Yesterday I watched an offline video of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmar’s presentation on Windows Phone 7 Series. Yes! You read it correctly; it’s not Windows Mobile 7.0. Windows Phone 7 Series was officially unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on 15th this month.
As told, it is a ground up approach from Microsoft with brand new operating system and efficient device drivers. Home screen is completely altered with “tiles” which scroll vertically and can be customized as quick launches, links to contacts, or self contained widgets. User interface experience is kind of WOW! (Should I say iPhone style J? Probably more than that) It will support multiple form factors and 4-point multi touch screen. Lot of extensibility is promised, even OS can be extended.
The architecture seems to be in information integration space. Integration approach is deeply rooted in operating system level. Like the people hub – targeted towards social networking – provides integrated contact pages which show status updates from multiple social networking services. Likewise there are five inbuilt hubs.
For developers Microsoft has promised new development platform, new tools and new services in could. The details will be announced at MIX10 conference in Mar 2010.
Apart from focusing on software, Microsoft is also focusing on carrier and hardware partnership. Carrier partnership including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone, while hardware partners include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC, HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm.
I believe, the focus will be to grab major pie of 66-million smart phone market in US for 2010. I believe this is going to be a make or break situation for Microsoft as it is losing fast on smartphones to iPhone and Android (source: Gartner).
First handsets are supposed to hit the market by the holidays of this year. I am super excited and as a developer and architect looking forward to MIX10.
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