What's Wrong With Windows Mobile and How WM7 and WM8 Are Going to Fix It [What's Wrong With Windows Mobile]
We just got the scoop from Microsoft on Windows Mobile 7 and Windows Mobile 8, the two upcoming platforms that will fix what is undeniably broken about the Windows Mobile platform to date.
Context & Ripple Effects
Gizmodo's WM7/WM8 scoop was the day's shared story rather than a single-outlet exclusive — Engadget (touch and motion gestures) and Download Squad both ran their own takes within hours, signaling real appetite for any word on where the platform goes next.
It lands in an unusually heavy Microsoft month: the Hyper-V public beta and Vista SP1 release candidate surfaced December 13, and the Multimap acquisition closed December 12, so the mobile roadmap announcement is part of a coordinated burst of platform commitments across virtualization, desktop, and web services.
First-order effects
- Hardware partners and carriers building on Windows Mobile must now plan against two simultaneous version targets, 7 and 8, instead of the incremental point updates that defined the platform to date.
- Gizmodo frames the current platform as 'undeniably broken' based on Microsoft's own briefing — an admission that raises the delivery bar for both upcoming versions and puts existing users and developers in wait-and-see mode.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's denial of Opera's antitrust claims about locking users into Internet Explorer keeps its bundling practices under scrutiny at exactly the moment it is rebuilding a mobile stack, so design choices in WM7/WM8 will be read through that regulatory lens.
- Rival mobile platforms gain a messaging opening: an incumbent publicly diagnosing its own platform's flaws invites competitors to pitch continuity and stability against Microsoft's promised reset.
Third-order effects
- A two-generation fix plan points toward full-rebuild cycles replacing incremental updates as the competitive norm for established mobile OS vendors — raising how often incumbents must bet the platform to stay credible.
- If the pattern holds, partner confidence becomes the binding constraint: shipping 7 and 8 late or out of step would undermine both, making synchronized delivery the test of whether Microsoft can execute multi-front platform renewals like the one it ran across Hyper-V, Vista, and web services this same week.
The trend: Mobile operating systems are entering a phase where incumbents must publicly diagnose their own platform's failures and commit to multi-version rewrites to hold partners and developers.