Is Microsoft Preparing for its Own Mobile Device Hardware?

[Jerry Raia]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=3020' target='_blank'>http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=3020</a><br /><br /></div><i>"As Taiwanese DigiTimes reported today, Microsoft is cooperating closely with four Taiwanese enterprises and a local research organization through its Microsoft Technology Center in Taiwan (MTC) to develop various multimedia devices, Microsoft COO Kevin Turner pointed out at yesterday a press conference held in Taipei. Cooperating with Microsoft are High Tech Computer (Smartphones, PDA phones, mobile live digital TV phones based on Windows Mobile platform)..."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Temporale-20050214-Microsoftlogo.gif" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/><br /><br />I think they are. It makes sense. They are seeing growth in the mobile arena and their staples like Office are starting to flatten out. There are only so many ways to dress up a word processor after all. The future is in your hand.

[gambit]

they always have, traditionaly they (try to) sell the designs to OEMs to commercialise. You might have noticed that there was a *huge* jump in quality in HTCs phones at one point a couple years ago - they suddenly got alot smaller....

and lets not forget peabody either.

[Kevin Daly]

Microsoft making a UMPC (to provide some direction to the OEMs, who sorely need it) would make more sense: getting into the mainstream mobile device market looks like an unnecessarily risky way of annoying their major partners.

What gambit says makes sense on the other hand.

From the Wishful Thinking Department: Could this activity actually be for the portable XBox that doesn't exist?

[Kris Kumar]

Whatever happened to the Peabody Smartphone?

[Sven Johannsen]

I can't see them going this route. Reference design, sure, but a marketable device, competeing with what is already out there? How would they explain that to the partners? How would they court phone carriers? It really hasn't ever been the way they market. It would be a huge departure. In the sense that it would tend to eliminate the upgrade issue, it would be good for us, but considering the detrimental effect it could have on third party platform adoption, it could be disasterous.