What is wrong with Microsoft?

That is the question I am asking myself these days. Where are they going? Of course Microsoft has never been recognized for innovating. When they see something they can make money with, they simply buy the company and repackage the product and use their unlimited supply of money and marketing experts.

What is happening to their flagship products? Vista was almost a disaster, Zune is a disaster, Office UI is driving people nuts, I could go on…

That brings me to Windows Mobile. Oh yeah, 6.5 has been announced and we’ve all seen some screen shots and videos. OK, fine. We have not expected anything, considering the platform being so old with a UI designed for the 90’s. It is 2009 Microsoft. Oh sorry, they know, yes, they have updated the user interface. Great, they put this honeycomb launcher with an UGLY X has a close button. It still feels like the old Windows Mobile to me. Where is the innovation? Cell phones needs an easy user interface, fast response and great integration between applications.

Apple has almost got it perfect. The Windows Mobile offers something Apple will never let happen… You can develop what you want without any restrictions, this is a huge plus, developers are more interested in an open platform than a closed one. Microsoft should put more energy into the Windows Mobile platform, cell phones are an important part of people’s life these days and the market is huge. Windows Mobile 7 will be nowhere to be seen until 2010 maybe 2011, by then, it will be too late for the platform.

Now, why doesn’t Microsoft look at Mobile Shell 3? That is very close to innovation in my opinion. It is slick, it is fast (from the videos) and seems simple to use. In 2009, we need polished products from the mega-corporations, a nice looking launcher is not enough, we need a newer interface, better list boxes, bigger buttons, great menus, a USEABLE on-screen keyboard. We use our fingers, not a hard to reach stylus that we all lose and that scratches our screens. The basic API can be tweaked easily to allow a finger controlled UI. With their resources, it should have been feasible to release early this year.

Who cares about backward compatibility for old PocketPC and Windows Mobile applications? It is a perfect time, there are pratically no new applications for the platform coming out, it is almost dead. I am positive most developers will be happy to adjust parts of their applications to run on a fresh and viable platform. Sales drives us all.

On the hardware side of things, we don’t need accelerometers, we need OpenGL 3D compatible hardware. We need a consistent hardware requirement list:

• VGA OpenGL 3D video card
• Touchscreen
• Speakers
• Bluetooth
• Wifi
• 3G

That’s it, no cheap phones allowed. This way developers work for one set of hardware and know that their apps will work on all devices. Don’t worry people will buy these devices, they will get them for $99 with a three year contrac no problem.

Then you get the app market place to integrate itself perfectly with the OS and you’ve got a platform that will make you a leader.

Maybe WinMo 7 will surprise us all. I personally doubt it.

What do you guys think? Do I make sense?