Microsoft’s Robert Youngjohns, President of  North American Sales and Marketing for Microsoft, was recently quizzed at the Barclays Capital Global Technology Conference on the state of Microsoft, which of course included Windows Mobile.

Israel Hernandez, head of the Software Group at Barclays Capita, asked about Microsoft’s fading market share in the mobile area.

His response re-affirmed the importance of Windows Mobile for Microsoft in its “3 screens and a cloud” strategy and noted, in terms of the enterprise market, Windows Mobile was already pretty well featured and offered a very good experience, especially compared to Android and iPhone.

“I’m running an HTC Touch HD2, which I got recently, and I think it’s one of the best handsets I’ve ever, ever had.  With 6.5, with Exchange 2010 back end, I have the best possible e-mail experience on the road that I’ve ever had.  And that includes using Blackberries in the previous job, and so on.  So, I think our enterprise story is already pretty strong.” said Youngjohns.

He did however feel Microsoft was not doing enough to sell the enterprise market on the capabilities of Windows Mobile.

“… if I have a complaint, or an observation of our own organization, we’re not doing enough to sell that enterprise connectivity story back into e-mail and collaboration, and so on.”

He did acknowledge when it came to the consumer market Microsoft could do better:

“Now, we clearly have a different issue in terms of the consumer market, and I think we have work to do to get there to a point that we can say we have as good an operating environment as, for example, the iPhone does.” 

He did however express the the belief Windows Mobile 7 would make Microsoft competitive in this area also.

He also pooh-poohed the idea that Microsoft would make its own handset.

“… the core of our strategy is to enable our whole bunch of partners to produce multiple form factors in terms of the device.  Not to go for one homogeneous device that we manage end to end.  It’s a huge bet we’re taking in the company that we think that’s the right strategy.  But I think whether it’s with Windows 6.5 now, and enterprise connectivity, or whether it’s consumer space with Windows Mobile 7 next year, I think the ability to go out there with multiple handsets, and multiple vendors, multiple form factors is a differentiator, and one I think we can exploit.”

Read the full transcript from the presentation here.

9

About Surur

Site Admin and Windows Phone enthusiast, he has been using Windows Mobile devices since before they were called PocketPC’s. He is currently sporting a HTC 7 Trophy.

•    Blog
•    Twitter
•    Facebook