Office Phone – the new branding for Windows Mobile?

September 29, 2010 | By Pradeep

We know as Windows Phone 7 lacks many enterprise features, and Microsoft has always intended for Windows Mobile to live on to fill the gaps, recently renaming it to Windows Embedded Handheld, which is not exactly consumer-friendly.

Now there is some evidence the company has decided to rebrand the OS to the more palatable Office Phone.

Microsoft Spain has announced the Sony Ericsson Aspen Windows Mobile 6.5.3 phone as the Office Phone, unusually bearing the Office logo.

Microsoft Spain blog (Bing Translated) describes this new phone as below.

Office Phone, a spectacular Sony Ericsson Aspen, lets you use your office computer in mobility, with the same simplicity and look to your PC. Office Phone offers all the tools that we use daily with Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, One Note…), mail in HTML… everything synchronized perfectly between the PC and our mobile, with transparent and easy access to our corporate server or our online through Microsoft Sharepoint libraries.Office Phone is a Windows Phone (with Windows Mobile 6.5.3 inside) but why spirit combine the best business features with the things we are looking for in our leisure time is very present. With Office Phone also can follow your contacts in Facebook, chat with Messenger, access your personal accounts or, and this is a very interesting, choose different panels for when use you on your side (panels SPB Shell) professional or personal (Sony Ericsson panel) feature.

Office Phone from msblogspain on Vimeo.

The question is whether this rebranding will confuse customers further and hurt Windows Phone 7. Does Microsoft’s move make sense? Let us know below.

Source: The Next Web

About Pradeep Viswav

Pradeep was a Microsoft Student Partner when he was pursuing his Computer Science & Engineering degree. He now works for a MNC. He is passionate about technology and loves to share his knowledge with people. People used to mention him as “A Geek who is not Nerd”. He was fascinated by the Metro Design language and Windows Phone which made him to follow and develop applications for it. Follow him at twitter.com/pradeepviswav

Tagged Microsoft Office, sony ericsson aspen, Windows 6.5.3

http://twitter.com/bnlf @bnlf

at least people cant complain there´s no multitask
Danny

Stupidly confusing. What was Ballmer just saying about the KIN distraction?
http://www.facebook.com/imperialdynamics Imperial Dynamics

This is wrong in so many ways. Just let it die already
Surfsup

I have the Aspen here in the states running on T-Mobile. That means no 3G. I use this phone everyday at work. It is small and fun to use. I also have the HD2. These are two totally different animals when it comes to use. The Aspen is "get it done", no frills serious. The HD2 is get it done but to easy to get distracted by all the "fun" built into it. As a General Manager, I would prefer my employees to use the "Office" phone. Distraction is a businesses #1 enemy right now. I don't think the public would be confused over the name difference. The phone 7 series will be heavily advertised.
chinch

letting it die in 2010 would be stupid, especially since in-house wm apps won't run on wp7.

if anything MS should be upgrading and tweaking windows mobile further especially regarding multiple exchange accounts.
BCH

Unfortunately, it continues MS's schizophrenic branding strategy (Mesh vs. Sync, Live Mail vs. Hotmail, LiveSearch vs. Bing, etc., etc., etc.,), but it might be the right move in this particular instance.

This allows MS to differentiate Windows Mobile from Windows Phone and avoid consumer confusion, while allowing them to co-exist for unrelated markets.
http://twitter.com/peterpulmonary1 @peterpulmonary1

its good, but probably should come with at least 512 mb storage space.
lol
efjay

So what happened to WM Classic? Why cant this company make up its mind? Plus WM is dead, no updates from MS and it takes years to get fixes from OEM's, really dont see a market or need for this. Even BB is going to update their OS but WM will not see another update. Time to let it go.
GP007

They'll let it go once they've got WP7 updated to the point it can do the business things that it's missing, so maybe this time next year they'll can it for good. Till then they'll support it because it just makes more sense for enterprise use compared to this first offering of WP7.
mark

I'd be surprised if they don't have to support it for years after its official end of life – consistent with other products they sell. Plus, chinch makes a good point.
djguapo

Would you like a grain of salt with that article? Highly recommended.
Joe

I think it's clever as of this moment. But of course they will have to let it die after some time…as a user has said, consumer and bussines phones are melding…