Microsoft left with Apple and BlackBerry pie on face as it misses own Windows Mobile sales targets

Davey Winder
Monday, 04 August 2008 05:46

Your IT - Mobility

The July launch of the Jesus Phone could hardly have made a bigger media splash, with the hype building for many weeks before it actually happened. Anyone in the market for a serious smartphone would seriously have been considering it at the very least.

Even if the iPhone 3G was not on the shopping list, the media speculation over a new breed of smartphone handsets looming large to imitate its style and functionality would be enough to make all but the most loyal of Microsoft mobile fanboys to delay a purchase while they wait and see what emerges.

Unless, that it, Windows Mobile has just lost its appeal in the increasingly style and fashion led mobile consumer marketplace. Microsoft has a populist consumer mountain to climb if it is to break free of the 'business only' branding its mobile platform has been encumbered with.

It appears to be only too well aware of this, recently assuring anyone who would listen that it was to address issues surrounding music functionality for the OS in future upgrades for example.

I am not sure that will be enough. Not least because Microsoft is facing a two-pronged attack in the smartphone sector: Apple coming from the consumer flank with the iPhone, and RIM performing a pincer movement with the enterprise oriented BlackBerry also finding its consumer feet.

Certainly, in the light of the disappointing sales figures for 2008, it looks like the plan for a 40 percent global share of the smartphone market by 2012 will have to go on the back burner. Shifting 18 million units, and growing the business, are to be applauded.

But I fear that when you miss your own sales predictions, targets that have been hyped in the media loud and clear, then the applause is likely to be drowned out by the sound of glass being broken by stone throwing marketing types.

Let's wait and see how the Redmond giant does with WIndows Mobile 7, I guess...