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ActiveNick’s 2012 Year in Review and Predictions for 2013

ActiveNick — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 14:00:00 GMT

Every January 1st for the past 9 years, I’ve been getting an email from Microsoft titled “Congratulations 20YY Microsoft MVP!” ( enum YY {Max = 13, Min = 05}; ) where I have the honor and privilege of being re-awarded as Microsoft MVP for Windows Phone Development. This is an awesome way to start the year and 2012 was no exception. It’s been an awesome year in the Windows Phone community and I love that I was able to take a more active part in it this year. I just received my 9th such email yesterday on January 1st 2013 (yay me!) but I’d like to take a look back at 2012 and reflect on some influential moments.

2012 was indeed a great year for me and for Infragistics, and I hope it was for you too. Allow me to indulge in a little retrospective as I contemplate all that transpired in what was supposed to be the last year of our existence. Since the Mayans were (thankfully) wrong about their predictions, I’ll try to offer my own for 2013.

New Job, New Responsibilities, New Products

Shortly after that MVP award announcement in 2012 came more great news: I accepted an offer to work at Infragistics and I joined this awesome company as Senior Product Manager for Mobile & Data Visualization Developer Tools. I joined up with old buddies Jason Beres (who is my new boss) and Ambrose Little, and met many new folks who have become good friends, like Brent Schooley, Brian Lagunas and many others. It was a weird feeling to leave the world of consulting services after 16 of my 20+ years career, but in retrospect, that was the best thing I’ve ever done. 11+ months later I still come to work with a huge smile on my face and I this is the most fun I’ve ever had in my professional career.

Being a Product Manager at Infragistics is a dual role. Not only am I the owner for several products, I also have community responsibilities to write, blog, tweet and speak at events. After several years on hiatus as a blogger, I relaunched “ActiveNick’s Big Bald Blog”, discussing mobility, devices, development in the Microsoft & Apple worlds, events, and more.

Some of my most popular posts this year have been:

From a products point of view, it’s been a very busy year for me here at Infragistics. We launched 2 releases of our full NetAdvantage collection, introduced new mobile products for Windows UI, iOS, Android and jQuery Mobile development and many more. Here are all the products I own which we shipped in 2012:

Two releases of NetAdvantage for Windows Phone: 12.1 & 12.2
Updates to the Data Visualization controls (charts, maps, gauges, bullet graphs, etc.) which are all now bundled in the following products:
- NetAdvantage for WPF
- NetAdvantage for Silverlight
- Ignite UI (HTML5 & jQuery)
Introduced New jQuery Mobile controls in Ignite UI
Launched the initial release of NucliOS for native iOS developers
Launched Iguana UI, a free Community Pack for native Android developers
Launched a new bundle for mobile developers: MobileAdvantage
Introduced new Data Visualization Controls for WinRT & WinJS developers in NetAdvantage for Windows UI Beta

Infragistics also launched many more products I was not directly involved with, including new versions of SharePlus for iOS and the inaugural releases of ReportPlus for iOS and Indigo Studio for UX designers, and many more. Yes, it has been an awesome year at Infragistics.

Community Events

My community role goes beyond tweeting and blogging of course. Traveling to community events and conferences is a key part of my job. As a product manager, it’s important that I connect with developers to hear about the projects they work on, what technologies they care about, and what topics they are interested in learning. It also allows me to spread the word about our awesome Infragistics products, meet current customers and get feedback from them about what we’re doing great and what we could improve upon.

Speaking at events is actually something that I’ve enjoyed for many years, going as far back as 1996 when I did a seminar tour in the province of Quebec, speaking about Internet and intranet development with Microsoft technologies, using Active Server Pages, ActiveX and all the other “Active” products at Microsoft. This is in fact when I was nicknamed “ActiveNick” by co-workers, a name that has stuck around since then. My responsibilities over the last few years at my previous job at Infusion had forced me to scale back my speaking engagements, sticking mostly to DevConnections and TechEd, and sadly neglecting the other conferences, code camps and user groups.

