Windows Mobile Gets a Facelift and offers new Windows® Phone Services

By Adam Kornak, Director, Global Enterprise Strategy, Microsoft OEM Mobile

Microsoft is hard at work putting the finishing touches on the next major Windows Mobile release, to be known as Windows® Phones. This new generation of Windows® Phones will be based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will feature devices with a new finger touch screen interface and rich browsing experience. In addition, Microsoft is introducing two new services: one called Windows Marketplace for Mobile, a new online shopping tool for mobile phones that will be accessible via Windows® Phones and the Web; and Microsoft® My Phone, a service that synchronizes text messages, photos, videos and contacts with a central site on the Web. The new Windows® Phones will be available in the latter half of this year and initially launched through top manufacturing partners, LG, HTC and mobile operator Orange. More details are available at: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/feb09/02-16MWCPR.mspx

What does all this mean for Financial Services and enterprise customers who are existing Windows Mobile users? Fortunately, Microsoft is only improving upon a well established platform. The past features of Windows Mobile are still part of the new Windows Mobile 6.5 feature portfolio. Windows Mobile is well known for its enterprise solutions and rich business and productivity applications. For example, Bloomberg recently announced a version of its popular Bloomberg Anywhere desktop application for the Windows Mobile platform – http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jun08/06-10BloombergMobilePR.mspx
Bloomberg is one of the most widely used information services networks in the world and with Windows Mobile 6.5, users will have a richer mobile experience through touch screen and finger scrolling on their device.

Microsoft and its manufacturing partners will continue to produce non-touch screen devices as well. The same security and mobile management capabilities that exist in Windows Mobile version 6.1 will transfer to Windows Mobile 6.5, along with application compatibility. Finally, the browser experience is vastly improved with Windows Mobile 6.5 with Internet Explorer 6. Internet Explorer Mobile 6 is a full-featured browser for Windows Mobile devices and looks and feels like the browser on your desktop. Internet Explorer Mobile 6 supports desktop-quality rendering and has the best compliance support of all versions of Internet Explorer on a Windows Mobile device to date. Some of the great new features are Adobe Flash Lite 3.1 support for an improved multimedia experience, and deeper integration with search – http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2008/11/11/internet-explorer-mobile-6.aspx

On the analyst front, Gartner recently published the “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wireless E-mail Software Market” (May 27, 2009)

In this Magic Quadrant, Gartner determines that “the market for enterprise wireless e-mail products is mature, with most new demand coming from the expansion of the user base in companies that already deployed the technology. Despite shrinking IT budgets in 2009, wireless e-mail continues to be a priority for mobile investments.” The Magic Quadrant can be viewed here: http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=167316

Corporate email and device management are strong suits in Microsoft Windows Mobile and will continue to be in Windows Mobile 6.5. New capabilities for mobile email messaging such as unified messaging will be available with Exchange 2010.

Windows Mobile 6.5 adds to the company’s success in the enterprise with the new mobile services Microsoft® My Phone and Windows Marketplace for Mobile. My Phone users will have the ability to back up and restore important data residing on their phone to a centralized location and access it anywhere from any device, not just their mobile device. To try the My Phone beta, users can go to: http://sn1-p1.myphone.microsoft.com/mkweb/Start.po?mkt=en-US

Despite the economic uncertainty, demand for mobile solutions and services is growing at an astronomical rate. The question companies need to be asking themselves is not “if” but “when” will mobility be a mainstream part of their business. It’s not just about email anymore; it’s about saving and generating hard dollars in a tough economy through mobile applications. In our next newsletter, we’ll look at how major firms on Wall Street and abroad are using mobility to not just stay afloat but are pushing ahead of their competition by staying “mobile.”