Coming soon: Get a Windows Live ID from your phone
An announcement coming at CTIA in San Francisco this week will unveil plans to offer the ability to sign up for a Windows Live ID from your phone, simply and securely. Why is this important? This from Phil Holden from Windows Mobile:
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has spent the second half of 2007 pushing Windows Live beyond the desktop browser: August brought the partnership with Nokia to ship Windows Live on S60 devices, and this week's CTIA announcement in San Francisco closes the loop by letting a user create a Windows Live ID directly on the handset rather than first signing up on a PC. Phil Holden's Windows Mobile group is fronting the news.
The story travelled further than a typical Live-side feature note: Reuters picked it up the same day under a headline framing the software as taking aim at RIM's customer base, which positions a mundane account-signup flow as a shot in the carrier-email wars between Microsoft and Research In Motion.
First-order effects
- Windows Mobile and partner-device users gain on-device provisioning of a Windows Live ID, removing the PC signup step that previously gated access to Live services on a phone.
- The announcement hands carriers and OEMs like Nokia a self-service on-ramp for Microsoft's mail and messenger stack, deepening the S60 relationship struck in August 2007.
Second-order effects
- Research In Motion faces pressure at the low end of its base, since Reuters' framing puts Microsoft's free, phone-provisioned identity against BlackBerry's carrier-billed email accounts — forcing RIM to defend why consumers should pay for what Live offers at no charge.
- Carriers gain a lever over which email ecosystem they pre-load and promote, making Live ID placement a negotiating point in future handset deals alongside the existing Nokia arrangement.
Third-order effects
- If sign-up-from-the-phone becomes standard, the account itself — not the handset or the carrier plan — becomes the durable customer relationship, pushing consumer web identities toward single sign-in that follows a user across devices.
- Identity provisioning shifts from an IT-style setup task to a retail moment at the point of sale, giving whoever owns the signup flow (Microsoft here) a structural advantage in attaching further paid services later.
The trend: Consumer internet identities are migrating from PC-first registration to device-native provisioning, turning the phone into the front door for web-service ecosystems.