RUMOR: Windows Mobile 7 delayed to 2011

[*LTD*]

RUMOR: Windows Mobile 7 delayed to 2011

After speaking with multiple sources, we're now certain that we won't be seeing Windows Mobile 7 before World Mobile Congress in Barcelona in February 2011.

We spoke with representatives from Microsoft, Lenovo, Qualcomm, TI, Nokia, nVidia, HTC and many more and they all had just one message - Windows Mobile 7 is delayed until 2011 and the focus is shifting to Google Android and even Chrome OS as a way to battle the competitors during 2010.

This unfortunate turn of events had several sacrifices, such as dedicated Windows Mobile 7 cellphones and smartbooks that are now being shifted to Android. We are not certain what this means for viability of Microsoft in handheld market and can Zune Phone make amends and restart the eco system but again, according to our sources - they're all going either for Windows XP/7 or Linux where they can [x86 CPU designs] or simply adopting Google's Android or Chrome OS.

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2010/1/10/windows-mobile-7-definitely-delayed-to-2011.aspx

 

[roadbloc]

*oh no! what ever shall we all do now?*

 

[*LTD*]

*oh no! what ever shall we all do now?*

That's definitely a question for MS to ask.

 

[rdowns]

This is devastating for Microsoft, if true. I'm sure they were cheering at Google HQ when this broke.

 

[Eraserhead]

The source isn't exactly well known though, so I doubt its true.

 

[Peace]

Sounds like somebody at MS snuck into the Mac unit and had a peek.

 

[sysiphus]

WinMo is essentially dead in the water for all but the hacker types anyways...now that decent Exchange support is available on other platforms, they have no real selling point--heck, even most of HTC's nice hardware is shipping with Android now.

If Nokia's not careful, they'll end up in the same boat...

 

[jaw04005]

We'll see Windows Mobile 7 previewed next month at Mobile World Congress just like 6.5 was previewed last year. It'll likely ship in Q4 of 2010.

From Ballmer's CES keynote:

"The Mobile Space, this year we brought the next iteration of Windows Phones to consumers with the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5. We continue to see new and exciting Windows Phones coming to the market every month. For example, here's the new HD2, which will be available through T- Mobile, sharper, wider, and richer screen technologies really do make a difference. We will have a lot more to say about phones next month at Mobile World Congress."

http://www.cesweb.org/sessions/keynotes.asp

Mary Jo Foley had more to say about it in her blog post including Robbie Bach pretty much confirming next month's preview.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=4913

 

[Chwisch87]

A preview could be nothing more than a screen shot. They have had years to come up with a iPhone alternative. Instead they got cocky and wrote it off. You could hear Ballmer ... no qwerty blah blah blah, 600 dollars blah blah blah, won't be a good email device blah blah blah. Windows Mobile for the winzzz. Now where are they?? Nearly dead in the mobile space with 1 to 2% market share from their 15.

Ballmer is out for 2009!

 

[maflynn]

That rumor is counter to about every other news item regarding win mobile 7 or is it win 7 mobile?

I highly doubt that Ms will delay it for another year. They realize with the plummeting marketshare of their windows mobile phone market, that another year will surely kill off any hopes of MS resurrecting its phone segment.

 

[roadbloc]

I highly doubt that Ms will delay it for another year. They realize with the plummeting marketshare of their windows mobile phone market, that another year will surely kill off any hopes of MS resurrecting its phone segment.

Isn't that what went wrong with Vista though? They rushed it out and it was crap. I'm sure Microsoft will be more than happy to take their time, if they have learned anything from the mistakes of Vista.

 

[kdarling]

The WM guys, who are not as secretive as the Apple guys (understatement), have said that they delayed WM7 so that they could start from scratch.

They also wanted to be sure that no one could say something important was missing when it debuts. (As with features missing from the iPhone's first OS version, or with the Zune.)

One thing the iPhone proved: it's _never_ too late to come in with a nice platform in the smartphone world.

 

[maflynn]

Isn't that what went wrong with Vista though? They rushed it out and it was crap. I

No,
that's exactly the opposite of what happened with vista. In fact it was being developed for something like 4-5 years. Vista's problem is that MS promised a huge list of things that were going to be in there, like winfs (using sql server for the filesystem) and such. One by one they had to pair it down. Each time change caused a futher delay. Finally they were left with a slow bloated OS that had almost no new features over its predecessor other then the intrusive UAC.

 

[MisterMe]

No,
that's exactly the opposite of what happened with vista. In fact it was being developed for something like 4-5 years. Vista's problem is that MS promised a huge list of things that were going to be in there, like winfs (using sql server for the filesystem) and such. One by one they had to pair it down. Each time change caused a futher delay. Finally they were left with a slow bloated OS that had almost no new features over its predecessor other then the intrusive UAC.

The bottomline is that when Windows Vista was released, it was not ready. If it were not ready, then Microsoft should have taken the time to get it ready. That time is not 4-5 years, 8-10 years, or 12-15 years. It is the time required to get the design right and the bugs out. Windows 7 is essentially Vista with the time need to get the bugs out. You have done an excellent job of explaining why Microsoft released Vista early and nothing to refute roadbloc's point that Microsoft released Vista early.

 

[maflynn]

I disagree it wasn't released early but rather suffered from over-promising and unable to deliver on that. They spent a lot of time on it, too much time and it was still crap. Given their track record with vista, I doubt more time would have helped them any, that is the failure was not because they rushed it out the door but rather produced a poorly developed product.

 

[jaw04005]

The WM guys, who are not as secretive as the Apple guys (understatement), have said that they delayed WM7 so that they could start from scratch.

