http://www.bmighty.com/blog/main/arc...crosoft_j.html

Interesting article about how Microsoft is more or less abandoning their own mobile OS in favor of the now Open Source (and ultimately first place ranked) Symbian mobile OS. We've had several discussions on the whole MS buddying up to Nokia thing already, but this is the first I've heard of WinMo being more or less tossed to the wind, or as the writer said, thrown under a bus.

Support public transportation.

When he talks about Linux he means Maemo or what?

Don't Microsoft already have the mobile office running on their winmo (or winpho now) since time immemorial (however sucky the implementation is)?

By the author's same reasoning, Microsoft was leaving Windows left for dead when they made MS Office available for OSX. And we know that wasn't the case.

@nwerneck: he's talking about the opensource community in general.

I think they're merely trying to avoid having back to back quarters where they lose money. It happened once in 35 years, so announcements and pushes like this make the stockholders very happy because it means "new audience" to them.

That's my take. And a new audience can only help their bottom line.

Microsoft? Use Linux? lol

Steve Balmer already expressed his disdain for Linux. To go back on that would be both hypocritical and conniving. Something doesn't smell right here...

Jesse~

You don't think Ballmer can be hypocritical and conniving?

I don't have any trouble seeing it...

I'm know he can be, which makes me worried. I think Gates has more sense in this regard, but seeing as he appointed Ballmer as his replacement, it speak ill of his decisions.

Still, only time will tell what this holds for the world of Linux, Nokia and us.

Jesse~

I doubt this alliance means Microsoft is throwing Windows Mobile. For a start, we still have to see what kind of software comes out of this.

As a matter of fact, Pocket Office has usually kind of sucked, being outfeatured in nearly every aspect by the competition (in my Palm days even DataViz's product had better binary format compatibility -- so I guess that's still the case today; if it's not and they have made a huge heap please tell).

Also, right now I believe that what what we're going to see is a web application. Unless very well executed (e.g. host filesystem integration) I don't see how can that compete with traditional office suites. After all, we already have Google Docs out there and not even the iPhone office suite makers saw that as competition (people who use Google Docs are not going to buy a full office suite either way).


Not to say that Microsoft knows Symbian faces certain death and it's not a likely competitor to the iPhone-killer Windows Mobile MS has in mind, but that's still debatable.

i suspect that they are trying to spread their service tentacles as wide as they can go.

stand alone editing of office files is of lesser importance then being able to access a storage pool and collaborative system thats automatically backed up, and available from anywhere.

basically, microsoft is shifting at least its consumer end of tings towards a environment of apps and devices tethered to online services, where the true muscle is not the apps but the services on microsoft controlled servers.

and if the same apps, by flipping a virtual switch, can talk to sharepoint, exchange and other business grade microsoft products, the better. Then they can sell the same product to both sides, and just alter abilities based on what code is used to activate it.

windows and desktop office have behaved this way for ages, and now they are heading the same way with pocket office.

oh, and if celio redfly, smartbooks and similar keeps things going, we may well see that the pocket office will change from being a lesser cousin of the desktop version to being a equivalent product. The limitations are no longer about cpu power, but about screen size and input systems. I may go as far as claim that separating desktop os and phone os is a legacy notion, and that one may well carry ones work 24/7, between a desktop dock, home dock and maybe a on the road dock, if needed.