Thanks to my new role at Infragistics, I was able to jump back in the community head first, speaking at and/or attending the following events in 2012:

Central New Jersey .NET User Group in Cranbury, NJ
Microsoft MVP Summit in Redmond, WA
Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, CA
Code PaLOUsa in Louisville, KY
Deeper in .NET in Milwaukee, WI
TechBash in Nanticoke, PA
Stir Trek in Columbus, OH
Philly Code Camp in Abington, PA
TechEd US in Orlando, FL
TechEd Europe in in Amsterdam, Netherlands
New Jersey Azure User Group in Iselin, NJ
That Conference in Wisconsin Dells, WI
Heartland DevCon (HDC) in Omaha, NE
Prairie DevCon in Regina, SK, Canada
Visual Studio Live! in Orlando, FL
NYC Mobile .NET Meetup in Manhattan, NY

I was also scheduled to speak at the Windows Phone Developer Conference in October in San Francisco, which sadly (but understandably) got cancelled/postponed, and I was also forced to cancel my sessions at DevConnections Fall in Las Vegas, but I also had the chance of appearing in a few online webcasts and podcasts, including:

The Tablet Show Podcast with Carl Franklin & Richard Campbell
Bytes by MSDN with Jerry Nixon
AJI Report with Jeff Julian and John Alexander

2012 was an awesome year, and 2013 promises to be even better for Community events. I can confirm that I’m already scheduled to speak at VS Live! Las Vegas in March and VS Live! Chicago in May, and also Code PaLOUsa 2013 in April.

If you want me to speak at your event, code camp or user group in 2013, don’t hesitate to contact me directly at activenick@infragistics.com or via Twitter at @ActiveNick.

Windows Phone, Nokia Devices & WP8

It’s been an interesting year for Windows Phone to say the least. Nokia finally started releasing their long awaited Windows Phone devices, including the Lumia 800 and 900. The problem is these devices came late (March 2012) in the Windows Phone 7.5 cycle that started in Fall 2011, and by then everyone was already wondering about the upcoming Windows Phone 8. Microsoft continued to uphold their veil of secrecy over all things Windows Phone, although they suffered from a lot of leaks in 2012. It looked like Windows Phone was on an upswing in Spring 2012, but it all came to (relative) crashing halt when Microsoft dropped the bomb that none of the current Windows Phone 7.5 devices would be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8. Even those shiny Nokia Lumias we had just bought a couple months before.

What a downer.

Microsoft sometimes suffers from being too honest. Microsoft seeks to emulate Apple to generate buzz in the mobility world, but Microsoft will always be Microsoft, and the two companies work in different ways. Allow me to illustrate the contrast. If an app or the OS suffers from a fault, Microsoft will tell you via an error message and you can often track down a log entry to diagnose it. Apple will just make your app disappear… *poof!* Error messages are bad, so instead of acknowledging the error and help you address it, Apple just sweeps it under the rug, hoping you’ll forget about it as they sprinkle more of that “Apple Magic” dust in your eyes. I prefer the Microsoft way because things will eventually go wrong in a piece of software. The interactions are too complex and errors will occur. Pretending the error didn’t happen is downright arrogant.

Why am I bringing this up? Because this same mentality is what drove Microsoft to announce Windows Phone 7.8. Microsoft’s approach for current devices was to borrow a few great features from Windows Phone 8 (like the new Start screen, tile sizes, Bing lock screen, etc.) and tack them onto Windows Phone 7.5, giving birth to Windows Phone 7.8. Microsoft is too honest. Apple prefers the “let’s fool our customers” approach. When Apple announced iOS 6, they also revealed that older devices would not get all the new iOS 6 features. Yet, Apple still calls this watered-down version of the operating system “iOS 6”. Why couldn’t Microsoft simply take a page from Apple’s dirty book? They could have announced that most current Windows Phone 7.5 devices would be upgradeable to Windows Phone 8, except that some new features wouldn’t be available on older devices.

The cold wet towel that is Windows Phone 7.8 basically sent Windows Phone sales to a grinding halt. Why buy a new Lumia now when it’ll be hitting a glass ceiling in the Fall? That was an unfortunate course of events and the slower adoption for Windows Phone in 2012 is what led many analysts to severely scale back their expectations for the next four years.

