Mobile Networks and Handset manufacturers better keep up!
17 February 2009
Microsoft are announcing a whole bunch of new mobile device strategy involving a new operating system they are now calling Windows Phone (is this Windows Mobile 6.5?) , a store service called Market place, and a online sync/backup service.
This is all great news and sounds like Microsoft are finally trying to catchup (well finally telling us the consumer about it). However with traditionally Handset manufactures and Networks have been very poor at providing OS upgrade paths for existing handsets. Getting feature of a new OS nearly always involves upgrading the entire handset to a new model. While this is fine and might be acceptable when a handset is approaching 18months in the wild, with the recent pace of change people who have recently upgraded may find they are stuck for several months and unable to move to the new platform and services.