Windows Phone 7: 3 Reasons It's Not Just for Consumers
Microsoft, far behind RIM and Apple in the consumer market for mobile phones, needs its established enterprise audience to warm up to Windows Phone 7 — quickly. Will advantages such as integration with Office be enough?
CIO — When Windows Phone 7 devices arrive this holiday season, they will be diving into crowded U.S. consumer waters full of CrackBerry addicts and iPhone fans.
But it's not as if Windows Mobile is a smartphone also-ran. Today, Windows Mobile owns 15.1 percent of the market, according to comScore's most recent numbers, putting Microsoft in third place behind RIM (42 percent) and Apple (25.5 percent). Google's (GOOG) Android platform is moving up at 9 percent, in the fourth place slot.
But the Windows Mobile platform has its work cut out for it. Recent surveys and analyst reports portray Windows Mobile as out of the loop and sorely lacking the brand loyalty of RIM and Apple. There is also the added challenge that applications compatible with Windows Mobile 6.5 or older will not run on Windows Phone 7 devices.
Yet positive overall reviews for Windows Phone 7's look, feel and functionality have shifted momentum. And if Microsoft doesn't win over the hearts and minds of consumers right away, the company believes it has an ace in the hole: the enterprise.
Here Redmond has a long-established ecosystem in place that it can integrate with Windows Phone 7 devices. The goal with the Windows Phone 7, according to a blog post written by Paul Bryan, senior director of Microsoft's mobile communications group, is to "address the needs of customers with active personal and business lives who desire a single device that navigates seamlessly between work and play."
At the TechEd conference this week in New Orleans, Microsoft revealed a few visual changes to Windows Phone 7 and outlined how the mobile platform will meet IT's integration needs by combining a new design interface with tighter integration with Exchange and Exchange ActiveSync, Outlook, PowerPoint, SharePoint (MSFT), Word and Excel.
In an interview last week at the Redmond campus, Microsoft's Bryan shared with CIO.com three reasons Windows Phone 7 is more armed and ready for the enterprise than any other smartphone.
1. New Design Will Improve Employee Productivity
The Windows Phone 7 homescreen is organized around live tiles — dynamic icons that update automatically.
The tiles lead to what Microsoft is calling hubs, which are menu areas that collect data based on functions, not applications. For example, the People hub is not just a list of contacts, but a real-time stream of updates about your friends that have been pulled in from Facebook or Windows Live.
There is a tile for People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video and Marketplace. But the tile businesses users and IT managers will be most interested in is the Office tile.
