The recent launch of several Windows Phone 7 devices has left many to write the products off as too little too late. Reports from the retail channels suggest sluggish sales. But I think Microsoft has a stronger play here than many suspect.
This certainly wouldn’t be the first time Microsoft has come late to the party. They seem to like to observe things for a while, enter with a product that may be less then compelling and then apply heavy pressure over time. Internet Explorer was initially seen as a weak product, but came to be dominant. Even as other browsers are beginning to surge in popularity, many large corporations today can’t update their browsers from IE 6 as they have applications that rely on many of IE6’s non-standard features. But the real story is that Microsoft probably really doesn’t care about IE anymore. It can embrace and extend any browser.
As the World Wide Web was in its early stages, and important feature was the ability adapt to the display type – displaying, for example a title, in bold, or a larger font, or whatever the display supported. However, as the commercial side of the web developed, the need to display websites exactly as designed grew. Web developers spent countless hours tricking different browsers into acting like one another. Javascript and CSS would come along as aids, but the need to display documents exactly as designed allowed Adobe to create quite a large business with Acrobat. With the acquisition of Macromedia Adobe also controlled video on the web as well a better way to create interactive content.
Meanwhile, Microsoft was offering developers a new framework in its .NET offerings. Originally, no one knew what .NET was. It was so many things. Some of these things were dropped along the way. But with more recent releases, the picture has begun to crystallize. Microsoft is locked in a direct war with Adobe, an end-run around HTML, and trying to nudge Apple and Google aside for control of the web, and perhaps the internet as a whole.
.NET applications provide their interfaces through XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language) which implements the Window Presentation Foundation (WPF), and WPF/E (WFP/Everywhere) is Silverlight. XPS (XMS Paper Specification) is a subset of XAML and controls printing in Windows (XPS files can also be displayed directly). So, XAML allows for the display of interactive applications, video, sound, printing and static documents. Silverlight allows any machine to take advantage of this. This includes the capabilities of Acrobat Reader, Flash, and even Postscript. Adobe is not happy.
XAML could supplant HTML entirely on the internet even has it runs natively on desktops. Not if Adobe, Apple and Google have any say in the matter. But they aren’t necessarily uniting in a common front.
Apple excels at what Microsoft often stumbles with - The consumer market. To do so, Apple has kept tight grip on native iPhone development so that no application can ruin it in the eyes of consumers. It cannot become a commodity product. Apple has basically banned Flash on the iPhone, claiming battery drain issues.
Google’s more open Android approach has been popular with many segments. But it remains to be seen if tweaks by the manufacturers, in order to distinguish themselves, may create a morass for developers, lead to customer service issues, or general confusion about what one gets on an Android device.
RIM will likely be an early casualty due to its popularity with corporate users. Unlike the consumer market, the corporate IT world is a segment where Microsoft is much stronger. Windows Mobile wasn't enough of a contender. With full Office integration, and .NET developers on hand, Windows Phone 7 will be attractive to corporate decision makers. So, many new WP7 users will have one, not because they did a comparison at Best Buy, but because that is the phone their company is paying for.
At some point, Silverlight support could come to be expected of any device considered by the enterprise market. At that point, Microsoft will have won. WPF/Everywhere.
