TheWindowsPhone

Not long ago, AT&T executive Roger Smith was hinting that his company would prefer to support one type of mobile software which was widely interpreted to mean that AT&T might eventually set their sights solely on Symbian, which came out comfortably over Windows Mobile this year, according to research firm Canalys. Since then, a bit of gloom has just kept spreading through the Windows Mobile news world.

BusinessWeek have an article up that outlines things they feel that Microsoft needs to fix in order to stay in the fast-paced mobile game. They break it into three main necessities: touch displays, mobile cloud computing, and its own app store. Windows Mobile is seen, by some research firm execs, as “chasing the market” but many, like me, worry they aren’t chasing fast enough.

While most of us would instantly argue that Windows Mobile has a touch interface, BusinessWeek (among others) consider most Windows Mobile devices to have ’stylus’ interfaces.

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As far as mobile cloud computing is concerned, BusinessWeek had this to say:

Microsoft also should also follow Google’s and Apple’s lead in the area of wireless cloud-computing services. The move would shift energy-sapping computing power away from users’ cell phones and onto the powerful servers maintained by Microsoft. Rivals are already offering such services. When you purchase an iPhone application from the Apple App Store, the payment is processed on Apple’s servers rather than on an individual device. When you ask your G1 to find the nearest sushi joint, it’s Google’s servers and not your phone that churn out the map. In both cases, your phone doesn’t do much legwork. Most of the processing is done on remote servers “in a cloud.” So processing typically happens faster and it requires your handheld device to be less sophisticated—and less costly. As cloud computing spreads onto rival software-based devices, Microsoft could lose $850 million in revenue in 2012 alone, according to Bernstein Research—unless it ramps up its own efforts.

As far as a Microsoft branded app store goes, I agree that one can’t come soon enough. Plenty of sources have been saying for months now that Microsoft is already working on something called Skymarket, which will offer applications and cloud services. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed on that one.

All in all, I will say that – though harsh – BusinessWeek is right on the money with a lot of these ideas.

Microsoft, are you listening?

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