Window Phone 7 to bury iPhones, Androids?
By siliconindia   |   Monday, 04 October 2010, 15:34 IST   |    1 Comments
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Seattle:About hundred Microsoft employees acted their fantasy with a mock funeral of Apple iPhones and, marked the completion of its Window Phone 7 software, which will be publicly unveiled on October 11 and expected on handset by November This mock funeral shows how badly Microsoft wanted to resurrect itself in the viciously competitive phone market. The new software that will hit the market by October 11 and expected on handsets by November is Microsoft's last chance to catch up with Apple and Google Android Smartphones, after squandering its strong market position in only a few years. A group of Smartphone manufacturers including Samsung and HTC are expected to roll out Microsoft based phones for the holiday seasons. There raises question whether Samsung and HTC will be good enough to render iPhone obsolete."The product can't be an also-ran that just does everything that is already out in the marketplace" said Bryan Keane, an analyst for Alpine Mutual Funds, which holds Microsoft shares. Till now, it's not obvious that Window 7 is better than anything that's out here, and the investors expect that it might have a better tie in to the actual Window platform. Microsoft is now fourth in the fast-growing U.S. market for Smartphone operating systems with a share of less than 12 percent, according to research firm comscore, behind Black Berry-maker Research in Motion, Apple and Google. Microsoft's unusual disappearance from the market and its late response to the emergence of the tablet devices like Apple's iPad, has forced Microsoft's shares down to 20 percent this year. "The market is really fearful of their positioning in those two markets (phones and tablets)", said Ken Allen, Baltimore-based portfolio manager of T. Rowe Price's Science and Technology Fund, which holds Microsoft shares. The investors were not satisfied with Microsoft's last attempt to launch new phone, the Kin, which was then dropped after less than three months. Prototypes of the new device,the Microsoft employees have been demonstrating past few months, seems to have huge improvement comparing the last version of Microsoft phone software and they also have touch screen resembling the company's Zune music player and movable 'tiles' that access various phone functions. Keane at Alpine said that "Lets see how much vendor support (Microsoft) gets behind it, which partially droves Android success". "But now, the problem is,'Do we need a third one? When we already have Android and the iphones".