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Microsoft in the Pink with Verizon on iPhone?

Verizon, AT&T's number-one competitor on mobile, is being touted as the company Microsoft will partner with to deliver a touch-screen phone running Windows. Microsoft is reportedly talking to Verizon about delivering a touch-screen device early next year. If true, then the phone is likely to be running Windows Mobile 6.5 that's …

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Anonymous Coward
Paris Hilton

As with Zunes?

MS does not seem to do "me too" very well.

I don't know why but it just seems to be so.

Anonymous Coward
Joke

I found an early picture!

http://www.ehow.com/how_4401691_telephone-simple-tin-can-phone.html

I think that they have applied for a patent!

Ascylto
Stop

Zunes and Bears

"Microsoft, itself, has already admitted

Windows 6.5 will fall short of what the company

should be delivering ..."

IN OTHER NEWS

The Pope is a Catholic

Bears defecate in woods

Tim Cook

A title is required?

Is the story here simply that this new phone will be Microsoft branded? Otherwise, "Verizon to carry Windows Mobile phone shocker" doesn't seem all that remarkable. It would be an odd and slightly pointless move for MS to simply market just another Windows Mobile 6.5 phone alongside all the many identical 6.5 handsets to be pumped out by HTC and the like.

The braver and possibly more successful route would be to pull up the drawbridge - leave HTC etc to the likes of Android, stop licensing WM en masse, and take what's good about Windows Mobile to make a dedicated piece of hardware that can really give the iPhone a run for its money. But they won't do that...

Anonymous Coward
Dead Vulture

@AC

Couldn't agree more. Show me someone, anyone apart from anti-apple zealots who sees the Zune as groundbreaking or even anything beyond competent.

It's just not the platform to be the launchpad to take on iPhone OS 3 or Android.

I couldn't see this even 18 months back but MS appear to finished. Ah, you say dominance in OS and Office, but the shift to mobile computing, smart phones et al is slowly delivering a death of a thousand cuts. Add to that FOSS continuing to deliver into the infrastructure market, the Oracle/Sun link up and it's hard to see any turf where MS isn't seeing major challenges emerging. And unfortunately they seem to be unable to think outside the box.

The problem, it seems to me, is that Microsoft have confused market share with profitability. The XBox division is a case in point - it's easy to loss lead hardware to gain market share, but there needs to be a plan to generate the revenue to recover that. And in that respect (accounting trickery excepted) the XBox division doesn't make money. Sky (in the UK) did exactly the same thing, giving away expensive set top boxes, but on the basis of a really solid ongoing revenue model based around sports programming. Microsoft don't seem to have that.

The danger is that their phone, like the Zune, will be an also ran product that fails to make an early impact and they withers on the vine.

MS need to decide what their plan is - even given their size they can't compete across the piece. The question Steve Balmer needs to ask himself is "Where do you want to go today?" ;-)

Adam Starkey

@Tim Cook

My understanding is that Ballmer wishes to have more control over the whole experience, ala Apple.

As such, this is likely to be a device where MS work with select partners, or make specific requirements of the hardware when granting licenses. I don't think this is intended to be just another WinMob phone.

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