the iPhone. Something tells me Microsoft is already working on it.
After all, Microsoft is still waaaay bigger than Apple.
Apple, iPhone, Microsoft, Cingular Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, Dash, Samsung, Blackjack, Treo 700wx, Zune
[via Phone News]
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