Microsoft Dummies Down Their Smartphones With Their Windows Phone 7 Series
by KS Shuttleworth
The Windows Phone 7 series was unveiled this week at the world congress in Barcelona Spain, leaving many of us scratching their heads at the complete 180 turn Microsoft took with their new mobile OS. With a declining market share in the Smartphone market and a rapidly aging Operating System platform, Microsoft shifted their focus from the business user to the mainstream multimedia market.
Gone are the days of HTC, Samsung, and Sony OEM custom user interfaces. Say goodbye to the custom task bars, widgets, sliders, and panels. Microsoft is shifting to one universal interface and doing away with the OEM custom user interfaces in an attempt to do away with the clunky, confusing and often subpar UIs. Instead a Windows Phone (formally known as Windows Mobile) customer can expect a clean and modern look to their device with widgets being replaced with hubs. What are hubs you might ask? It’s a window placed on your homescreen that constantly pulls information from the internet updating itself accordingly.
Why the sudden change in the strategy of the Mobile Operating engineers from a customizable business Operating System to a more standardized one? One might speculate and blame the success of the Iphone on the change in Microsoft’s market strategy. Another theory is the need to expand their search engines (Bing) horizons and integrate it closely into OS and extend it to the mobile searchers. In any event get ready for a huge change in Microsoft’s approach to the delivery of their mobile software.
