“A post on The Windows Blog highlights a case study published on Microsoft’s Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) site containing a detailed technical blueprint that describes the porting of the iPhone application Amplitude to Windows Mobile 6.5,” Montalbano reports. “The report was created by a third-party consulting group, Crimson Consulting, and is meant to be a helpful document for developers as they build Windows Mobile applications for Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace. Microsoft plans to launch the Windows Marketplace for mobile applications in the fall, which in the U.S. means the late-September to late-December time frame.”
“Microsoft President of Entertainment and Devices Robbie Bach acknowledged last week at the company’s annual meeting of financial analysts that Microsoft’s mobile business, centered around its Windows Mobile OS and development platform, did not perform well in the last fiscal year, losing market share while making modest gains in unit volume,” Montalbano reports. “Apple’s iPhone continues to leave most other competitors in the dust in the mobile space, and Microsoft has been struggling for some time to compete in this market… In addition to the apps marketplace, Bach said Microsoft has a few ideas to improve its mobile business, including adding talent to the team and continuing to innovate on the platform without building its own hardware to compete with the iPhone, which analysts have suggested it should do.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Never fear, WinMo sufferers, we plan to begin porting our free MacDailyNews app for iPhone and iPod touch to Windows Mobile on the very first Thursday after never.
Add talent to the team!
What original thinking.
LMFAO. LMMFAO.
When some apps are ported to Windows Mobile, how long will it be before some Windows clown claims that the app first appeared on Windows.
Like Photoshop
MS still has the problem of trying to support many devices some with touch other with out. It will be impossible to support so many phones with one OS. Imagine writing specific applications for 150 phones. Seems like a developers nightmare. This is the beauty of having one phone and one platform to run it on. This is not like pc vs. mac but 150 different computers vs the mac which makes it nearly impossible to capture the OS market for the phone.
Another cheap and classic way MS tries to ride the backs of innovators. Please Microsoft more “Big Ass Tables”.
kenh,
“How long will it be before some Windows clown claims that the app first appeared on Windows?”
Yeah, like Microsoft’s Word, Excel, and Office itself. All were first on Mac, Wintards.
if it is developed with the iPhone SDK and then converted to winmo does that not break the developer agreement?
Great! I’ll start that as soon as I finish my current project — converting my HD movies to cave drawings.
I suggest that any developer that ports their app to Windows mobile be tarred and feathered and then publicly humiliated. Further, they should be banned from the Apple App store for life.
The sheer stupidity and cluelessness of that “request” just boggles the mind.
How does one even begin… ?
How many different screen resolutions and hardware configurations are present in all the various WinMob phones?
I don’t think even MS could answer that question.
@tigercliff definitely the comment of the day.
It is entirely reasonable that a developer of mobile applications produce versions for multiple platforms. That said, surely you would start with the most popular mobile operating systems like iPhone OS and Symbian. I would think that Windows Mobile would be a long way down the list, behind Blackberry, Android, etc.
dd: if it is developed with the iPhone SDK and then converted to winmo does that not break the developer agreement?
Unlikely, since porting it from an Objective-C/Cocoa environment to a C(++)/Windows environment will likely require a rewrite of at least most of the UI-related stuff – if not of the entire App. Basic functionality concepts can probably be re-used, but directly re-using code would be quite difficult.
Um, won’t you need multi-touch on a Windows Phone OS device for a port of an iPhone app to work? Since that’s not coming until the next version (God knows when/if that will ever see the light of day), I guess developers will have to strip Multi-Touch out of their iPhone apps and add in little plastic button commands?
May as well write a new app, except that you won’t sell more than 30 copies.
“Windows Phone OS – Exercises in Futility! But our phones cost less (after mail-in rebates, discounts at time of purchase, and assuming you really don’t care about functionality)”
I wonder if M$ finds it humbling at all that they have to ask people to develop for them.
Ballmer’s new mantra: Developers? Developers?… developers?
Port iPhone apps to WinMo? That’s only a very small step up from porting them to the Pre.
Anybody foolish enough to try this is going to either find themselves gimping their iPhone apps to accomodate the restrictions of WinMo which would make their apps vastly less desirable to iPhone users, or just gimping the WinMo port which would make the iPhone vastly more desirable to WinMo users as the platform where the apps ain’t gimped.
I’d ask how Microsoft could possibly think this as a good idea, but they’re so out of touch they could add 2 + 2 and get ‘banana slug’. The stupidest shit in the world regularly looks like a good idea to them(see SPOT watches, Sideshow, Windows Vista, Microsoft Store, etc. etc. etc. etc.).
By the way, don’t you just love the originality and innovation on display here? Faced with a dying(if not dead already) Windows Mobile, their answer is to not only copy the App Store, but to plead with developers to put iPhone apps on WinMo.
Forget the WinMo team. Microsoft should consider adding talent, period. And taste, while they’re at it.
@Tigercliff…..Classic post!
Similar logic…….put Jeff Gordon in a Ford Pinto and tell him to win the Daytona 500.
Same driver right so whats the problem?
@Tigercliff….hahahahaha, great.
What copycats. A-frigging-mazing.
Please write stuff for us! please please please?
I know we suck and have a terrible software platform that is even worse because it’s splintered between multiple types of phones. But overlook all that and write code for us anyway!
Please?
Pretty please with sugar on top?
I’ll be your best fwend!
MS definition of “innovation” = port
M$ has taken “freezing the market” to new lows.
Gates and Allen should get together and cancel (no longer allow) old Balmy.
Forget it. It’s all burp and fart apps. MAC could only attract sophomoric, throwaway joke app developers, not anyone who makes serious, real world stuff like you get on the Windows side of things. I’m looking forward to the mobile Excel and Word enhancements as well as some really neat stationery for mobile Outlook.
When I feel like kicking back after a long day in the cubicle I’ll simply rock out to some Dokken in glorious WMA format on the ride home.
Your potential. Our passion.™
As if it’s not enough to COPY Apple’s every innovation…
Now they want to outright pillage and clone the contents of all the iPhone Apps?
DISGUSTING!