14 DAY TRIAL // Windows Phone 7 OS, the latest mobile operating system Microsoft unveiled officially at the Mobile World Congress last week, comes around with great changes when compared to the previous flavors of the platform, including new services, enhanced applications and a minimum of hardware requirements for all devices that will be powered by it. But that is not all, it seems, as the Redmond-based software giant unveiled on Monday a new strategy for the mobile market, one said to be both “closed” and “horizontal.”
Andy Lees, senior vice president of Microsoft's mobile communications business, stated during an investor conference call on Monday morning that the company imposed OEMs to use a minimum of specifications for their handsets, while also restricting the customization levels they could enjoy. They won't be able to use the hardware they want, that's true, but that applies to a minimum of specs, meaning that they can do whatever they want above that limit.
“[...] historically OEMs can do whatever they like,” Andy Lees said, reports The Microsoft Blog. “The problem with that is, from a software point of view, the hardware you're running on. And therefore your software is not optimized for the hardware, in which case the end-user doesn't get the benefit of the innovation that the OEMs are providing. So with this new model, we provide a minimum as to what the hardware needs to be capable of; we don't stop people from adding value over and above that. And what the means is, that means the software and hardware is optimized to work together.”
The new approach to the mobile area should offer Microsoft the possibility to regain some of the market share it lost to rival companies. And that will be ensured by a closer collaboration with OEMs, as well as by the fact that a higher percentage of the software included in the handsets will be written by Microsoft, and not OEMs, so as to maintain the Windows Phone 7 look on various devices. According to Lees, OEMs will be able to differentiate their products “in a way that is synergistical with what” Microsoft develops.
At the same time, Lees also unveiled some other details on Windows Phone 7, including the fact that there would be a new Internet Explorer browser available with the OS, one with hardware-accelerated graphics, or that Xbox Live integration would offer developers the possibility to come up with “multiplayer, multiscreen” games. “What we don't want is things that are going to compete or take away from the total experience. And so I'd say that it's not restricting insomuch as it's liberating by having these common standards,” Lees also said, according to the news site.