My Samsung Omnia II running Windows Mobile 6.5 was actually quite good back in 2009 - I thought it was better overall than an iPhone and had some good hopes for Microsoft after owning a couple of nice HP Windows CE PDAs (remember those Microsoft ?!). However, when Microsoft announced that none of the apps I'd purchased for 6.5 would be compatible with Windows Mobile 7, I was furious, switched to Android in protest and never looked back.
And amazing, this was the second time it had happened to me......I used to be a faithful fan of Palm. The original Treo phones were reasonably, despite most people laughing at my phone with it's large colour touchscreen with icons and apps - I mean who would want that in a phone ?!!!
The huge failed opportunity in my opinion was that Sony didn't buy Palm and release a true smartphone before Apple did. Sony Clie PDAs were lovely. I owned a Sony PEG-UX50 back in 2004. It was amazing hardware for a pocket device: Wifi, bluetooth, rotating touchscreen to flip between 'laptop' and 'tablet' mode, camera, memory card slot, charger docking station, qwerty keyboard, and Palm had a amazing app development community. In that same year, Sony purchased Ericsson as it saw a future in mobile phones, and was really productive in brining out excellent Sony Ericsson devices which were at least as good as anything Nokia were doing. I then purchased the latest Sony Cybershot phone - the camera was a revelation for a phone device. I pleaded for Sony to merge the UX50 tech into it's Ericsson phone tech, transfer its Symbian engineering resource into Palm development, and create the most amazing phone ever.........nothing happened.
And then Apple released the iPhone a year later.
My only consolation is that I've now owned each most of the top Sony Xperia devices (now on an XZ Premium) so at least Sony finally caught up with Apple and Samsung. But it could have destroyed them both......
Hey, Microsoft, Sony, I'm just a nobody in the world of IT - but I could have run your companies better than you....WTF ???!!!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
