10/03/2008, 9:35am, EDT
Friday, October 3rdMS reaffirms porting Zune UI to Win Mobile
Microsoft is still committed to including aspects of the Zune interface to Windows Mobile devices, company chief Steve Ballmer said in an interview with CIO published late Thursday. The company co-founder supports the public company position and makes no mention of a rumored, internally developed Zune phone but instead says some form of the Zune shell will eventually be ported to Windows Mobile to give the device a better media experience than today's smartphones.
"What you’ll see more and more over time is that the Zune software will also be ported to and be more important not just with the hardware but on the PC, on Windows Mobile devices," Ballmer says.
The Redmond, Washington-based developer has never issued a formal timetable for adding the components but is known to be planning a major overhaul for Windows Mobile 7, which is due later in 2009 and is commonly understood to be bringing a much more touchscreen-friendly interface as well as other upgrades to aging components that have largely gone unchanged since Windows Mobile 5, such as the portable version of Windows Media Player.
Microsoft is also believed to have purchased Danger with the intention of improving the friendliness of its cellphone platform for home users, though whether this includes any Zune-style integration has never been discussed.
Filed under: industry, mobile phones
Other story tags: Microsoft, Windows Mobile, Zune, Danger
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How on earth...?
How can one company consistently get their products wrong yet completely dominate the market for over twenty years? How can one company consistently get their products right yet be outsold 20 to one for over twenty years? There is little more baffling and frustrating than Microsoft's success and Apple's struggles. (Note: my first Mac ran System 3. I have been through the dark years. And there have been too many.)
Re: How on earth...?
Microsoft had a stranglehold on the enterprise market, where most computers were/are sold. However, the adoption rate of Vista in the enterprise shows that the stranglehold is loosening some. Also, Apple doesn't bottom feed, so they'll never have a huge share of the market unit wise, but dollar wise, Apple may very well be one of the largest.
re: HombrePhaty
Actually the iPod is the market leader in its field.
Apple notebook (MacBook line) are increasing in market share, recently 20% of all new laptops sold in the US are a Mac.
It's slowly changing, as more people realize that what a POS windows is.
He-heh...
You can't polish a turd, Beavis.
Re: How on earth...?
Years ago MS didn't get it wrong, and the right plays they made back then have put us in the situation we have today.
MS focused on 2 things that ended up entrenching them imho. First they recognized that an OS on commodity hardware had the potential to create a standard, and secondly, they focused a lot of resources on making software for the enterprise that allowed mixing data from multiple applications, such as putting data from excel directly into a word document.
MS also did not have much competition going into the 90s. When Windows 95 hit the market, it answered the needs of the many. MacOS before OS X was complete garbage in the 90s. Sorry if that pisses anyone off, but its true.
why the hell...
am I reading about this on a Mac centered News Site?
No
"MacOS before OS X was complete garbage in the 90s. Sorry if that pisses anyone off, but its true."
Actually, that's just your opinion, it's no more "true" than any other ludicrous statement.
Having "owned" a local government Mac shop from System 7 to Mac OS 9, the Mac based setup kicked the crap out of the NetWare, PS2, OS/400 crud we had to deal with.