Steve Ballmer unveiled a variety of new cell phones that will be using Windows Phone 7 yesterday. Unfortunately Ballmer’s presentation bombed. Which leads me to wonder whether this is Microsoft’s last chance with the mobile platform?
With Microsoft’s share of the smart phone market accounting for just 5 percent of the worldwide smart phone market in the last quarter, there’s increasing pressure on Ballmer to kick-start what even he acknowledges has been a disappointing performance. Symbian, on the other hand, had a 41 percent share, 18 percent went to Research in Motion’s BlackBerry phones, 17 percent for Android and 14 percent for the iPhone, according to research firm Gartner.
The first thing that any gadget lover will notice is that the Microsoft logo is on the button that is below the screen. As far as I know this is something new and it just does not impress me. You don’t need constant reminders about what operating software is found on your phone. The second problem is that developers are really not excited about the Windows Phone 7 software platform. Developers can simply use Visual Studio to create applications.
Ballmer (seen in the image above) has made it clear that Microsof’ts dabbling in the mobile business is a long term strategy. Mr Ballmer, you might need to bring the cheque book and purchase a competitor to survive. Or maybe take some classes from Steve Jobs on how to market your products.
