Enterprise Market:
Microsoft currently focuses on the leisure, highly communicative users that also want a gaming experience. By leveraging their office products more through their office hub, they could include the enterprise users easily. Also their dominance in the overall Office Software market is a huge competitive advantage that could be used in venturing into this market again. A second approach with more effort would be developing a special version for the enterprise markets with e.g. deleting the Gaming features and thus make it more business-like.
Microsoft currently focuses on the leisure, highly communicative users that also want a gaming experience. By leveraging their office products more through their office hub, they could include the enterprise users easily. Also their dominance in the overall Office Software market is a huge competitive advantage that could be used in venturing into this market again. A second approach with more effort would be developing a special version for the enterprise markets with e.g. deleting the Gaming features and thus make it more business-like.
Compatibility to older Software:
Since nearly all of the software is not being supported by the new OS, this could be a huge barrier for former Windows Mobile users. By taking Java as an example, they could support old applications through a sandbox-environment that would give the users access to the applications, but could not endanger the OS as a whole.
Marketplace & Developers:
Microsoft’s mobile app strategy may also involve different tactics from those the company employed for Windows Marketplace for mobile. Now with Silverlight and XMA, there are two extremely robust, mature frameworks with a large install base. Silverlight has half a million developers worldwide, and every single one of those developers is essentially now a mobile developer.
The new windows phone marketplace will allow developers to leverage their creations for profit, offering features such as onetime credit card purchases, mobile operator billing and advertising funded applications.
In a bid to further differentiate themselves from competitors such as the App store, where prices tend toward free or else .99 cents per application, Microsoft can also encourage developers to charge more for their products. “We would definitely want to promote the idea that you make more money selling applications than selling your application in a dollar store, “Loke Uei, senior technical product manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Developer Experience.
Microsoft’s mobile app strategy may also involve different tactics from those the company employed for Windows Marketplace for mobile. Now with Silverlight and XMA, there are two extremely robust, mature frameworks with a large install base. Silverlight has half a million developers worldwide, and every single one of those developers is essentially now a mobile developer.
The new windows phone marketplace will allow developers to leverage their creations for profit, offering features such as onetime credit card purchases, mobile operator billing and advertising funded applications.
In a bid to further differentiate themselves from competitors such as the App store, where prices tend toward free or else .99 cents per application, Microsoft can also encourage developers to charge more for their products. “We would definitely want to promote the idea that you make more money selling applications than selling your application in a dollar store, “Loke Uei, senior technical product manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Developer Experience.
Staying Innovative:
Staying innovative is one of the most difficult issues to tackle, but they essentially took the right step by creating the Windows Phone OS from scratch and implementing the Hubs and especially the Mobile Gaming features. By constantly trying to venture into new markets, Microsoft could stay innovative in this field. Also, since their R&D budgets are one of the biggest in the industry, they simply need to try to market their innovations harder and better than in the past.
Staying innovative is one of the most difficult issues to tackle, but they essentially took the right step by creating the Windows Phone OS from scratch and implementing the Hubs and especially the Mobile Gaming features. By constantly trying to venture into new markets, Microsoft could stay innovative in this field. Also, since their R&D budgets are one of the biggest in the industry, they simply need to try to market their innovations harder and better than in the past.
References:
eWeek, "Microsoft's Windows Mobile Phone 7 Needs to Avoid Past Strategy", Mar 16, 2010, http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Microsofts-Windows-Phone-7-Needs-to-Avoid-Past-Strategy-160244/
