WinMo 7 or WinMeh 7 to launch at MWC next month?

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 23 January 2010 13:45

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s iPhone OS, known as Windows Mobile 7, is very late, but a new report suggests it will finally be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in February, with WinMo 7 powered phones due to hit the market by year’s end, or early next year, delivering the “ZunePhone” at last.

Taiwanese tech publication Digitimes has reported that not only will Windows Mobile 7 finally be unveiled at the annual “Mobile World Congress” next month in Barcelona, but an interim WinMo 6.6 will launch as well.

The 6.6 version is meant to support multi-touch screens, but given HTC’s HD2 has this feature and still works with WinMo 6.5, one can only question exactly why Microsoft sees the need to release yet another interim version.

No doubt we’ll hear all the details at the MWC, but no-one really cares about WinMo 6.6 – the juicy stuff is all supposed to be in WinMo 7.

Numerous reports online suggest that Windows Mobile 7 is a complete break from the WinMo past, meaning old WinMo apps won’t work on the new platform, which is supposed to be based on the software that powers Microsoft’s Zune media player. This will cause some developer consternation, but will give Windows Mobile a clean slate to work from.

Should this occur, it will confirm the longstanding rumours that Microsoft was developing a ZunePhone after all, despite its endless denials, something that only makes consumers suspicious of companies that make such denials when reality seems so obviously different.

As Digitimes and others have reported, there’s a bit of a sting in the tail to follow the so-called “launch”, which is that WinMo 7 phones are due to arrive either at the end of 2010, or early in 2011, instead of being made available immediately.

Of course an early 2011 launch will be nearly five years after the iPhone’s original launch in January 2007, showing that Microsoft, at least, was one of the companies Steve Jobs referred to when he claimed the iPhone OS was five years ahead of the competition.

Digitimes also repeats the widely held expectation that WinMo 7 will support Xbox Live (and the possibility of Xbox Live gaming), an actually usable browser, Silverlight support, Zune music and much more.

The only real downside to all of this is that it really looks like Microsoft is but responding to today’s iPhone with what will effectively be a sort-of “version 1.5” operating system (despite the “7” moniker), and not the iPhone that will, in theory, arrive mid-2011, with a true 5th generation mobile operating system.

So, Microsoft: your WinMo 7 had better be the most amazing thing in the whole entire universe when it launches, or you’ll be celebrated as having launched WinMeh 7 instead, and no amount of developer dancing will hide the disappointment.