Windows Phone 8 really has a solid shot at succeeding. This is the fabled “third version” where Microsoft typically gets things right, and while I’ve been a fan of the platform since the initial reboot in 2010, Windows Phone 8 finally reached top contender stage. Nokia brought us new devices, and HTC showed us they actually know how to design a sexy phone. Hopefully Samsung can bring some sexiness to their own devices. They have awesome specs and quality, but they need a phone borne out of the mind of creative designers, not engineers.

The combination of new OS features and new devices finally make Windows Phone much harder to dismiss as “irrelevant”. The good news came late in the year, but this was nonetheless a good year for Windows Phone.

Surface Announcement & Launch

The Surface announcement and launch was a real surprise. Microsoft may have released a LOT of hardware in the past, but nothing comes close to the Surface in terms of involvement or investment (with the exception of Xbox). Microsoft used to be primarily a software company, but we can’t really say that anymore. Sinofsky may be gone, but the Surface remains. For the first time in its history, Microsoft shipped a new version of Windows, Windows Phone and Office and yet none of those are the most talked about product coming out of Redmond within that same calendar year.

Surface is.

I wrote extensively about the Surface and if you have not had a chance to peruse my series titled “From iPad to Surface”, I invite you to do so via the following links.

The jury is still out on Surface and I plan on writing more about it in 2013. I just hope we get a brand new official Mail client because the current one really sucks.

Let’s now dive into my predictions for 2013…

ActiveNick’s Top 10 Predictions for 2013

I’ve never done this publicly before. Like a lot of people, I’ve offered many technology predictions casually through conversations in the past, but those are often more wishful thinking than actual predictions. Given my really bad track record on some of these (e.g. Beta VCRs, NEC TurboGrafx 16, Commodore CDTV, Star Wars Galaxies, Windows Mobile, HD-DVD, etc.) I expect to do really poorly on many of my predictions. Still, let’s have some fun and reflect back on them in a year.

1. Return of the Windows Start Button

I’m probably wrong on this one given how Julie Larson Green was so deeply involved in the UI design of Windows 8 and Windows RT, but I think that now that Sinofsky is out, Microsoft will cave to enterprise pressures and bring back our beloved Start button. This will only be available in Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise, and it’ll come back as an optional feature through some form of service pack or Windows Update. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was only available via enterprise policies / settings.

2. New Apple Devices

The fact that we’ll get new Apple devices is not really a prediction, it’s more like stating the obvious. What will we get though? Or more importantly when it comes to Apple, what WON’T we get? Here is what I think we’ll see from Cupertino in 2013:

Another iPad Mini, this time with Retina Display and better specs
New MacBook Air with Retina Display
iPhone 6 will ship in 2013. I’m not sure what Apple will add, but the screen size & resolution will remain the same, whatever new features Tim Cook introduces will be lifted from Android or Windows Phone, and it still won’t support NFC. Whatever it is, Apple fanbois and fangurls will proclaim “the Apple Magic is still alive” yet Apple’s global market share will remain stagnant.

Oh, and Apple Maps will still ~~suck~~ be inferior to Google, Bing and Nokia Maps. In terms of wishful thinking, I really hope Siri gets an SDK.

3. Windows Phone 9

IDC recently predicted that the worldwide Windows Phone market share will reach a very modest 11.4% in 2016. I think this is a very conservative estimate, especially given the big marketing campaign currently under way and the fact that every single Windows 8 computer and Windows RT device acts as an advertisement for Windows Phone. The Metro UI and Live Tiles will become more and more familiar to consumers and this will positively affect Windows Phone sales.

Microsoft will probably introduce the Windows Phone 9 OS along with new partner devices, and I predict that all current and future Windows Phone 8 devices will be compatible with it. This will prevent any slowdown in WP8 device sales, something that negatively hurt the platform in 2012. Disclaimer: At this point in time, I know absolutely nothing about any future version of Windows Phone. This is pure speculation on my part.

Based on IDC’s data, Windows Phone is at 2.6% market share today and I predict it’ll climb to 7% by the end of 2013 and officially claim the third spot ahead of RIM in the mobile ecosystem.