Haha, yeah right.

Windows Mobile 7 is based off Windows Mobile 6.5. It's not "from scratch."

Also, Ballmer and other Microsoft executives forced the WM Team to ship "something" in 2009. That's why they shipped 6.5, which is sort of a stop gap between 6 and 7.

 

[MisterMe]

I disagree it wasn't released early but rather suffered from over-promising and unable to deliver on that. They spent a lot of time on it, too much time and it was still crap. Given their track record with vista, I doubt more time would have helped them any, that is the failure was not because they rushed it out the door but rather produced a poorly developed product.

At the risk of going around in circles: You keep confusing the crime with the motive. Microsoft over-promised on Vista. No one with the brain God gave red brick disputes this. Microsoft could have deleted some of the more difficult to develop features and take the time to clean-up the mess, or it could have taken extra time to deliver on its promises. It dropped features, but did not take the time to clean-up the mess. This is why Microsoft released Vista early.

After Vista was released to almost universal disdain, it went back and took the time to fix the problems that it had not fixed earlier. It released the fixed version of Vista as Windows 7 to the adoration of the Windows fan base.

To summarize:

Crime: Microsoft released Windows Vista too early.
Motive: Microsoft over-promised on its ability to develop new features and needed to ship something.

Is this clear?

 

[Rodimus Prime]

The bottomline is that when Windows Vista was released, it was not ready. If it were not ready, then Microsoft should have taken the time to get it ready. That time is not 4-5 years, 8-10 years, or 12-15 years. It is the time required to get the design right and the bugs out. Windows 7 is essentially Vista with the time need to get the bugs out. You have done an excellent job of explaining why Microsoft released Vista early and nothing to refute roadbloc's point that Microsoft released Vista early.

There was one more problem with Vista and Microsoft knew it.

That is since it had some pretty big changes under the hood it was going to cause a lot of problems for drivers and developers. They knew people would blame MS for those problems when really it is the devs fault for not prepping and getting stuff done. Yes Vista was not fully ready at release and MS did clean it up and improve it with the Service packs but it left a bad taste in everyones mouth. Vista main job was to take the heat for the next thing (Windows 7) and it did its exact job. It took the heat for the change to the new system.

 

[Chwisch87]

Well windows 7 had a lot of changes under the hood as well but the API structure was kept in line with Vista so that there wouldn't so much of a compatibility hiccup.

 

[kdarling]

Windows Mobile 7 is based off Windows Mobile 6.5. It's not "from scratch."

While 6.5 is, as you say, undoubtedly an interim release, WM7 is not based on the same code.

The roadmap for Windows Mobile has been around for years, before the iPhone was made known. Those of us who've programmed in Win CE have known about it, so have WinMo users.

• WM5 was the first WM to not use the corresponding base (CE 5.0).
• WM6 is using CE 5.0, which has some helpful library memory changes
• WM7 will be using CE 6.0, which is a radical kernel change:

For example, CE 6.0 jumps from allowing 32 processes to 32000. App memory limit increases from 32MB to 2GB virtual. The old common causes of lockups are gone due to memory map changes. It's a whole different animal.

 

[ArrowSmith]

I'm shocked, nay shocked that LTD found a rumor denigrating Microsoft!

 

[ArrowSmith]

At the risk of going around in circles: You keep confusing the crime with the motive. Microsoft over-promised on Vista. No one with the brain God gave red brick disputes this. Microsoft could have deleted some of the more difficult to develop features and take the time to clean-up the mess, or it could have taken extra time to deliver on its promises. It dropped features, but did not take the time to clean-up the mess. This is why Microsoft released Vista early.

After Vista was released to almost universal disdain, it went back and took the time to fix the problems that it had not fixed earlier. It released the fixed version of Vista as Windows 7 to the adoration of the Windows fan base.

To summarize:

Crime: Microsoft released Windows Vista too early.
Motive: Microsoft over-promised on its ability to develop new features and needed to ship something.

Is this clear?

Yup. One thing that I think MSFT learned from the Vista fiasco is never to rush a major release of anything again. Since then we've seen a steady release of hardware/software that is top-notch. Windows 7 has not seen any major issues after 3 months which is unprecedented for a major Windows release. MSFT is now about getting it right.

 

[*LTD*]

I'm shocked, nay shocked that LTD found a rumor denigrating Microsoft!

There's just so much of it, it's hard to pick and choose the really interesting ones.

 

[FX120]

Yup. One thing that I think MSFT learned from the Vista fiasco is never to rush a major release of anything again. Since then we've seen a steady release of hardware/software that is top-notch. Windows 7 has not seen any major issues after 3 months which is unprecedented for a major Windows release. MSFT is now about getting it right.

It wouldn't have mattered if Microsoft shipped Vista last week, users would have had the same issues they had with it in 2006.

XP was critically flawed in several ways and what Vista did was change the core architecture of the OS to improve on that. Unfortunately this meant that a lot of software would run incorrectly or poorly, and that hardware drivers had to be completely new. Most users problems were linked to poor or unavailable drivers, which as time went by were mostly alleviated but the damage to the name has been done.

Windows 7 and it's current positive reception is only possible because Vista came first and made those tough, core changes. The only tweaks 7 has offered me are some very welcome UI changes. Stability and performance wise 7 is about the same as Vista, which after the drivers matured has always been very good in my experience.

 

[djellison]

There's just so much of it, it's hard to pick and choose the really interesting ones.

Why do you post them here? If I post critcism of Apple, I'm told to go away. Yet you're posting criticism of an entirely different company, repeatedly. It's all you do.

Why?