It seems to me that the powers that be who were involved in the Microsoft Antitrust lawsuites should look at how Microsoft is viewed by the market in general. If Microsoft was indeed the innovative, ground-breaking organisation that it keeps telling us it is, why do companies not want to go near it with a barge pole? Surely, if Microsoft is the one and only saviour who can provide solutions for the mobile professional, the man-in-the-street and the kid who wants fun, why aren't manufacturers running to Microsoft in order to partake of the pot of opportunity?
The reason is that the mobile phone manufacturers can see what has happened to the Dells, Compaqs and Toshibas of this world;
[quote="Seattle Times"]
Companies worry that Microsoft, if given enough power, will dominate the way it does in the personal-computer industry — knocking out competitors with monopolistic actions.
"We have good reason to be concerned," San-Jing Park, head of mobile handsets at Samsung Electronics, told Reuters last month. Microsoft and Intel "took all the value and left hardware makers as clone producers. We don't want a repeat of that situation."
[/quote]
Why would anybody want to be colonized by a power that sucks it of all its resources and spits it out (a la Sendo)?
So, Microsoft decide (as they do) that the rules are wrong.
[quote="Seattle Times"]
Microsoft's strategy in the mobile business has mostly been to make deals directly with mobile operators — AT&T Wireless and T-Mobile, for instance — instead of selling software licenses to handset vendors.
"When we looked at the industry, we said we think that the mobile operator is key," said Microsoft's Brown. Operators are the ones who integrate services and have customer ties, he said.
[/quote]
If Microsoft is thus convinced, why did Bill Gates throw a temper tantrum when Nokia wouldn't take biscuits and warm milk to him in bed? If Microsoft is so convinced, why did they try and get deals with the manufacturers first? If Microsoft is so convinced, why are they so mouthy whenever they do manage to get a two-bit, unheard of manufacturer to make its Windows powered cellphone?
Surely, what Microsoft does and what Microsoft says remains a constant contradiction, continually killing the confidence of people who see the truth.
Microsoft is in the market, not because it is interested in the technology, or because it wants to see mobile devices innovated to the next level...... it is in the market because it can't stand to think of someone doing something without being taxed by Microsoft license fees. If Steve Ballmer (who in court told the judge that he didn't know what WindowsCE.Net was - go figure how a liar like that doesn't get done for contempt of court) wanted to make a device that was actually good for the end user, guess what, Microsoft would provide such devices.
The motives of an organisation hell-bent on destroying competition rather than competing with competition can only result in half baked ideas that stink like mowed-over cat poo!
[quote="Seattle Times"]
Phone users expect the highest quality of service, and Symbian will win because it is better than everyone else, Levin said.
"The world has tolerated PCs, which crash and which need rebooting, but the world has grown up to expect that your phone remains working," he said. "In fact, it is incredibly intolerant of phone software which is not robust."
Two million phones using the Symbian operating system shipped last year. Microsoft will not give comparable figures.
[/quote]
Of course, Symbian will talk up its OS as much as the next person, but look at what it produces! There's freedom for manufacturers to build what they want! There's freedom for users to enjoy the technology without having to lock themselves into a foreign mode of thought.
Limitations? Of course, but you know the limitations before you buy the devices, and you can be confident that the OS is efficient, powerful and smart to work with the hardware, and not against it . The Nokia 7650's low RAM was a design decision. Was the SPV's inability to make phonecalls from the contacts list (a feature of early firmware versions of the SPV) also a design feature? The ability to crack the PocketPC Phone Edition's security was described as a 'Design Decision' and it's become too common a joke (to the point of an urban myth) that anything which causes Windows to crash on a PC is an 'undocumented feature'!
Symbian was designed for small devices. Small devices are what were in the minds of the people who built Symbian. When the brains behind the OS put the first design stroke to paper, they were thinking small devices. Can the same be said about Microsoft devices? With an OS that will be forever built on 80's technology, is there hope?
Look at that platform!
Built for 640Kb PCs, stretched to be able to make use of and hog every bit of memory and processor power it has at its disposal with addons and bolt-ons, and given the ability to multitask only in 1995, yet to be stripped down again in order to streamline it for a mobile device - stripped, but still inneficiently hungry to the point that the OS had to wait for hardware to catch up with its demands in order for it to run itself let alone other applications.
Man, you gotta admit it, Microsoft has got some big balls to say what it does and to claim what it does! But if you look behind the scenes, you see a bully that tells commercial organisations, charities, governments (hell, even third world governments) and you how to think.
Microsoft recently struck a deal with China. Whatever next!? Striking a deal with such a dictatorial, abusive and evil regime...... I don't know how the Chinese government can live with itself
.Ok, rant over. Flame away!
nfire: