What does $15 buy you?

September 30, 2008 | By Surur

The wires are abuzz with Steve Ballmer’s latest uttering- his insistence that the Windows Mobile OS is worth at least $8 per device. Most websites are reacting with amazement – with Android free and Symbian going free Windows Mobile just does not seem to be competing.

Steve Ballmer’s insistence that “We are doing well, we believe in the value of what we are doing.” does not ring well with those who love to hate Windows Mobile, but it may be useful to list exactly what $8-$15 will buy you (and you wont get from Android or Symbian).

Built-in Exchange push e-mail support.
Support for remote device management, application deployment and device policy management.
Support for full device encryption (including external memory cards).
Free sync with Windows Live Hotmail and Live Contacts.
Windows Live Search.
Live Messenger IM Client.
Software for simple Internet Sharing.
Office files reading and editing.
A pretty good e-mail application with built-in smart filtering search.
A pretty good bluetooth stack.
Access to 18000 + applications already out in the market.
Support by carriers and a wide developer community.
Security certification by recognized accreditation bodies.
Indemnification for the technology used.

Sure, OEM’s could decide to produce Android devices, and then find the phones they produce are unattractive to business users because they did not license Exchange Activesync, and does not appeal to others because it does not have any applications yet, and others still will complain the phone does not support A2DP. The OEM may find some carriers are reluctant to support their new device on their network.

I would gladly pay $15 for a mature OS and the ODM’s who are rallying to Windows Mobile knows this.

Ultimately, if your OS is free, you may just get what you are paying for.

If there are any more Windows Mobile value points I have ommited why dont you add those in the comments section.

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.

Tagged windows mobile

netboy

remember the patent between broadcom and qualcomm? broadcom stopped qualcomm from selling some 3G phones in USA. freaking qualcomm should just pay the freaking loyalty!, qualcomm can charge their customers for the fee! i dont mind paying a extra 20buk to have tri-band 3G instead of phones keep coming out with 2100umts only!
admin

An example relevant to the OS is that Microsoft will carry all the costs if RIM tries to sue Samsung for example for the push e-mail technology in the Blackjack. If Samsung rolled their own solution using Android for example they will have to fight the million dollar battle themselves.
http://www.reant.net/essi Le Sage

Access to 18000 + applications already out in the market.
This seems the major point to me. With the fact that the OS has been existing for 10+ years which gives him some kind of maturity.
Though Android & Symbian have also major points that WinMo doesn’t have (maybe access to features (graphic among others) that WinMo coders need to recode from scratch ?).
All OSes are worth interest, & all have interesting points & flaws that others don’t.
dgduris

This is an interesting market positioning to me and – I think – one that is more tenable in North America than rest-of-world.

Symbian is a mature OS that – at least in UIQ form – was a worthy competitor to WinMob Pro…and it had some advantages, like more attractive and richer graphics (2-million vs. 62k color screen, stability, plenty of 3rd party apps and push mail and data). But the offering of Symbian phones that support the US bandwidths is pretty meager…and IT managers are comfortable supporting Win- anything. So while this may work for the US, I hardly expect it will do anything but help WinMob lose share in the rest of the world – where Symbian has something like 60% of the Mobile OS market based on unit sales.

Of course, increased Symbian share ex-USA may make it an interesting OS for HTC to look at. That certainly wouldn’t help anyone in Redmond.

Better move to free Steve.
admin

Whether the OS is free or not only matters to the OEM’s, not the end users. Nokia has recently given up on the business market WORLDWIDE, leaving only RIM and MS to fight over the arena. In addition Symbian OEM’s besides Nokia have always done poorly, and making the OS free wont really help them.

HTC sells more phones in Europe than USA, so I think WM has a home worldwide also, and certainly if you want the native features of WM (e.g. full exchange support) its best to get a WM phone.
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dfghj

well I’d go for FREE since its a f-ing pain to get an update for your phone when using Windows Mobile.. Hell I’m still waiting for 6.1 for my phone as Microsoft made 6.1 for a reason and that reason was due to the fact that 6.0 was so damn buggy..
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http://bitbank.wordpress.com Larry Bank

As a developer, the biggest advantage for Windows Mobile is that it allows you to leverage your Win32 dev experience and write native code in any language (I like C and ASM). iPhone is limited to Objective-C and Android + Blackberry are JAVA only.
Rich

“In addition Symbian OEM’s besides Nokia have always done poorly, and making the OS free wont really help them.”

Really? Sony Ericsson’s P900 outsold the Treo 600 and SE’s P910 outside the Treo 650.

Symbian’s Japanese customers have also enjoyed strong sales.

Also, half the items on your list above are provided by Symbian. Are you seriously suggesting that Symbian hasn’t got a Bluetooth stack at least as good as Microsoft’s?

What about the things that Symbian and Android provide that Microsoft doesn’t, such as a modern web browser?
admin

Symbian has contracted tremendously in Japan, resulting in a precipitous drop in Symbian marketshare world wide. SE is doing particularly poorly in the smartphone world, and I think is being outsold by HTC.

The fact is, using Symbian, despite the smartphone giant using it, does not guarantee market success.
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