Emblaze Picks Windows CE .NET 4.1 For The New M5 Mobile Phone

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://smartmobileassets.com/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl/Blah.pl?,v=display,b=news,m=1087748363' target='_blank'>http://smartmobileassets.com/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl/Blah.pl?,v=display,b=news,m=1087748363</a><br /><br /></div>Emblaze Mobile have released the <a href="http://em.emblaze.com/specm5.html">M5</a> mobile phone running Windows CE .NET 4.1. The guys over at Smart Mobile Assets have post an interview with Eli Reifman, CEO of the Emblaze Group, where the ask him about their OS decision. (You can read the full interview at the linked article.) Here's what he had to say:<br /><br /><i>"We didn’t really create our own operating system, we simply didn’t go with the mainstream. The mainstream was Symbian or Nucleus as an embedded system or Smartphones 2003. The reason we went on CE .net is very simple…at the time none of the operating systems allowed the flexibility to do whatever you want, WHATEVER you want with it. Either Symbian or Smartphone would force you into UI flow, a certain experience and we wished to be able to have complete flexibility."</i><br /><br />I understand that this may sound attractive, but I feel it creates undo confusion in the Windows Mobile market. Casio did this in the PDA market a while back when they released the BE-300, for which they built a their own GUI on top of CE.NET and it was never much of a success. Consumers will have a hard time finding 3rd party applications for the phone. Not to mention the confusion of applications that have been made for the Windows Mobile-based Smartphone platform that won't run on the M5. With that being said; it is a pretty nice looking phone. I like the 2 extra action buttons located at the top of the screen.

[Jason Dunn]

Interesting. The "Let's do our own platform" approach usually fails, but in this instance I think it might work - assuming they don't try to sell it as a Smartphone and talk about 3rd party software. People are willing to buy closed platforms if that's what they're expecting. Casio's problem with the BE-300 was that they bragged about third party software, tried to evangelize to developers, and failed to achieve the success they needed.

[dazz]

Since my site is about the business use of mobile tech I am more interested in finding out what they have planned for the new version mentioned, the modified C5.

I agree with you Jason, that if the user is only expecting to use what is one the phone then Emblaze will be fine. Orange has gone ahead with 40K units so they must be decent.

The planned business model is another story. You can't expect a business to conform to what you offer. Emblaze will need to have an easy way to allow businesses to use their own systems with the Emblaze phone. Maybe they are planning to rely on .NET for that. &lt;shrug>

Like I said, should be interesting to watch this company.

[phillypocket]

So basicly they taken the potential of windows ce and turned it ito another limited phone that doesn't leverage any of my existing technology or resorses. :? gee. Well at least that fits in with 98% of what american carriers offer. However, since they're not a "name brand" they won't be sold here anyway.