Will Microsoft delay Windows Mobile 7, its operating system for
smartphones, until 2011?
Rumors circulating online this week seemed to suggest that could be the
case. Much of that scuttlebutt drew its fuel from a report published on the site Bright Side of
News, which said: "We spoke with
representatives from Microsoft, Lenovo, Qualcomm, TI, Nokia, nVidia [sp],
HTC and many more and they all had just one
message—Windows Mobile 7 is delayed until 2011 and the focus is shifting to
Google Android and even Chrome OS."
That site’s report, and the rumors circulating as a result of it, seemed
to contradict intimations made by Microsoft over the past few months that
Mobile 7 would emerge into the public eye sometime in
2010.
At last week’s 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas, Microsoft displayed several smartphones in its
booth running Mobile 6.5, even as CEO Steve Ballmer failed to mention Mobile
7 during his Jan. 6 keynote address.
But during a separate news conference during the show, Robbie Bach,
president of Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division, seemed to suggest
that Mobile 7 would make an
appearance at February’s Mobile World Congress in
Barcelona.
"We are going to have some new things that we’ll talk about at Mobile
World Congress," Bach said in response to a question about the timing of
Mobile 7, according to a transcript released by
Microsoft. "When you look at the product, I’m sort of like, I have the luxury of
having seen it, to be able to look at it and played with it a little bit, but
I’m certainly confident people are going to see it as something that’s
differentiated."
Bach added that the "product" was something "that feels, looks, acts and
performs completely different."
Reports from 2009 suggested that Mobile 7 could make an appearance sometime in late
2010, as part of Microsoft’s
broader strategy to reverse its eroding mobile OS market-share in the face of
stiff competition from RIM’s BlackBerry, Apple’s iPhone, and others. However,
Microsoft has repeatedly refused comment to eWEEK about any
Mobile 7-related news or rumors, except to say: "We're
always working on future versions and have nothing new to announce."
A Nokia representative, Joseph Gallo, responded to eWEEK’s query about
the Bright Side of News report by saying:
"Per our policy, we do not comment on competitor announcements, rumors or
speculation. As Windows Mobile is not our smartphone operating system of choice,
we are not able to comment."
HTC also responded to
a query about whether Microsoft had committed to delivering
Mobile 7 for production sometime in
2010.
"We are strongly committed to both Windows Mobile and Android as part of
our overall product lineup," Keith Nowak, a spokesperson for
HTC, told eWEEK in a Jan. 14 email, "and
HTC will continue to build a robust portfolio
of devices on both of these operating systems going forward."
Nowak added that HTC plans to
introduce a number of smartphones running Windows Mobile during 2010, but
declined to elaborate which version of the operating system would be running on
those devices.
When contacted by eWEEK, Theo Valich, author of the original Bright Side
of News article, said in an email: "This is not the matter of Microsoft delaying
the part into 2011, this is the question of, if they come in 2010, who will
exactly carry them."
In elaborating on the background to his own story, Valich said that he
had spoken to executives at several companies, and, "What I was told was that
Microsoft kept on delaying the release of the operating system and that they
could not commit sticking to WM platform given the multi-million dollar
investments they had." Those companies, he added, had begun shifting more
personnel to working on smartphones that incorporate the Google Android
OS.
In the meantime, Microsoft and at least one manufacturing partner, Sony
Ericsson, plan on producing a smartphone with
Windows Mobile 6.5.3, reportedly
an incremental improvement on the Mobile 6.5 that made
its debut in October 2009.
Speaking on strict background, an employee for Nokia, who declined
to use his name because he wanted to defer to the company's official
statement, termed the Bright Side of News report "strange." Until next
month’s Mobile World Congress, the question of Mobile 7’s ultimate
release date
will be left up in the air—and meanwhile, yet another round of rumors
suggests
that the operating system making its debut during the conference will
be Mobile
6.6.
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
