The PC in the mid 1980’s. The World Wide Web (or the internet as we know it) in the 90’s. Mobile phones in the late 90’s and early 2000. GPS car navigation in the mid 2000 (but also hiking/travelling and air/sea navigation).

Where do WM fit into this? Well, it doesn’t realy fit into this as an important key technology. Approximately 10% of mobile phones use a “smart” operating system. Approximately 10% of the smart OS’es are WM. This leaves WM as a technology in approximately only 1% of the mobile consumer type devices in total. The internet, mobile phones, PCs and GPS’es do extremely well without WM.

Where WM do have a mission is in integrating those technologies in small portable devices. But the fact is that WM does not do the job all that well either. Ordinary “dumb phones” have internet, they have email, they have GPS either built in or through BT. The reason for this is as the article say – hardware. The constraints in power consumption prevents development of general OS’es that consumes huge amount of power just to tick in favour of low power consuming and lean purpose built OS’es (the OS in the iPhone is probably the best visual example of a lean and mean purpose built OS, but so is S40 and all other “dumb” OS’es).

If WM is to have any future life, one additional revolution is needed, and that revolution is in battery technology and/or low power consuming electronics.