4. Nokia Devices

My new Nokia Lumia 920 is as perfect a phone as I’ve ever owned one. But it’s still not perfect. It only has 32GB of storage, no storage card slot, and the battery life could be better. Nokia is not all about devices, they have Nokia Maps and their “Here” location services that bring in a lot of dough after all, but if they want to stay competitive in the phone space, they’ll need more than the current three Windows Phone 8 devices (Lumia 620, 820, 920). We’ve seen rumored concepts for the Lumia 720, and we also know that Nokia wants to bring more of its PureView technology to Windows Phone.

I predict that Nokia will introduce a new wave of Nokia devices in 2013 *before* we see the Windows Phone 9 OS ship, and all these phones will be upgradeable to WP9.

5. Star Trek

The new “Star Trek Into Darkness” movie will be awesome and will rank over 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. I really miss having a good Star Trek TV show though, and sadly I don’t see 2013 changing this situation. Hopefully the new HD remasters of Star Trek: the Next Generation will make their way to Netflix.

6. Microsoft Surface 2 & Surface Phone

Microsoft sunk a lot of money in the development of the Surface and while the sales have been good, they have not been iPad-spectacular. Surface Pro also hasn’t been released yet. The question nonetheless remains: will Microsoft ship a “Surface 2” device, and if so, when?

There are already rumors that Microsoft is hiring for such a project and while the current Surface RT is great – though not perfect – there is still room for improvement. I was very doubtful about calling for a new Surface 2 – announcement or launch – in 2013, but now that I think about the potential features, it seems obvious Microsoft can keep raising the bar for other OEMs.

Potential Surface 2 improvements could include:

High resolution screen, matching the ppi count of Apple’s Retina display on the Newest iPad
More SKUs with higher storage options, including tablets with 128GB and 256GB built in
Better battery life
Built-in NFC
Built-in GPS
Improved TouchCover keyboard
Optional SKUs with cell radios for built-in 4G LTE support

There have also been a lot of rumors about Microsoft manufacturing their own “Surface Phone”. I would really love to see such a device get announced, though it would really create tensions with Nokia and HTC. The bar has also been raised when it comes to Windows Phone and both these manufacturers have proven they can design truly competitive devices.

My call: No Microsoft-branded “Surface Phone” announced or launched in 2013.

7. Xbox 720

There will be a new Xbox in 2013. I really hope they find a better name for it, and I won’t speculate… ok, maybe I will. I’m throwing my own Xbox vNext names into the hat:

Xbox 3… or 8?
Xbox Pro
The New Xbox (just kidding, but this is what Apple would call it)
Skybox (Xbox in the Cloud, get it?)
Microsoft Gaming Console 2013 Total Pwnage Edition

Anyways, I have absolutely no knowledge about Xbox vNext, but here is what I think we’ll see in this device:

More powerful specs (obviously) like CPU, memory, etc. I call for 8-16 cores in the CPU
Built-in Blu-Ray player and all Xbox game discs will move to the Blu-Ray format
Full 3D support, complete with 3D glasses and augmented reality. We’ll probably have 2 GPUs to drive the dual image
Built-in storage will be SSD
More cloud integration, cloud saves, and the cloud will also be used to tie games to users, thus severely hurting the 2nd hand game market
Fully compatible with all Xbox 360 games
The controller will be the same except the D-Pad will be enhanced
Microsoft Points will go away and we’ll just buy stuff with normal currencies
A new version of the Kinect sensor will be packaged by default with all SKUs
Xbox vNext will share a store with Windows, and most Windows Store games will be usable on Xbox. Indie developers will be able to publish Xbox games with the same SDK they use to create Windows Store games today
XNA won’t be usable (officially) to build Xbox LIVE Indie Games anymore (I hate you Microsoft)
We’ll see more features added to the Xbox Smartglass apps to truly extend the console for gaming like the Wii U does
We’ll also get more media content, more TV channels built-in and the ability to use the Xbox as a DVR

I expect Xbox vNext will be announced at E3 and ship in time for Holidays 2013.

8. World of Warcraft and Blizzard’s Project Titan

World of Warcraft will extend it’s free to play offering beyond level 20. I suspect they’ll raise the level cap to 60 for free to play accounts and lift some of the restrictions (e.g. gold cap, whispers) to make it more viable and less of a trial.

