Microsoft Research shows off a prototype ‘Menlo’ mobile phone
For the past few months, I've been trying to piece together what Microsoft codename “Menlo” is. My tipsters described it as a project by Microsoft Researchers to investigate new operating system possibilities in the mobile space.
Context & Ripple Effects
Menlo has been leaking in stages all year: an April Reuters piece flagged it as Microsoft's latest phone experiment, and a May report on this same blog asked whether the codename signaled a change in mobile strategy. What is new today is confirmation of who owns it — not the Windows Phone product group but Microsoft Research, prototyping a handset to explore new operating-system possibilities for mobile.
The timing matters. July's two-iPhone-competitors promise has already produced one visible casualty: the Kin line, whose failure reportedly embarrassed rank-and-file employees and coincided with hundreds of targeted layoffs. With Project Pink's hardware play (first shots leaked in March) dead on arrival, a research-lab prototype gives Microsoft a lower-stakes way to keep mobile OS ideas moving while the product organization regroups.
First-order effects
- Microsoft Research gains a concrete hardware vehicle for its mobile OS work, moving the project from rumor to demonstrable prototype and giving the lab a seat at the company's mobile table alongside the Windows Phone product group.
Second-order effects
- After the Kin failure damaged morale inside the rank and file, a credible research alternative creates internal competition for which mobile OS direction Microsoft backs next — research prototypes versus the existing product roadmap.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, big-company labs become the hedge against failed first-party device bets: rather than killing mobile exploration outright after a commercial flop like Kin, Microsoft routes the next generation of OS thinking through research prototypes where the cost of being wrong is low.
The trend: Corporate research labs are increasingly the fallback channel for mobile operating-system experimentation when a company's first-party hardware strategy stumbles.