I love my iPhone. But I also worry about its future. History has shown that when a company innovates an awesome product and takes over the imagination of a market sector, the awesome product goes stale without a creditable threat. I think this new Windows phone just might do the trick. See the article in Gizmodo.
Current Threats to iPhone
Google's Android platform is the current yet less that credible threat to the iPhone. Android sure looks good, is easy to develop for, has all the features you would expect from a modern smartphone, but has some fatal flaws too. Different handsets have have different versions of the system, different features implemented, different screens, different keyboards and different performance curves, making it a very difficult target to pin down. At least on the iPhone, you know the features and limitations available. The best Android phone, the Nexus One from Google, has potential to make this a credible threat as its the best Android phone out there, but the support mess and penalty structure needs to get fixed.
Symbian has announced Symbian S^3, their next generation handset operating system, taking the ideas from both Android in going open source and Palm in using web technologies. Since most of Europe will be on this platform by 2011, it sure is a potential threat. As long as Nokia and the other Symbian handset makers stabilize the feature set on handsets to make it work.
Palm is the baby of the three. Its software looks terriffic and its handsets look great and work terribly. If they fix their hardware, they can still be called a potential threat.
Windows Phone 7 Series
I like the big flat buttons. I like the Zune build in. I love the integrated contacts, facebook and other live updates. And Xbox on a phone is just plain smart. Calling the mail application outlook is priceless. And locking down the hardware to a limited set of features means the handset makers will compete on price and bezel and nothing else. Leaving us developers with a nice clean platform to make money on apps, just like the iPhone.
What's the Catch?
Windows Phone 7 Series will not be out until the holidays - I assume that means the end of 2010. That gives Apple, Google, Symbian and Palm a year to leap even further ahead while making sure their offerings equal or beat the Microsoft product. And Microsoft itself has to still deliver a stable and feature complete product, something they have not executed well at over the pst 10 years.
I really hope they succeed. The iPhone is 3 years old now, and still looks and works the same as it did on day one. Maybe it needs some credible threats to spur Apple on to make it even greater.
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