We still won’t know what Project Titan is by the end of 2013

9. BlackBerry 10 Smartphones & PlayBook Tablets

Very little is known about the new QNX / BBX / BlackBerry 10 devices and I won’t speculate much. After many delays, BlackBerry 10 should finally be revealed in February but I suspect devices won’t be available commercially until March or April 2013. At the end of the day, it won’t matter much. Microsoft rebooted Windows Phone in 2010 and many pundits called it “too little too late”. How can RIM reboot their platform in 2013 and expect to stop the free fall?

Their only salvation might be if they released their own OS with its own merits, and yet still support Android apps out of the box without any repackaging, hacking or side-loading. Now THAT would be an interesting feat of engineering.

Bottom line: BlackBerry devices will slip to 4th place in the mobile ecosystem market share, and whatever new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet is introduced will be as insignificant as the current one.

10. Android, Google, Samsung and Amazon

The Android platform holds a decent share of the tablet market but it’s definitely on smartphones that it dominates, with over 60% of market share. Android is a weird animal since so many versions have been forked or heavily customized by all those who seek to make money with it. What will happen to some of the major Android players in 2013?

Samsung is the main company making money off Android. They will keep customizing it to their heart’s content, growing farther apart from the rest of the Android ecosystem, like Amazon has done.
Amazon made Android their own. They forked it and built their own OS on top of it. They have their own UI, their own services, their own marketplace, and it’s all about selling you their content. Expect to see Amazon release newer services for your Kindle Fire tablets to insure you rely less and less on Google. I expect to see an Amazon Email service released in 2013, as well as a cloud-storage solution for consumers, akin to Dropbox or Skydrive. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon expand their search engine to go beyond content and include Internet searches as well, competing with Google and Bing.
Google is quickly losing control of Android and they’ll try to reign things in during 2013, but I don’t see them succeeding very well. They’ll probably just end up releasing more devices of their own with their own Android version. More phone & tablet OEMs will fork Android away from Google and follow Samsung and Amazon since no one is making any significant money with the baseline Android software. Android is winning but Google is losing.

What do you think of my predictions? On target or completely off? Which ones do you agree or disagree with? Which would you add? If you have any questions or comments about this post, the products and technologies discussed or my predictions, you can post them in the comments below or contact me on Twitter at @ActiveNick.

Happy New Year!

The Need for a Third Mobile Ecosystem: The Need for Windows Phone

ActiveNick — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:07:00 GMT

A debate is raging in the technology world these days: Is there a need for a third mobile ecosystem? (FYI, iOS and Android are the first two) If so, which is it gonna be? My position is that yes, we need a third mobile ecosystem, and Windows Phone is it. This post is my rationale as to why, and an invitation to debate the issue. Note that by mobile ecosystem I am talking about mainstream platforms. There will always be a need for multiple niche & proprietary mobile platforms for industrial or other specialized uses, but this post is mostly concerned with the mainstream consumer and enterprise spaces.

Disclaimer

My regular readers and followers know full well that I’m an avid Windows Phone supporter. In the interest of full disclosure, I have almost entirely dedicated my 20+ years career to Microsoft technologies, starting with MS-DOS in 1987, Windows 3.0 in 1990 and Visual Basic 1.0 in 1992. I got my first Windows CE 1.0 device in 1997, adopted .NET in 2000, became a Pocket PC developer in 2001, became a Microsoft MVP awarded on .NET Compact Framework / Windows Mobile development in 2005, and a Windows Phone Development MVP in 2010. For 15 years I have been a Microsoft mobility consultant, advocate, conference speaker, trainer, author, blogger and “tweeter”.

It’s also important to note that I’m heading the mobile strategy at Infragistics, and while many of our products are Microsoft-centric, we have mobile developer tools for Windows Phone, jQuery / HTML5 / Mobile Web, and very soon for iOS too. I use both a Windows 7 laptop & a Macbook Air for work, I have an iPad, an Asus Eee-Pad Transformer Android Tablet and a Blackberry Playbook, my phones have been Windows Phones since 2010, but for the two years prior, I was using an iPhone 3GS (even when I was a Windows Mobile Dev MVP). The bottom line? Understanding and supporting all the modern platforms is a vital part of my work.

