Microsoft’s announcement of Windows Mobile 7 left quite a few of us scratching their heads: what should we do with this crappy platform? Windows Mobile 6.5.3 was an “antithesis” to WM7: with Palm OS gone, which business platform should we flee to when our boxen break down?
istartedsomething now reports the following:
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Going forward, Windows Mobile 6.5 (and Windows Mobile 6.5.3) will be rebranded as Windows Phones Classic, and presumably the devices as Windows Phones Classic Series. Although this will not be reflected in retail until the release of WP7S, it does signify that Microsoft is committed to not just sustaining but potentially growing the current platform for some time to come.
To compliment WP7S’ focus on consumers, Windows Phones Classic will shift its focus to emerging markets and enterprise solutions. Notably one of the important reasons for this is to provide legacy support to all the existing investments made by OEMs and third-party developers to this platform.
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I personally consider this a strike of genius: iPhone heads get their fix, while business heads and geeks can continue to use their favorite OS. Two types of customer need two types of platform – and Microsoft seems to understand that better than most. They had “split operating systems” for ages: what worked for Windows NT and 9x should also work in mobile.
For them, WM7 seems to be the “premium” service for media-centric handsets – business boxen will continue to use Windows Mobile 6.5.x. This means that two customer groups get tailor-made solutions; which sounds lovely to me.
What do you think?
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