Comments on: Windows Mobile 7 — More Brand Dilution Coming

By: Mike Graham

Mike Graham — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 07:43:19 +0000

I have become convinced that the ‘brands’ you will see from Microsoft will be Silverlight running everywhere, Silverlight applications including Office apps, and cloud services. I think you will see a gigantic marketing wave from them in summer 2010 that will make this transition in the market.

From a Microsoft perspective, they need to protect the Office brand and make sure it runs everywhere. To do this, they will make sure that Silverlight runs everywhere and deliver office client apps that run in Silverlight.

They also need to protect the infrastructure brands like SQL Server, Search (Bing), SharePoint, and Exchange. I believe these will be protected by delivering them as a cloud services and as products that support customer-managed, intranet cloud services.

BTW, I really enjoy your analysis of the mobile market. I spend a lot of time trolling for the availability of new mobile phones. It would be really cool if you had an RSS feed that was specific to new devices as they hit the market :)

Keep up the great work…

By: P. Douglas

P. Douglas — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:52:41 +0000

Oops! It appears you have discovered the extent of my car expertise! That’s so embarrassing! I think I need a paper bag!

By: n240sxle91

n240sxle91 — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:22:19 +0000

Douglas, I’m not sure Ford would be happy with Chevy for selling their Mustang!

Joking aside, I agree with what you’re saying. I’ve never been happy with the idea of “one size fits all”.

By: P. Douglas

P. Douglas — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:22:05 +0000

I actually agree strongly with MS’ policy here. Imagine GM trying to sell the Chevy Mustang, and only the Chevy Mustang to millions of people. GM would never come close to satisfying the car market’s varied tastes. The trick is for MS to have rich, diverse, high quality differentiation among mobile operators, while making it not too difficult to move from one Windows phone to another (much like with motor vehicles) and to ensure mobile third party apps work consistently well, and also blend well with all these phones. If MS does this, Windows phone will be able scale far better than its competitors.

The main beef I had with Windows Mobile 6.5, was that the base UI seemed underworked and subpar compared to its competitors’. However I really, really liked the UI differentiation that was seen across Windows phones.

By: James Kendrick

James Kendrick — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:53:42 +0000

Lost hope in seeing a consistent Windows Phone brand, yes.

By: Jake

Jake — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:24:37 +0000

You’ve lost all hope because of a lack of consistent branding? That makes no sense.