NOTE THE CAVEAT:
IDC’s estimates hinge on Nokia transitioning smoothly to Windows Phone, something a few analysts perceive as easier said than done. Once the news emerged that Nokia planned on abandoning its Symbian platform, sales of Symbian devices began a precipitous drop—and Nokia’s Windows Phone devices aren’t expected to hit the market before the end of 2011.
Whether or not the Nokia transition ultimately succeeds, Microsoft is moving forward with its plans to buttress Windows Phone’s capabilities. During a May 24 press event in New York City, Microsoft executives demonstrated some of the top-line features of the upcoming “Mango” update, including multitasking, a redesigned Xbox Live Hub, visual voicemail, the ability to consolidate friends and colleagues into groups within the platform’s “People” Hub, and Local Scout, which offers a view of everything to see and do in a particular neighborhood. The “People” Hub will also include data from Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as the ability to share and tag photos.
For enterprise users, Mango will offer the ability to search a server for email items no longer stored on the device, and share and save Office documents via Office 365 and Windows SkyDrive. There’s also an upgraded Internet experience, one that tightly bakes Microsoft’s Bing search engine into the interface.
But if IDC is to be believed, it’ll be Nokia—and not all those nifty features—that eventually make Windows Phone a true smartphone force.
Yes, but are those additional WinPhone features safe for Congressmen to use?
I’m an “early adopter,” and I have always had to change once the final platform comes on line, usually because somebody with a bigger base got the idea and made it more commercially viable - or it was dropped altogether for lack of support, such as the early Windows Reader versions way back in the 90’s. In this case, we don’t know what it will be.
But that’s life. It’s only a couple of hundred dollars for the phone (or free, if you can get a deal), so by the time the new technology takes over, it would be time to change anyway.
In the cyberworld, nothing is forever...or even for much longer than a year or two.