Google’s Dreams, Apple’s iStrategy, and Microsoft’s WinOpportunity
Google wants world domination with its Chrome browser and Android platform. But if it happens, it won’t be because of the initial HTC Dream phone, but due to a blending of Apple and Microsoft concepts into a different strategy that appears to cherry pick from a number of areas.
HTC is one of the leading suppliers of Windows Mobile based smartphones, selling one out of every six smartphones in the US. Windows Mobile is actually, at an estimated 26 million sold, more successful than the iPhone in terms of volume. But none of its phones have created the buzz the iPhone has created, or driven the kind of changes in phone design that Apple has demonstrated. Microsoft may have more volume, but Apple, at least at the moment, has more influence on the market. Microsoft has more volume because it is hardware independent, and executing a plan that is more similar to the one it executed with Windows for PCs. Plus, it started years before Apple or Google did.
iPhone Advantages and Limitations
Apple’s iPhone is currently the Model-T of smartphones, by which I mean that you get a limited choice of designs and colors, not that it is old. You can have any color as long as it’s black or white, and any size as long as it is the one size offered (granted, you can choose capacity, but a “line” of phones, it isn’t). You can also have any carrier in the US, as long as it is AT&T, and you can run any application, as long as it doesn’t create a competitive problem for AT&T or Apple. In effect, with respect to applications and competition, it is like someone took a lot of the complaints folks have made about Microsoft, and wrapped them up into an Apple strategy. Of the three companies, Apple is the most limited. Strangely enough, its device is also the most desired, which is a credit to Apple’s design and execution, but probably suggests some of us are giving up our freedoms too easily.
The phone is incredibly easy to use, and connected to two market-leading services: iTunes and the Apple Application Store, both of which currently dominate the competition in terms of interest and capability. But there’s also a troubled service in the mix: MobileMe, which promised much, but has been having serious problems. Apple is good at connecting to its own things. Connecting to other people’s stuff has been clearly problematic.
Windows Mobile’s Advantages and Limitations
If Apple is about simplicity, Microsoft’s platform is about choice and connectivity. Windows Mobile is sold on phones from a wide variety of vendors, ranging from Palm to Motorola and HTC. They come in different sizes, shapes, and colors, and even offers different interfaces (though that is still more the exception than the rule). The Windows mobile platform connects back into Microsoft’s much more robust back end of communications offerings, led by Exchange, and the phone also has third-party developer support. However, there is nothing yet like the Apple Application store, substantially reducing volume of programs available and ease of installation.
Microsoft also lacks any one phone that has the kind of excitement created by the iPhone. Even the CTOs in one company that makes Microsoft Mobile phones carry iPhones. HTC has been the most aggressive in creating an iPhone-like front end for Microsoft’s Mobile platform, and its Touch line (and it is a line) comes the closest to the ideal created by the iPhone. The Sprint version of the HTC Touch Diamond (due largely to Sprint’s services) comes closest of all the phones currently in market
Microsoft falls apart on closing the user experience, and the marketing gap between Apple’s offerings and its own. With its new $300 million campaign it’s working on that second issue, but the user experience issue may have to wait until the next version of its platform, or until more manufacturers take HTC’s lead and build touch interfaces into its Windows Mobile phones.