I’m betting that Steve Ballmer will use his keynote address at the world’s leading mobile event next week in Barcelona to make a surprise announcement that Microsoft will be releasing a brand new mobile operating system to compete with Android and the iPhone. Everything points to this happening, especially the continued delay of the next release of Microsoft Windows for Mobile and the fact that Windows Mobile has hardly changed or improved since its inception. Microsoft must surely be concerned that Nokia now has control of Symbian, Linux is rearing its not so ugly head in the mobile space, RIM continues to make inroads and Apple and Google are flexing their muscles with their own quite remarkable products. Remarkable because they seem to have been able to develop a complete OS and development kit in less time than Microsoft realised that Vista was viewless!
Surely Microsoft with all its billions of dollars and millions of staff could lock 100 people away in a room and tell them to create a world beating product from scratch! Or, as one of my American colleagues notes, they have been drinking their own Kool-Ade for so long they actually think they have a winning product already. Wrong! Windows Mobile sucks, just ask anybody that has wasted money buying a ‘smartphone’ embedded with it. Come on Steve, show us MS has still got some creative edge. Forget all the copycat products to compete with the AppStore and Mobile Me, and give us what we really want!