Windows Mobile 7 — More Brand Dilution Coming

uphill3_lI have been harsh in the past at the Windows Mobile lack of a specific brand. I’ve detailed why that is – the many partners of Microsoft that want their specific phone to be unique. I’ve heard some say that Windows Mobile 7 would usher in a new era of a consistent user interface and rescue WinMo from “more of the same.” Istartedsomething just pointed out something that dashes what little hope I had for Windows Mobile 7.

“On one hand, every OEM and operator in the ecosystem wants to differentiate their product and this allows them an easy way to do so without resorting to changing the hardware which is more expensive. At the same time however it also means the same device across operators and all devices under the Windows Phone brand will have even less in common – adding more complexity to an already diluted ecosystem.”

Long’s comment comes after he discovered that MS has advertised for new talent to work on Windows Mobile 7 toward the following goal:

“The final responsibility of our group will be working with mobile operators to deliver a unique windows mobile experience that seamlessly integrates the mobile operator’s services (such as voicemail services, video-on-demand services, and navigation services for instance). Microsoft experimented with this back in 2007 with the introduction of the T-Mobile Shadow. That was a great success and with WM7 we will be expanding this effort to more operators. Because of this we will be working heavily on creating custom user interfaces, so passion around UI and graphics programming is a must.”

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