Exclusive: Windows Mobile 7 To Focus On Touch and Motion Gestures
Microsoft is currently developing Windows Mobile 7, the first revolutionary change to its mobile device operating system. Recently, I was given a document by a source inside Microsoft that details the touch and gesture plans for Mobile 7.
Context & Ripple Effects
This leak lands in the middle of a touch-heavy stretch for Microsoft. In October 2007 the company took a patent on a new user interface for mobile devices (patent coverage), and in December CNET reported that the next desktop Windows would get more touch input (Windows 7 touch plans) while Gizmodo laid out what it saw as wrong with Windows Mobile and how versions 7 and 8 were supposed to fix it (Gizmodo's WM7/WM8 critique). The InsideMobile document, picked up by Engadget the same day, claims to show those threads converging in a single product.
Worth stressing the epistemic status: this rests on one unnamed source and an internal document, so the touch-and-gesture focus for Windows Mobile 7 is unconfirmed rather than announced. But if accurate, it would be the first revolutionary change to an OS whose staleness critics had been cataloguing for months.
First-order effects
- Device makers building on Windows Mobile would need to spec touchscreens and motion sensors into their 2008-and-later hardware, since the OS's headline features would be unusable without them.
- The existing Windows Mobile developer base faces a new gesture-driven interaction model, with applications built around stylus-and-menu conventions needing rework to stay competitive.
Second-order effects
- Rivals shipping touch-first phones — Apple most visibly — lose their differentiation window if Microsoft matches the interaction model at Windows Mobile's scale of carrier and OEM distribution.
- Component suppliers of capacitive touch panels and accelerometers see a second large-volume customer beyond Apple as Microsoft's OEM ecosystem retools its hardware lineups.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across both Windows 7 and Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft is standardizing direct-manipulation input across desktop and mobile, pushing the whole industry toward touch as the default interface rather than a premium feature.
- A successful gesture-centric overhaul would also pressure carriers and OEMs to accept deeper OS-level control from platform vendors, eroding the skin-it-how-you-like model that defined Windows Mobile licensing.
The trend: Mobile operating systems are converging on touch and motion as primary inputs, with Microsoft racing to retrofit its licensed-OS empire around the interaction model the iPhone popularized.