The Economic Times
Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system for mobile phones needs to catch up in the consumer segment, said an executive. “The operating system was developed to cater to enterprise needs such as sales and marketing staff. In the past two years, the market has changed a lot,” said Bijoy Singhal, developer evangelist at Microsoft India. The new Windows Mobile 6.5, due for unveiling later this year, could help the software giant address a lot of issues in the consumer segment.
For instance, it comes with a bee-hive user interface that allows more space to access an icon, useful in a touch-screen phone. HTC is likely to be the first handset vendor to launch phones with the new version of the operating system. Handsets with the new operating system will come installed with Windows Marketplace for mobile, allowing independent software vendors and developers to reach out to users and sell their applications.
The world’s largest software firm is also working on developing a mobile phone version of Silverlight that it thinks will allow many more consumer-friendly applications to be developed for Windows Mobile phones.
The Windows Mobile operating system competes with Symbian used on Nokia phones and newer rivals such as Google’s Android platform. “Symbian has the advantage of being on a large majority of phones across the world. But it’s not Microsoft, it’s handset makers using Windows Mobile, who compete with Nokia,” said Singhal. For Microsoft, Android is yet to achieve the scale to be considered competition. Singhal said both the operating system and the market are being watched closely by the software major.
There is also a lot of focus on helping create applications that can be particularly useful in rural areas. “We need applications to enable delivery of services such as healthcare and education. The platform is mature enough to do it, but applications need to be developed,” he said.
For instance, Microsoft is helping a partner develop an application that could be used to send an SMS to an owner of an animal husbandry farm, if any unusual changes are detected in the temperature and moisture at the farm. Another one relates to a healthcare application for rural health workers that can be used to collect information about pregnant women in a village. The information is sent to a central database and then used to generate prescriptions.
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