Windows Mobile 7 seriously delayed

http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/26/windows-mobile-7-phone-release-now-seriously-delayed-could-be-as-late-as-2010/

Bad news for Windows Mobile fans I guess.

Meh.......  Windows Mobile 6.1 + something like TouchFLO 3D + Opera works great already.

Wow. 2010.

Will Microsoft have a chance to catch up to other mobile devices by then (RIM, iPhone)? One of the biggest features in WinMo 7 has to have Pocket IE to be able to render pages such as IE 6 would. LoL. 2010.... IE 9 will be out then?

VB Man said:

Wow. 2010.

Will Microsoft have a chance to catch up to other mobile devices by then (RIM, iPhone)? One of the biggest features in WinMo 7 has to have Pocket IE to be able to render pages such as IE 6 would. LoL. 2010.... IE 9 will be out then?

The 2010 date is taking into account that the carriers and handset manufacturers are generally idiots when it comes to getting devices up and running. Part of this comes from the fact that Microsoft let's people put WinMo on crazy hardware, and the carriers need time to nerf whatever device the manufacturers can come up with.

But yeah, 2010

I hope they have some finger friendly GUI, like iPhone or Zune. If they are not going to make a Zune phone, at least make a WinMo look as finger friendly as Zune. Zune has no touch screen, but the GUI is sure big enough for finger.

Dovella said:

The current Windows Mobile, are already higher than any other mobile market.

Connecting some old news I no longer have any doubt,

Everything has been moved to the Zune Phone
i'm sure 100%

Defending Microsoft here can only make things worse.

It isn't bad enough that MS sell OS that still looks so early '90 on the desktop. C'mon, guys, give me a year, I'll make good spiffy interface. HTC proved that. Isn't a shame that we need some hardware company to fix software shortcomings?

IE 6 code base is now a big news. Don't let me started on that.

Win32 programming model. On a mobile device. Ok, it was nice ten years ago, to give the developers some head start, but today, guys, seriously - we seen that you know how to make some good framework work with WPF (ok, there's some performance work needed, but still), where's something similar for the mobile phone? Some all-around .NET framework that isn't just a bleach copy of WinForms? Something actually built with idea to make developing things for the mobile phone, you know, fun and easy to use (Android SDK, I'm looking at you - how many steps it takes on Windows Mobile to replace the default dialer, for example? Or to fetch contact list? Or to be notified when the next SMS arrives?)?

Etc, etc... if it's some other company, I'll probably say "but it's a big task, to re-invent the whole platform". But we're talking about Microsoft. THE software company. If MS doesn't have enough warm bodies to throw at the problem, who does? I suspect that we have not body count problem, but motivation problem - Palm is buried, Symbian is more or less crap, someone from the management told to developers "ok, we're done here". Well, guys, prepare for some serious butt-kick-awakening: you got some slack from Apple's idiotic NDA behavior, but I doubt that they will wait forever to put their act together, and Android seems very, very promising (I didn't touch the phone, of course, but SDK looks much more serious than current WM am-I-mobile-device-or-something-that-pretends-to-be-a-small-desktop)

apetrovic said:

Dovella said:

*snip*

Defending Microsoft here can only make things worse.

It isn't bad enough that MS sell OS that still looks so early '90 on the desktop. C'mon, guys, give me a year, I'll make good spiffy interface. HTC proved that. Isn't a shame that we need some hardware company to fix software shortcomings?

IE 6 code base is now a big news. Don't let me started on that.

Win32 programming model. On a mobile device. Ok, it was nice ten years ago, to give the developers some head start, but today, guys, seriously - we seen that you know how to make some good framework work with WPF (ok, there's some performance work needed, but still), where's something similar for the mobile phone? Some all-around .NET framework that isn't just a bleach copy of WinForms? Something actually built with idea to make developing things for the mobile phone, you know, fun and easy to use (Android SDK, I'm looking at you - how many steps it takes on Windows Mobile to replace the default dialer, for example? Or to fetch contact list? Or to be notified when the next SMS arrives?)?

