early April, some initial slowness
for users in the United StatesÐ by
March 27, no device had reached
the ª deliveringº stage for either the
March or February updatesÐled to
another micro-burst of public frustration, this time in the comments
section of the Microsoft-owned
Channel 9 Website.
ª We know the table would benefit greatly from more detail, and
we are hoping to add more to it by
working with the operators who
own the ` testing' phase to get more
clarity,º Joe Belfiore, Microsoft' s
corporate vice president and director of Windows Phone program
management, wrote March 26 in
direct response to those comments.
If your phone is shown in scheduling, it' ll be worth checking the
timetable next week.
And therein lies a potential rub:
By ceding the ª testingº phase of the
update process to the ª operatorsº Ð
Microsoft' s carrier partnersÐ the
company surrenders control over
the upgrade timetable to outside
entities whose strategic alliances
and concerns may not wholly align
with those of Redmond.
Those entanglements aside, the
minor speed bumps with the first
two updates will likely pressure
Microsoft to ensure that the software tweaks scheduled for the next
few months, including multitasking and a Twitter feature, proceed
on schedule.
In the meantime, Microsoft
seems intent on plowing through
the early, more awkward stages of
Windows Phone 7' s lifestyle. At its
MIX11 conference, which kicked
off April 12 in Las Vegas, a broad
range of developers and designers
were expected to discuss, among
other topics, the future of Windows
Phone as a viable platform for apps
and services.
A March 30 posting on The Windows Phone Developer Blog offers
numbers that Microsoft executives
will likely use onstage to illustrate
that viability: Windows Phone
Developer Tools being downloaded
some 1.5 million times, the Windows Phone developer community
boasting 36,000 members, and the
Windows Phone 7 ecosystem containing around 11,500 apps.
ª We recognize the importance of
getting great apps on our platform
and not artificially inflating the
number of actual apps available
to [customers] by listing ` wallpa-
pers' as a categoryÐ or perhaps
allowing competitors' apps to run
on the platform to increase ton-
nage,º Brandon Watson, Micro-
soft' s director of developer experi-
ence for Windows Phone 7,
wrote in the posting.
ª We also don' t believe
in the practice of counting
` lite' apps as unique qual-
ity content. In reality, they
only exist because develop-
ers can' t have a Trial API
and must therefore do
extra work.º
Nonetheless, it remains
unclear whether consum-
ers are gravitating toward
the Windows Phone 7 plat-
form. New numbers from
analytics firm comScore
suggest that Microsoft' s
share of the smartphone
market dipped to 7. 7 per-
cent for the three months
ending in February, down
from 9 percent in Novem-
ber 2010, when the first
Windows Phone 7 devices
hit store shelves in the
United States.
To be fair, comScore' s
gross number also incorporates devices in Microsoft' s antiquated Windows Mobile
line, which are presumably experiencing a degree of natural bleed-off in favor of Windows Phone
7 and other platforms. Even so,
Microsoft's smartphone efforts
continue to lag those of Google' s
Android, Apple' s iOS and RIM' s
BlackBerry.
In order to change that picture,
Microsoft is betting on partnerships with companies like Nokia,
a broad array of devices on multiple carriers and quality apps from
third-party developers. As emphasized repeatedly by both Microsoft
executives and outside analysts,
there is a very long game ahead. «
For more articles on this
topic, go to EWEEK.COM.
Windows Phone 7 lacks a mobile version of its
upcoming Internet Explorer 9. Instead (at least
for the moment), the platform relies on a Web
browser based on Internet Explorer 7.