Still… Can I be objective about Windows Phone? Probably not.

But not because I think it’s “Microsoft or nothing”, it’s because I feel that Windows Phone is much needed in the modern mobile technology world, just like iOS is needed, and Android is needed. I’m not here to tell you Windows Phone is better. I’m here to tell you Windows Phone is as important as the other two.

Apple: The iPhone Revolution

For anyone who’s been involved in enterprise mobility for 10 years or more, what happened in 2007 was a major curveball. Technologists & futurologists call it a “disruption”. The short of it is Research in Motion (RIM) was on top of the smartphone world with its Blackberry devices, and Microsoft was desperately trying to tweak its Windows Mobile platform (based on then-eleven year old Windows CE) to compete in the enterprise space. As this battle ensued, comes Apple with the iPhone, sending shockwave ripples across the planet. Everyone heard about it. Everyone. Even my mother.

The iPhone was a revolution. Remember that at the time, Microsoft was slowly abandoning the Pocket PC touch screens in favor of rigid smartphone screens (e.g. Motorola Q, HTC Excalibur, Samsung Blackjack), just like the Blackberry, believing it was what users wanted. Give it to Steve Jobs to design a touchscreen phone that everyone wanted before they even knew they wanted it. That’s the disruption part. What Apple realized is that Microsoft was right, but the implementation was not. Instead of using a stylus on a resistive touch screen, the iPhone told us to use our fingers on a highly-responsive capacitive touch screen (as long as you held the device the right way). Now every platform uses them, and the rest is history.

The true revolution came a year later though: the iPhone App Store. Interestingly enough, Steve Jobs originally wanted to completely close down the iPhone platform, not allowing anyone to mess with its perfection, no multitasking allowed, insisting that all third-party apps would be built in AJAX and match the phone UI look & feel. Jump ahead 5 years and the iOS App Store is now the “benchmark” for any consumer software marketplace.

So what sets the iPhone apart? If you distill Apple’s flagship product to its essence, you get:

A premium consumer smartphone built on powerful quality hardware, with enough enterprise features to survive in the business world.
A device that is more about style than technology.
A simplified & consistent holistic user experience.
A highly controlled environment with strict rules & policies.
The widest choice of third party applications, while still conforming to these rules & policies.

The end result is very polarizing: Those that love it will swear their undying allegiance to Apple. Others use it because it’s the “cool non-nerdy phone” and their friends have one. Many would love one but cannot afford it, and the rest will have nothing to do with it.

Android: Power to the People!

When it comes to Linux-based Android, Google went for the polar opposite approach. The first difference is that Android adopted a platform model similar to what Microsoft did with Windows Mobile: provide the software platform and rely on OEM’s to supply the hardware to run it. This is in contrast to Apple (and RIM) who supply & control both the hardware devices (iPhone, Blackberry) and the software (iOS, Blackberry OS). I find it interesting to draw parallels between Windows Mobile and Android, where the latter often repeats mistakes of the former. The main difference is that Android was designed on top of a more powerful & modern foundation.

Note: While Google acquired Android (and the company of the same name in 2005), it is officially a product of the Open Handset Alliance, and is maintained as an Open Source project. Since Google is at the head of all these efforts, Android is still generally considered a “Google product”.

The Android platform was designed with key principles in mind:

Android is made available for free for use by any OEM (i.e. no licensing fees, but OEM’s still need to pay for the various patent licensing fees attached to Android).
Giving complete freedom to the OEMs & carriers to customize the OS and differentiate their devices from one another.
Giving the same freedom to Android developers to create and distribute any kind of apps, games, utilities, widgets, input panels, hacks, etc.
Catering to new smartphone users by driving the costs down, making Android devices the new “default free phone”. Users sign-up for a new cell phone plan and they get a choice of free subsidized phones, now virtually all Android phones (these used to be Symbian feature phones).
Catering to power users who want the best technical specs and the freedom to do what they want.

