Microsoft's vision for universal mobile platform a little blurred

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 24 October 2007 10:30

Opinion and Analysis

The keynote address of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday at the CTIA Wireless conference in San Francisco in which he outlined a grand vision of emulating Windows' desktop computer dominance in the mobile devices space sounded nice in theory. Does the vision bear any relation to reality or is it merely a delusional fantasy?

I don't wish to rain on anyone's parade or to be accused (once again) of being an anti-Microsoft zealot so I'm going to be as objective and dispassionate as I can in looking at the facts.

Ballmer says that Microsoft wants to get Windows onto hundreds of millions of mobile phones (devices) so that developers can develop rich cross platform business and lifestyle applications that span the Windows desktop and mobile phones.

The PC is the most powerful device, says Ballmer, but the phone is the most ubiquitous and people want their phones to be a general purpose device for work, home and play. That much seems to be true.

OK so is there anything standing in the way of Microsoft's grand vision of being the unified platform of choice?

Here are some facts.

Nokia, the number one manufacturer of mobile phones and smartphones in the world, has its own operating system. Or rather it is the major shareholder in ownership of this operating system with other major mobile phone manufacturers having stakes including Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens and Samsung.

This operating system Symbian happens to dominate the mobile phone and smartphone markets with something more than 70% market share and is used by all the major mobile device manufacturers.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, Windows Mobile is currently not even in the second runner in the smartphone operating systems race. Linux, which is widely used on mobile devices in China, is second to Symbian with more than 13% market share. Windows mobile is a distant third with about 6% share.

However, these aren't the only players by any stretch. The wildly popular business mobile device, the Blackberry, also has its own proprietary operating system which has a comparable market share to Windows Mobile. Then of course there's the Palm Treo which runs both Palm OS (about 1.5% share) and Windows Mobile.

Oh, lest we forget, there's an interesting little device released by Apple at the beginning of this year called iPhone that runs Mac OS X, which has already carved more than 1% share of the smartphone operating system space.

Looking at the above facts dispassionately, what has got to happen for Microsoft to dominate the mobile devices operating system market?

Microsoft would have to convince Nokia and a heap of other major mobile companies to replace Symbian with Windows Mobile, convince RIM that licensing Windows mobile is a better option than continuing with the popular Blackberry OS, convince Palm to drop Palm OS and go solely with Windows Mobile, and wean the Chinese mobile market of Linux. As for Apple, can somebody pinch me please, I need to wake up.