Will Windows Phone 7 be a success or a failure?

In recent weeks much talk in technology circles has been about the new Mobile offering from Microsoft, but will it work out for them? In truth nobody yet knows, and perhaps only time will tell. There are some compelling arguments either way.

Putting a foot firmly in each camp - Luke says success, James says failure- we explore some of the arguments.

James says Failure...

Microsoft have tried and failed to break in to the Mobile OS arena before. In the past users have complained about the complex and poorly designed phone interface that made the “phone” element of the smartphone experience difficult and clumsy.

Historically problems with general speed and useability of some of the more complex 'smart' functions meant that reviews and sales have always been (at best) lukewarm.

Microsoft is arriving late to the party. Apple has redefined the landscape for smartphones. Putting useability and design at the very top of their list, they have managed to create a highly desirable range of devices that are appealing to look at, great to use and are highly functional (with some 300,000+ apps on the App Store to date). In addition Android (Google) now boast 100,000+ apps of their own and have stolen market share from the other heavyweights of the Mobile OS arena, while Symbian (Nokia) and Blackberry (RIM) are responding with new devices and “app” platforms too. The point is that this market is congested with well established competitors.

Windows Phone 7 isn't as feature rich as you may first think with no multitasking, no tethering, no copy/paste or in browser support for Flash or Silverlight (the later being a Microsoft product).

While technical reviews have been good for WP7, this is no indicator for market success- carriers will need to be incentivised to sell it and the general public will need to embrace it.

Just being considered a capable competitor to Blackberry is not where Microsoft want to be- a £400 million marketing budget may only serve to make this venture a well publicised failure.

Luke says Success...

Microsoft-based developers can finally make use of their .NET skills to produce feature-rich Silverlight apps using the Visual Studio IDE. If you were to believe the stats that 90% of the World’s developers target Windows and approximately half of all developers are .NET developers, then there must be a substantial amount of developers that have been waiting patiently for Microsoft to truly enter the smartphone arena!

WP7 is the first real replacement for the desktop PC. It organises messaging, social networking, music, photos, gaming and documents into an intuitive, slick user interface. All other smartphones to date have only ever been an extension of your PC.

With its Xbox Live service, WP7 will appeal massively to the gaming community allowing Xbox gamers to hook up with their friends anytime, anywhere.
With the Office hub, you can work on mobile versions of MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint and even makes use of SharePoint Workspace Mobile to collaborate with your business colleagues.

WP7 allows true integration with MS Exchange to manage and use multiple accounts with Outlook Mobile, while also allowing popular personal email accounts, like Google, Yahoo and Windows Live.

WP7 provides a music and video hub that not only synchronises wirelessly with your PC-hosted collections, it also allows you to stream or download tunes direct from the Zune marketplace.

All other arguments aside, the success of WP7 may well depend on the Apps market.

Now that the majority of developers can get their hands dirty using their preferred language, it does stand to reason that we will see Microsoft become a real contender in the fight for smartphone dominance.