With OEM’s competing at both ends of the spectrum, Android can be found in the hands of teenagers, soccer moms, Wall Street traders and Silicon Valley IT gurus. In essence, Android is the power of choice. But as we all know, “with great power comes great responsibility”. Android’s strength can also be its Achilles' heel. The lack of user interface design guidelines resulted in an inconsistent experience across phones and apps, something that can drive some users away (though it’s slowly changing). By giving all power to the OEM’s & carriers, Android users never get any guarantee of upgrades when newer versions of the OS become available, resulting in a heavily fragmented ecosystem. This fragmentation in turn causes nightmares for Android developers who incur very high development, test and support costs as the device diversity increases and the fragmentation worsens. Finally, when apps can do whatever they want, it all gives birth to malware, adware, unwanted notifications, copyright infringement, app plagiarism and other digital calamities. This all leads to more user frustrations that have become so common they have their own Twitter hash tag.

It’s undeniable that Android is the most “powerful” mobile OS platform and is here to stay. In a nutshell, Android is to smartphones what Windows is to PCs.

Windows Phone: Microsoft’s Middle Ground

Given that Windows Mobile could barely keep up with Blackberry and certainly not face-off with iPhone or Android, Microsoft made the bold move of rebooting their entire mobile strategy, cut ties with the past, and introduced Windows Phone 7 (which is NOT an upgrade from Windows Mobile 6.5… the Microsoft phone names are really confusing). Now in its second major release (version 7.5, aka “Mango”), Windows Phone is a serious contender with a very high user satisfaction rate… if only users gave it a chance. It’s no secret that Windows Phone sales have been disappointing, though the Nokia Lumia 900 jumped on Amazon’s best sellers list at launch. Nokia went “all in” with Windows Phone and is pouring millions of marketing and innovation dollars in the platform. The recent launch of the Nokia Lumia phones in the US shows some promise, but it’s too early to tell.

Windows Phone is an important player though, as it fills a gap between iOS and Android:

Windows Phone offers a middle ground between the controlled iOS environment and the Android “free for all”.
It offers a wide choice of devices from various OEMs & carriers to its users (though not as wide as Android, yet).
Windows Phone provides enough control & policing to avoid chaos & malware, but also has more openness than iOS.
Windows Phone’s Metro design language also provides a consistent user experience across apps and devices, while still offering enough customization options and application mechanisms (e.g. Live Tiles) to allow users to customize the experience to their needs.
Windows Phone’s Marketplace has now over 80,000 apps, and while that is a lot less than the 600K+ and 400K+ on iOS and Android (respectively), Windows Phone nonetheless has most of the apps users typically expect, and plenty of alternatives for the others. The Marketplace is growing at a pace of 1,150+ apps / week, and Microsoft & Nokia are actively courting the key missing ones to fill that gap. Interestingly enough, with over 90% of the desktop market, Windows has millions of software products vs. tens of thousands for the Mac, but that never stopped Mac users from claiming they have the superior platform.
Windows Phone can also be a premium product, though currently not as high end as the iPhone 4S or the top Android devices. The 480x800 screen is very nice, but currently limited to a single resolution (rumors & Windows Phone 8 leaks point to more resolutions being supported in the next release). The lack of Windows Phone devices with more than 16GB of storage or with dual-core processors shows that higher end devices are needed, especially for the power users who in turn act as advisors to their friends. However, single core CPUs are not stopping Windows Phone from smoking other high performance phones out there.
Windows Phone also competes on the low-end of the device spectrum alongside the “free” Android phones, as a convincing entry-level smartphone for those finally ready to abandon their Symbian feature phones, or buy a cell phone for the first time. The new Windows Phone 7.5 Refresh devices (aka “Tango”) with a reduced 256MB of RAM are aimed at cheaper handsets to conquer those seeking more affordable options.
Finally, Windows Phone can be the enterprise smartphone that is needed to replace the Blackberry. Knowledge workers can feel at home with native support for Microsoft Exchange (including multiple mailboxes), built-in Office apps, and integration with Windows and SharePoint. IT administrators also welcome password protection, secure data communications, device security, application isolation and central policy management. Windows Phone 7.5 added email threads/conversations and server search, tie ins with Lync and Office 365, and a beta version of the Skype app is now available. Rumor has it that Apollo will add Bitlocker support and internal provisioning of enterprise apps.

