Datasheet

Initially Microsoft didn’t realize the mobile market was undergoing a major overhaul. It failed to

react quickly to accommodate the dramatic growth of the smartphone market driven by explosive

adoption of the iPhone among average consumers. In 2007 and 2008, Microsoft worked on

Windows Mobile 7, which for the most part resembled Windows Mobile 6 from a user interface

perspective but with multi-touch support. In the interim, Microsoft released Windows Mobile 6.5,

which provided a minor update with ﬁ nger-friendly tiles and menus. Unsurprisingly, it failed to

impress the market.

Google entered mobile space with Android in 2008, and has enjoyed rapid growth since then,

partly because Microsoft has failed to release a major update for about three years (since Windows

Mobile 6.1). Google has formed the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) with major handset makers,

silicon vendors, and mobile operators to create the Android open platform. As Microsoft struggled

to build Windows Mobile 7, handset makers turned to Google Android.

Feeling the pressure from Apple and Google, Microsoft has shufﬂ ed its mobile business division,

reset the Windows Mobile 7 effort, and started WP7 from scratch. WP7 sports a new tile interface,

Marketplace application store, Silverlight- and XNA-based application framework, and Xbox LIVE

and Zune integration. The effort has ﬁ nally paid off. WP7 was launched in Europe, Singapore, and

Australia in October 2010, and in the U.S. and Canada in November 2010. Microsoft shipped 1.5

million WP7 devices in the ﬁ rst six weeks. It’s still too early to project WP7’s future in terms of

market share. Nonetheless, WP7 is unique in many ways compared to iOS and Android, and thus

offers another choice for smartphone users. Microsoft continues to invest in mobile technology and

keeps improving Windows Phone. It’ll be quite interesting to see the competition among the three

major mobile operating systems for the next few years.

The Big Ideas

WP7 is the outcome of Microsoft’s new mobile strategy, which is to shift from enterprise-oriented

mobile product design to consumer-focused design. As Andy Lees, Microsoft’s president of the

mobile and embedded division, put it in an interview:

We made a very big decision to re-examine everything, because the industries

surrounding mobile are at an inﬂ ection point. . . . The technological advances

over the past few years enable us to do bold new things we’ve never done before.

But the most important thing is that we are bringing it all together with an almost

maniacal focus on the consumer.

www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2010/

feb10/02-15windowsphone7.mspx

The following list describes the overall goals that Microsoft tried to achieve when developing WP7:

Consumer Focused: Microsoft reviewed its competitors’ offerings in order to understand

what the consumer wants in terms of mobile user experience. For example, consumers want

to touch the screen using their ﬁ ngers, rather than using a stylus. Therefore, the developer

must create a graphical user interface (GUI) that’s ﬁ nger-friendly, with enlarged actionable

components that support tapping (brieﬂ y using a ﬁ nger to touch the surface), dragging

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An Overview of Windows Phone 7

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