Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer doesn’t seem to be too “deep in-side” the mobile computing market – as he bemoans that Microsoft’s Scott Rockfeld stated that the company does not plan to build a smartphone of its own:

So it seems what Microsoft could use most in the short term is a better marketing plan — to cut through some of the Apple and Google noise and remind consumers that they exist. Right now, few people are probably saying, “Gotta get me one of those Microsoft phones.” But as Apple, RIM, and Google (GOOG) expand their efforts, Microsoft will have to solve that somehow.

Dear Dan: the strength of the Windows Mobile platform is its “diversity”. Hundreds of licensees produce Windows Mobile/Windows CE boxen – while RIM or Apple fans have to choose from the limited offerings of their manufacturer of choice, Windows Mobile fans have the “pains of the large choice”.

This allows customers to remain loyal to the OS (and their applications) without having to stick to the brand: if someone no longer wants to enjoy the pains of using Asus crap, he can always switch to quality manufacturers like Aceeca, HP or HTC without loosing his application suite.

Manufacturers invest a lot of money into their devices: for them, fighting against the OS manufacturer will always leave behind a sour taste as the OS team will always be tempted to assist its hardware team.

Companies like Palm and Nokia have invested huge amounts of money to spin off their OS’s to some extent: this was done in order to motivate licensees to be interested in the platform (and to allow an arrogant PalmSource executive to tell them to pay x00000$ up-front or f### off).

If Microsoft would enter the hardware market (even with a web-browser-armed Zune spin-off), many licensees would be miffed and would start to think about alternatives. As alternatives are abundant nowadays, these thoughts would hurt the “diversity” of the platform…

What do you think?

P.S. We interviewed Microsoft’s Thomas Kritsch last year – the interview could be very interesting…


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  2. Microsoft: stay out of handset business
  3. Google: we won’t do hardware
  4. Microsoft Pink: Smoke and Mirrors galore
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