In
an interview with German
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates made clear
that Microsoft will not (yet?) launch a product that directly competes with
Apple's iPhone. This was speculated after the first
Windows Mobile 7 screenshots
unveiled earlier this week.
In the interview, Gates is quoted that Microsoft don't want to that (competing
with the iPhone) but rather continue to concentrate on the Windows Mobile
platform itself. At the end - if you read between the lines - it also means that
"Zune Phone" cannot be expected anytime soon - as long as Zune isn't part of the
Windows Mobile platform itself (think of an updated Windows Media Player
experience):
"We have partnerships with a lot of device manufacturers from Samsung to
Motorola and this variety brings us significantly more than if we would make our
own mobile phone," Gates said.
Nevertheless, even if I know that the possible Windows Mobile 7 GUI, as we
might have seen previously, is way older then the Apple iPhone (you cannot
develop something completely new within 4 months only which is the same with
HTC's TouchFLO UI where development started before Apple announced the UI) it's
clear that Apple was the first to market with a new kind of consumer friendly
GUI. All other platform developers - from Microsoft's Windows Mobile to Symbian
with Nokia's S60 and Sony Ericsson's UIQ' - will follow sooner or later.
Cheers ~ Arne