As most of you know, Microsoft hasn’t had very good luck lately in getting cell phone makers to adobe Windows Mobile. Indeed, recent surveys show that the BlackBerry software, Apple iPhone and even Google’s Android are faring far better these days.
The newly-released Windows Mobile 6.5 has gotten, to be generous, lukewarm reviews. Microsft’s response is, as usual, to promise everyone that they’ll do better next time with version 7, whose shipping date has now slipped to late 2010. That, of course, is nothing more than their typical excuse for releasing a product that would probably be declared unreleasable by most of their competition.
To add insult to injury, Microsoft has just pulled a fast one on the users of T-Mobile’s Sidekick smartphones. You see, Microsoft purchased the creator of that product, Danger, for a cool $500 million, but has evidently let development on the platform languish.
Worse, some Danger employees were promptly transferred to the still-vapor Pink project, supposedly a project to develop a genuine Microsoft mobile device in the worst tradition of the Zune digital media player. However, many key members of Danger’s staff have simply quit, and the resources allocated to the Sidekick have evidently been severely curtailed.