John Gruber in a recent podcast give a very positive review of a short time he got to spend with a new WinPhone7 prototype mobile. I’ve said many times here and at the Apple Finance Board that the future may not look like the past and the current smartphone wars of iOS v Android as created by the media may look very different in the future. Anyone predicting Android dominance is premature. WinPhone7 will compete for mindshare with all the current smartphone players but primarily WinPhone7 is aimed at Android. Both are licensed OS’s used by competing hardware phone makers.
Apple and Nokia have chosen to stick with their own OSs and HP seems to be taking a schizophrenic approach by developing its own OS (webOS) phones while at the same time using Microsoft licensed winphone7 for other mobile products. This may be a temporary obligation they had to Microsoft or, it may just represent a flawed strategic approach. In any case, If WinPhone7 is good, fast, and has a rich feature set AND if Microsoft can force Android handset makers to pay them license royalities on each Android OS handset they sell then WinPhone7 has an interesting chance to be a game changer, stealing a fair share of the market from Android phones.
Microsoft has lots of money to spend on advertising and R&D and they have the motivation to play for high stakes. They could make the smartphone market a 3 OS market.
This is good for Apple. People either want an Apple product or they don’t, you either “get” Apple or you don’t. So Apple will continue to sell very large numbers of phones and rake in the lion’s share of smartphone profits. HTC, Motorola, LG, Samsung, Sony and the rest of the licence crowd will duke out Android/WinPhone7 space with endless phone variations using Android or WinPhone7.
