Ballmer Shows Smart Phone Tricks

At Mobile World Congress last year Microsoft announced its new mobile operating system. This year CEO Steve Ballmer announced it will work better with Twitter.

To be fair he did say a bit more than that. Let’s run through the good bits: there were impressive demonstrations of IE9 on the mobile phone showing how much better it was than Safari running on an iPhone. It was a lot, lot better.

The integration with XBox and Kinect was also pretty impressive. It showed three peopleone standing in front of the Kinect camera “dodged” balls that were sent by the two other players from their Windows phones which appeared on the TV screen.

And the demonstration of multi-tasking (which was described as “battery-safe multi-tasking”) was also very good.

Toni Albir/EPA
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, held in Barcelona, Spain.

So you would imagine with all that, that it was a great keynote.  But it was surprisingly flat. Most of the presentation by Mr. Ballmer was taken up with telling us things we already knew. At times it felt more like a feature demonstration from a really good salesman rather than a keynote from the CEO of one of the world’s most important software companies. We were told how happy users are with their Windows Phone 7, but not how many users there are.  We were told how many users would recommend their new phones to friends and families, but not about any new phones.

For some in the audiencemobile network operatorshe said that Windows Phone 7 was going to be “the most operator-friendly” operating system without going into too much detail. This was a theme echoed by Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia, with whom Microsoft announced a strategic partnership last week.

And you have to feel for Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president, Windows Phone Program, who fell foul of the scourge of live presentations at conferencesdreadful wi-fi. His attempts to demonstrate various other aspects of the phone were like his flying skills in a World War 1 flight simhe crashed and burned.

Microsoft is trying hard to stay relevant. Mr. Ballmer had the air of a man who knows that he has arrived late to the party and was doing his very best to persuade everyone that actually coming late was a great thing.  He may yet be right. Windows Phone 7 is certainly like no other mobile operating system and some of the things he has shown were very impressive. But what it lacks is momentum, spark, drive and verve.

Will the alliance with Nokia inject some excitement into the phone? Nokia and excitement are not words often found in the same sentence. Mr. Ballmer still has some convincing to do.

Add a Comment


Comments (5 of 16)

View all Comments »
    • How does the incompetent bozo ballmer keep his job? He hasn't created one dollar of shareholder value during his decade long tenure?

    • Times here are Zulu ?

    • Microsoft sould be treated with respect just as a beached-whale should. It might roll over on you!

      In the long term, good luck Nokia! Stay nimble!

    • The problem with the tech media and a bunch of people is that they know very little and talk too much (and hence wrong). Let's go through the points one by one:

      1. WP7 IS a very good smartphone OS. The iPhone / Android-loving crowd would love not be accept that, but it's a fact. Why it has not caught fire/ It will. When Android shipped, the same media pundits didn't give it a fighting chance against iPhone, but now iPhone's market share is declining! Really.

      2. The payment between MS and Nokia is beneficial for both companies. They are in business, and whatever takes them forward and is not illegal, they will do that. MS will pay Nokia to use their technologies as well as an investment for the phone ecosystem. By the way, MS paid Apple $150M in 1999-2000 as an investment.
      Nokia doesn't have any good option on smartphone OS. MeeGo is not really going anywhere, and Symbian is dated now. Their choice was Android and WP7. If Motorola can be an Android-only company and still be raved for what a great job they are doing, what's wrong with Nokia making great phones on WP7/8? Is that a mental block for some people?

      3. OpenGL was made available in NT 3.1 in 1993, and SGI at that time shipped some NT-based SG workstations, and MS-ownd Softimage used run on that to create amazing graphics for movies etc. MS later sold Softimage to Avid later on. SGI died of self-inflicted wound, like SUN -- sitting on their laurels for too long. They assumed it was OK suck the users dry for ever.

      4. WP7's March update brings it on par with or goes well past iOS4. The biggest shortfall will be in the number of apps department, and that's something to work on for the next year or so. Remember, it took Android about a year to beat iPhone in market share. Another year will bring a bunch of new surprises.

    • If it is so great then why is MS paying billions of dollars to Nokia just to use their software???

About Tech Europe


    • Tech Europe on Twitter
    • Tech Europe on Facebook