The fact that they are waiting a full year until another update is and indication of one or the other, or perhaps both – incompetence and/or indifference.

Here is a key difference between iPhone and WinMo – my wife, who is not all that technical, needs to be reminded how to use my WM phone to do anything – even make a phone call! (On her standard phone she is used to opening her contact list and making a selection from there – she looks at my keyboard and sees a computer keyboard without seeing the embedded phone keypad, and cannot figure out how to bring up a list of contacts, which is trivial with her Razr.) She picks up an iphone and can use it immediately.

Microsoft should be very scared of everybody on that list. Well, of RIM, iPhone and Android for sure, Symbian everywhere but in the US for some odd reason. Palm is worse than Microsoft.

to the larger microsoft business, as long as there is increasing winmo year over year shipped unit growth there isn’t really much of a problem, and no feeling of urgency to address little things like the interface and such.

microsoft is actually quite lucky that they started the winmo platform so many years ago, as this has given the company such a headstart that it will take android and apple a year or so still to catch up.

we don’t raelly know if microsoft has gotten the wake-up call. perhaps ms is beavering away with a renewed sence of urgency unsterstanding it needs to reinvigorate its development innovation.

or perhaps not. :-)

If you ask what the biggest competition is, though, I’d say Android or RIM. Android because it’s free and open, RIM because it has the infrastructure and a lot of users.

Palm is pretty much dead, despite the success of the Centro, unless their new OS comes out quickly and totally rocks.

Apple is cool, but probably too limited because of the one company philosophy. (Yes, RIM has that problem, too, but they entered the market long enough back to get marketshare and infrastructure.)

Symbian is in the lead worldwide, but not doing very well in the U.S. Plus, as they’re already in the lead, they don’t have to play catch up.

Steve

The answer (to the correct question) is probably Symbian, as the answer to the wrong question is Windows Mobile…

Symbian and WM are the two OS’es with most in common. Symbian goes open source next summer, who knows what WM will do next summer. RIM and Palm are both utterly outdated, they are futureless. iPhone OS is a closed cult. Android is spyware on steroids.

I don’t think anything of this matters. As long as Nokia exists, there will be Symbian. As long as HTC exists, there will be WM. iPhone OS? who cares, Symbian and WM in particular have catched up with the fancyness of iPhone OS by now, and will steam ahead leaving iPhone in the shadows. Android is strange. It is made for the masses, but needs top of the line hardware to work, this is not a good combination for anything but a niche. The question is what will Samsung and LG do? The answer is probably all of this (WM, Symbian and Android).