Windows Phone 7 - Microsoft's Last Stand

Windows is a household name as far as desktop and laptop computers are concerned, and it holds 90% of the market share in that market. However, the reverse is true for the Windows Mobile Phone OS share. Smartphones are gaining huge ground in developed economies and larger emerging ones, led by Apple's iOS and Google's Android. Microsoft however, has lagged behind greatly with its Windows Mobile Operating System. While the OS was rich in functionality and application support (especially for business users), it was truly one of the worst, as far as the user experience is concerned. A mini-start menu looked simply ugly on a 3-inch screen and it was more importantly, not very easy to operate. But that's all history now.

Windows Phone 7, rewritten from scratch, attempts to not only provide a completely new user experience for phone users, but also bring more cohesion among Microsoft's own services. The user interface is a tile-based approach, which is different from the icon-based approach associated with iOS and Android. Most of the services are grouped into "Hubs", eg: People Hub provides Facebook and Twitter updates in addition to storing contact info. The XBOX Live Hub is very useful for XBox owners as it provides them access to their XBox account and the Live Arcade and its selection of games. In terms of other differentiating features, Windows Phone 7 has The Zune software, including access to the Zune Marketplace, and a mobile version of Microsoft Office. The OS at the moment lacks some commonly found features, such as Bluetooth file transfer , and copy-paste functionality, although the company says it will be available early next year.

Basically, Microsoft has provided all the essential features of the modern-day smart phone, without the need for any third-party app so far. Also, it offers an interface which is supposed to reduce the number of hops required to access the main features of a phone.This seems to be a good strategy at least from a customer point of view. However, availability of many third-party apps is the main reason why iOS and Android are leading the race right now. Microsoft already has a few popular apps such as Netflix and eBay. But whether it can build an app catalog rivalling that of the two frontrunners, how well it manages and controls this catalog, remains to be seen. Additionally, the missing-features, unless not made available soon, can turn off quite a few potential customers.

UPDATE: Here's a link to a well detailed review from Ars Technica, one of my favorite websites.