“Microsoft is belatedly trying to take on the iPhone and Android phones with its own phone software,” David Pogue reports for The New York Times. “It’s available on several phones from Samsung and HTC, at prices from $50 to $200 with two-year contracts; each major American carrier offers at least one. (The Windows Phone 7.5 software, code-named Mango, is also available as a free upgrade for older Windows Phone 7 phones.)”
“Windows Phone 7.5 is gorgeous, classy, satisfying, fast and coherent. The design is intelligent, clean and uncluttered. Never in a million years would you guess that it came from the same company that cooked up the bloated spaghetti that is Windows and Office,” Pogue reports. “Most impressively, Windows Phone is not a feeble-minded copycat. Microsoft came up with completely fresh metaphors that generally steer clear of the iPhone…”
“Now, if this phone had arrived before the iPhone, people would have been sacrificing small animals to it. But Microsoft’s three-year lag behind its rivals is going to be very tough to overcome. Windows Phone is considered a weird outlier. Unlike with the iPhone, there’s no teeming universe of alarm clocks, chargers, accessories and cars that fit these phones,” Pogue reports. “Similarly, Windows Phone’s app store has 30,000 apps, which is an achievement — but Android offers 10 times as many, and the iPhone store has 16 times as many… In other words, Microsoft may face quite a Catch-22, no matter how superb its work: Windows Phone isn’t popular because it isn’t popular.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Windows Phone will be popular. Over time, it’ll eat the lunch of the increasingly fragmented, increasingly insecure, and increasingly costly Android (losing patent infringement lawsuits and dropping features/paying royalties to multiple IP owners will do that to you).
The not-iPhone world will begin to dump Android and move to Microsoft’s mobile OS offering because it will eventually cost less, work better, and come with far fewer legal issues. In the iPhone wannabe market, it’s already happening (Nokia, for example). We expect the same to happen in the iPad wannabe market, too. Google and Microsoft will long battle each other for the non-Apple markets and that’s a much better scenario for everyone than having a single ripoff artist flood the market with fragmented, insecure, beta-esque, mediocre-at-best products. Google’s attempt to be the next Microsoft is doomed.
This, of course, will also impact Google’s search business. Apple’s Siri will increasingly deliver info to users sans Google and Microsoft will, naturally, use Bing for their search. As we’ve said many times in the past: Google will rue the day they got greedy by deciding to try to work against Apple instead of with them.
The bottom line: We’d rather see a company trying unique ideas, even if – shockingly – it’s Microsoft, than the wholesale theft of Apple innovations that we’ve been seeing for over four years now. Don’t steal IP. Even worse, don’t steal IP and “claim to be innovators.” We have no problem with any companies that attempt to compete with Apple using their own unique ideas and strategies.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward Weber” for the heads up.]
Here in Sydney Australia I have only ever seen 2 WP7’s in the wild.
Gotta give credit to MS for not being like Google. They earn their right to enter the mobile market on their hard work and merits. I hope that MS and Apple eventually destroy what’s left of the weed OS which is Android.
Sorry, but I don’t quite get the part where Mango is not a rip-off of iOS.
Does Mango use heuristic filtering of touch inputs? Yes.
Does Mango copy iOS’ data detectors? Yes.
Does Mango use the same multi-touch UI gestures as the iOS? Yes.
Does Mango copy the slide to unlock feature? Yes.
Does Mango copy Apple’s touchscreen keyboard design? Yes.
Is the list of things Mango copies from iOS too long to list here? Yes.
I know that Mango uses tiles instead of app icons and Microsoft has made an attempt at a unique graphic design, but these differences don’t nullify Microsoft’s wholesale copying of Apple’s’ patented innovations in iOS. I guess that Microsoft has so many patents of their own that they can copy with impunity.
Yep. Pogue is reaching with this review. Mango, hilarious.
I think the WINDOWS phones work and function
pretty much as iPhone.
With such a lag behind Android; Microsoft may have done a nice approach yet basically its also a rip-off. In that time they could have thought about Voice rather then touch.
In the End – Apple owns touch for the mere fact they brought it to market with pure innovation. And Now that Siri is obviously the next thing to come – it furthers the competition as COPY CATS being laughed at.
I have been saying I want to see ANDROID dead. and Windows has been helping to keep the damn thing alive while selling its New Mobile OS to NOKIA. Still thieves as always.
Those concept videos are really odd. On the one hand they are appealing in a gee-whiz sort of fashion. But after a while they are just exhausting. In no way do I imagine that technology would be used like that if it were available. When telephones were first being deployed there was talk of how they would spread culture. People in remote areas could hear live opera. Instead we got telemarketers annoying us all day long.
It kind of reminds me of Windows 7. Every time you open a window it pops out at you. After a while this is exhausting. (There might be a way to turn this off. I see this on customer computers when I visit to give them training on our app.)
The really nice thing about Apple’s concept video, Knowledge Navigator, was that it worked. It wasn’t just fancy graphics flying in the air. You followed a guy working on a problem and solving it.
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They call it….. Mango
MDN will you kindly use some images from SNL’s “Mango” when referring to MS’ new smartphone offering. Google images has a treasure trove.
“They call it… Mango”
They may soon be “updating” it to Lemon