Microsoft will unveil its next-generation mobile operating system Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, according to The Wall Street Journal. People who have had an early look at the software giant's new platform, reportedly called Windows Phones, say its touch-sensing user interface is comparable to what Microsoft currently offers on its Zune HD music player, the newspaper reported.
Beyond improvements to the interface, however, Microsoft's new mobile OS needs to be optimized for mobility, according to Lisa Pierce, an independent wireless analyst at the Strategic Networks Group.
"Frankly, there seems to be an underlying assumption on the part of Microsoft that people want to do exactly what they want to do on a PC, but in a smaller form factor," Pierce said. "But this is not necessarily the case."
A Shrinking Market Share
There are certain standard PC apps that make perfect sense for deployment on mobile devices, Pierce observed. "But then there are the ones that frankly are not going to work very well without an entirely different type of display," she said, citing spreadsheets as an example.
Microsoft's share of the mobile OS market was just nine percent at the end of last year's second quarter, according to Gartner Research. And given that Windows Mobile 6.5 only became available in October, it was too late to have an impact on the third quarter, so sales of Windows-based smartphones saw another decline to 7.9 percent, Gartner analysts said.
By contrast, Nokia (44.6 percent), Research In Motion (20.8 percent) and Apple (17.1 percent) all grew their market shares in the third quarter. Though Android only held a two percent market share at the end of June, the Google-backed platform picked up momentum and rose to 3.5 percent in the third quarter after the launch of several new phones, but still lagged behind the 4.7 percent share held by mobile Linux, Gartner analysts added.
Pierce thinks increasing the new mobile operating system's speed is among the most important improvements that Microsoft needs to make in order to stem further market-share losses.
"The problem historically with Microsoft, apart from the user interface, has been that mobile applications were slow to load and work compared to other mobile alternatives," Pierce said. "This is not unlike some of the problems that Windows PC users complain about."
Reducing Data Constraints
Pierce hopes that Microsoft has taken the time to rethink the mobile browser experience so that it does a better job of handling data. "They need to recognize the constraints of the mobile world," Pierce said.
RIM, for example, has implemented some special compression capabilities between the handheld, the cellular tower, and the backhaul, Pierce observed. And Opera is preparing an iPhone browser that dramatically reduces the amount of data that must be sent to Apple's handsets.
What's more, Microsoft must take steps to improve the developer appeal of its Windows Phones platform by building a stronger Microsoft marketplace, noted Gartner Research Director Carolina Milanesi. Additionally, the new OS needs to achieve "ease of use, a stronger brand in the consumer market," and integrate "good rich hardware," she said.
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