Etc, etc... if it's some other company, I'll probably say "but it's a big task, to re-invent the whole platform". But we're talking about Microsoft. THE software company. If MS doesn't have enough warm bodies to throw at the problem, who does? I suspect that we have not body count problem, but motivation problem - Palm is buried, Symbian is more or less crap, someone from the management told to developers "ok, we're done here". Well, guys, prepare for some serious butt-kick-awakening: you got some slack from Apple's idiotic NDA behavior, but I doubt that they will wait forever to put their act together, and Android seems very, very promising (I didn't touch the phone, of course, but SDK looks much more serious than current WM am-I-mobile-device-or-something-that-pretends-to-be-a-small-desktop)

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Edit 1: I've read your post a few more times and I think I understand you now. I definitely agree, they need to do something that involves lots of WPF if Windows Mobile is going to have any chance keeping up with the interfaces we've seen from other vendors. As for the system-wide .NET Framework, there was some speculation about this a while ago but it seems less likely to me than advances in the user experience. At least the Windows Mobile team now has some decent competition to work against.

apetrovic said:

Dovella said:

*snip*

Defending Microsoft here can only make things worse.

It isn't bad enough that MS sell OS that still looks so early '90 on the desktop. C'mon, guys, give me a year, I'll make good spiffy interface. HTC proved that. Isn't a shame that we need some hardware company to fix software shortcomings?

IE 6 code base is now a big news. Don't let me started on that.

Win32 programming model. On a mobile device. Ok, it was nice ten years ago, to give the developers some head start, but today, guys, seriously - we seen that you know how to make some good framework work with WPF (ok, there's some performance work needed, but still), where's something similar for the mobile phone? Some all-around .NET framework that isn't just a bleach copy of WinForms? Something actually built with idea to make developing things for the mobile phone, you know, fun and easy to use (Android SDK, I'm looking at you - how many steps it takes on Windows Mobile to replace the default dialer, for example? Or to fetch contact list? Or to be notified when the next SMS arrives?)?

Etc, etc... if it's some other company, I'll probably say "but it's a big task, to re-invent the whole platform". But we're talking about Microsoft. THE software company. If MS doesn't have enough warm bodies to throw at the problem, who does? I suspect that we have not body count problem, but motivation problem - Palm is buried, Symbian is more or less crap, someone from the management told to developers "ok, we're done here". Well, guys, prepare for some serious butt-kick-awakening: you got some slack from Apple's idiotic NDA behavior, but I doubt that they will wait forever to put their act together, and Android seems very, very promising (I didn't touch the phone, of course, but SDK looks much more serious than current WM am-I-mobile-device-or-something-that-pretends-to-be-a-small-desktop)

post as these are now OLD

blowdart said:

Dovella said:

*snip*

And this statistics and predictions came from where exactly?

Interesting the iPhone already has displaced WinMo into second place in the US

Gartner shows Nokia, and thus Symbian shipping 10 times as many phones world wide as HTC (although that doesn't include rebranded operator HTC devices), and Symbian owning 57% of the worldwide phone OS market, with RIM in second place.

I think this is in part due to how the iPhone has inflated the market for smartphones quite considerably. Lots of people who would never before have bought smartphones have now done so through the act of purchasing an iPhone. I would go so far as to say that the majority of people who own iPhones wouldn't have owned a smartphone before.

Those statistics are impressive nonetheless. Just wait until they start bringing out cheaper versions of the iPhone like they did with the iPod.

tfraser said:

blowdart said:

*snip*

I think this is in part due to how the iPhone has inflated the market for smartphones quite considerably. Lots of people who would never before have bought smartphones have now done so through the act of purchasing an iPhone. I would go so far as to say that the majority of people who own iPhones wouldn't have owned a smartphone before.

Those statistics are impressive nonetheless. Just wait until they start bringing out cheaper versions of the iPhone like they did with the iPod.

The iPhone isn't a true smartphone since you're not free to develop and deploy your own programs without limitations, that's why the majority of smartphone software is for Windows Mobile, there are zero restrictions, as opposed to the $99 fee to get the iPhone SDK, then a few thousand $$$ for getting an Intel Mac to develop on, and then you're still at Apple's whim on wether or not to allow a program to be distributed via the App Store.

This way it's more of an extremely well executed feature-phone with limited expansion facilities.

blowdart said:

W3bbo said:

*snip*

It depends how you define smartphone of course; it's not like there is a standard definition.

Definition: Phones demo'ed at Mix08

I think translation of this delay is... "sorry, we screwed up and need to start from scratch again...".

BlackTiger said:

I think translation of this delay is... "sorry, we screwed up and need to start from scratch again...".

I hope so. I hope they area really going to start from scratch. WinMo is like Win95 on Mobile.

magicalclick said:

BlackTiger said:

*snip*

I hope so. I hope they area really going to start from scratch. WinMo is like Win95 on Mobile.

Zing! Hit that nail on the head...

magicalclick said:

BlackTiger said:

*snip*

I hope so. I hope they area really going to start from scratch. WinMo is like Win95 on Mobile.

Win95? Quite too optimistic... It's Win311 for me...