The mobile phone market has become a lot more competitive this morning with Microsoft’s launch of their new mobile phone system, Windows Phone 7, which will be appearing on new phones in the shops over the next few weeks.
For the Australian market Vodafone have announced they will make Window 7 available on the new HTC 7 Trophy model while Telstra are offering it on the HTC 7 Mozart and LG Optimus 7Q.
Interestingly, Optus haven’t announced what handsets they will be selling Window Phone 7on while parent company Singtel are offering the same handsets as Telstra in Singapore which, depending on exclusivity agreements, might mean Optus will have some suprises at today’s Australian launch of the product.
Should you be looking at buying a phone, you’ll find there will be a big push on the Windows 7 models as the telcos and phone sellers are desperate to have another smartphone alternative to the iPhone alongside the Google Android models.
Last week before the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce Telstra chief executive David Thodey described some of the challenges his organisation has with Apple and that frustration is shared by all the telcos and retailers who hate seeing the bulk of the profits going back to Steve Jobs.
So if you do set foot into your local phone shop before Christmas expect the hard sell on the Windows and Google Android phones as the dealers will be seeing better commissions from those devices.
As well the obvious incentives to salespeople, Microsoft’s always impressive PR machine has been rumbling away on this for several months after Windows 7 was launched at the Barcelona World Mobile Congress last February showing off early versions of the phones so we’ve had a chance to play with the devices and they certainly behave nicely.
It may be that the Windows 7 phones may well be the right thing for you. A play with them finds them fast and responsive with built in support for standard Microsoft features such as Exchange and Office applications along with consumer attractions such as XBox Live.
Where the Windows phone sits in the market is going to be interesting — we’ll almost certainly see the Microsoft and Google phones selling at cheaper price points than the Apple iPhone — however Apple tend not to respond to price wars so the battle is going to come down to features.
The real battle ground will be in the applications space as we now demand more from our phones. For most smartphone users, actually speaking on the thing is a small part of what they use the device for. US technology writer Robert Scoble points out Google’s Android system has over 100,000 apps available while Apple has 270,000. That’s a lot of catching up for Microsoft.
Although if any organisation can do this, it’s Microsoft as they have a well established culture of supporting developers for Windows applications alongside a massive army of resellers and support companies which all have an interest in the success of Microsoft’s latest product.
The biggest player, Nokia, isn’t taking this lying down with at least one new product launch coming up in the next few weeks. So the run up to Christmas is going to be fun for mobile phone resellers.
If you are shopping for a new phone, it might be worthwhile nursing the old one along for a little while, let the early adopters deal with the teething problems and seeing which product meets your needs and budget when the hype settles down.
