For a couple years now, Microsoft's CEO has been making bold promises about the company making a serious effort to be a player in mobile. He criticized the failed Windows Mobile 6.5 effort and promoted Windows Phone 7 as a game-changer. Then Windows Phone 7 shipped with the fewest capabilities of any competing mobile OS (despite having a nice UI) and quickly became a joke and a flop. Likewise, Ballmer made promises on Windows tablets a year ago that the company never even tried to fulfill.Yesterday, Ballmer announced that Windows Phone 7 would be updated late this year to make Internet capabilities a "first-class citizen" (his words, not mine, though it's nice to see him agree that the early version was second- or third-class). Ballmer promised that Microsoft would address the features currently missing from Windows Phone 7, such as HTML5 support and multitasking.[ Get all the details on why Windows Phone 7 fails. | Keep up on key mobile developments and insights with the Mobile Edge blog and Mobilize newsletter. ]Microsoft previously said it will add cut and paste to Windows Phone 7 this year as well. Not so clear is whether Microsoft plans to fill in all the security and management holes that disallow its use in most corporate networks, such as lack of VPN and on-device encryption, as well as substandard support for Microsoft's own Exchange ActiveSync policies (it supports fewer of those policies than any competing platform).What Ballmer is promising to deliver -- multitasking and HTML5 support -- are basic capabilities that should have been in Windows Phone 7 at the outset. Apple's iOS, Google's Android OS, Hewlett-Packard's WebOS, and Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS 6 (introduced with the Torch last summer) all do. This is Microsoft just finally getting the basic in place, not an advancement that should get people excited.The basics matter -- especially if Nokia's adoption of Windows Phone 7 is to have a prayer of working (I think it's a suicidal move). But in the competitive mobile market where Apple continues to set the pace and Google continues to follow fast, simply staying on the track isn't good enough.And given how Microsoft routinely breaks the promises Ballmer makes in the mobile space, I can't help but believe that when Windows Phone 7 does get multitasking, HTML5 support, and cut and paste, it will not deliver to the standard of the competition.I'm all for admitting mistakes and expecting to be forgiven, as long as the actual mistake is addressed and not repeated. Maybe this time Ballmer means what he says and Microsoft will deliver on it this fall. But with its track record, I wouldn't bet on it.
Nokia stalwart Symbian isn't quite making its exit yet even though the world's largest phone maker is switching to Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 as its primary smartphone platform. "Just because we're changing our direction in terms of smartphone platform, it doesn't mean that the existing platform is completely broken," said Vlasta Berka, general manager for Nokia Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei, at the launch of the E7 smartphone in Singapore today. "We still have obligations to our users, developers, business partners, and customers." According to Nokia, there are currently 200 million Symbian users around the world. The Finnish outfit said it expects to sell about 150 million Symbian devices going forward. "Symbian is here to stay. Symbian will still be around, but it's just going to go somewhere around the corner," Berka added. The latest E7 smartphone features a 4-inch AMOLED display, physical QWERTY keyboard, 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, 16GB of onboard memory and a suite of enterprise solutions. It retails at S$989 ($774) in Singapore. Berka also tried to allay fears that Nokia will cease support for the Symbian platform. He said over 50 improvements, from visual to performance enhancements, will be rolled out for the rest of this year. Last week, Nokia's Chief Executive Stephen Elop noted that the Qt development environment that is used for Symbian devices would not be usable on Windows Phone 7 applications. He said this was to ensure that differing platforms don't confuse developers or consumers. According to Gartner, Symbian's market share dropped from 46.9 percent in 2009 to 37.6 percent in 2010.