Blackberry & The Rest of the Field

While some argue that a third ecosystem is not needed, others agree we need one but may think other platforms can fill that gap. The first name to come up is the Blackberry, which still has a significant share of the smartphone market, if only that share was not in free fall. The new leadership at RIM seems to be spinning more of the same message, key executives are defecting and rumors are starting to abound, from Blackberry adopting Windows Phone to RIM setting itself as an acquisition target. This hardly makes the Blackberry a frontrunner.

As for Symbian, its last serious supporter was Nokia, and we already know they are transitioning away from the platform, betting all their chips on Windows Phone. There’s WebOS, MeeGo, Bada and other platforms, but none of them are really in contention as mainstream platforms worldwide.

Windows Phone is the Third Ecosystem

Why is a third ecosystem even needed? Understand that technology platforms almost always evoke very emotional reactions from those who are passionate about tech. When confronted with two or three divisive choices that force us to be “locked-in”, humans often feel the urge to convince others to side with them if only to insure they made the right choice and won’t be the exception. Just look at the popular “technology wars”, current and past:

Beta vs. VHS
Nintendo vs. Sega
Genesis vs. TurboGrafx
Java vs .NET
Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD
Xbox vs. PlayStation vs. Wii
and of course “PC vs. Mac”

We all remember how these “technology wars” sparked heated debates, some still raging on. In every single instance cited here, choosing one over another also influences future habits and purchases. Which movies can I rent from the video store? Which games can I buy and which won’t be accessible to me? What software will I be able to use for work? What skillset should I learn for my career?

While the most popular debates were two-man races, the automobile industry shows that a very wide range is needed to please all users. Brand, features, performance, style & price are all factors that come into play. Picking a car can be a very personal choice, and smartphones are becoming that way too. Your smartphone is the one item that you carry with you at all times. You use it to communicate with friends, coworkers and family. Store your favorite music in it. Keep photos of your loved ones. Play games. Share on social networks. Choosing a smartphone is actually more about its subjective qualities than about specs. Forcing such an “emotional product” into a two-man race necessarily means leaving a lot of people behind. Remember that for every power user, there are thousands of casual buyers out there.

What makes Windows Phone the third ecosystem then? As stated above, the only other real contender is the Blackberry. But with a future that seems to lack direction or any innovation, I fear for the Blackberry’s ability to stay relevant. Trust me, as a Canadian, I am proud of the RIM success story, and it pains me to see them go down like this. I actually think we would all win in the end if Blackberry managed to hang on and challenge the other three. While the Blackberry currently struggles, Windows Phone has a lot going for it:

It’s the perfect balanced choice sitting between iOS and Android, as explained above.
It is brought to us by the world’s largest software maker: Microsoft.
It is backed 100% by the world’s largest cell phone manufacturer: Nokia (and don’t forget a lot of Android OEM’s like HTC, Samsung and others also support Windows Phone).
The unified Metro design language initially introduced by Windows Phone is now making its way everywhere. The Xbox 360 dashboard now sports a Metro design and sits in 67+ million living rooms worldwide. Windows 8 & Windows RT are coming in full force this Fall, both featuring the Metro UI front & center. All these devices natively integrate with Windows Phone, and every Xbox 360 and Windows 8/RT PC, tablet & laptop will be a virtual ad for Windows Phone. Metro will soon become a recognizable brand, and Windows Phone will be at the center of it.
Windows Phone 8 (aka “Apollo” or whatever it ends up being called) is just around the corner, with all indications that it’ll ship later this year. If history serves, this will be the fabled “third version” of Windows Phone, which is usually when Microsoft gets it right and starts gaining widespread adoption in a product. If the rumors & leaks are true, I have no problem believing in the massive positive impact the next version will have.

When Microsoft bets the farm on a product, you can expect big things and a relentless campaign. The pundits claim that it’s “Lumia or bust”, but Nokia already confirmed that “there is no plan B”, and Nokia won’t go down that easily. Analysts have been making market predictions for the mobile market all the way to 2015, some showing Windows Phone in 2nd or 3rd place. The experts agree that Windows Phone will make it at least that far, and the future of Microsoft’s mobile platform won’t be decided in the next few months only.

Remember that for Windows Phone, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

What do you think? Is a third ecosystem needed? Where will Windows Phone be in 3 years? Post your comments here or ping me on Twitter.