Microsoft abandons old Windows Mobile apps
Although it has been saying that Windows Mobile 7 is a clean break from the past, not everyone understood that Microsoft was flushing support for all of the software written for earlier Windows Mobile versions.
Microsoft is being very glib about this situation, as in this quote from a blog by Microsoft executive Charlie Kindel, who handles relations with non-Microsoft software developers: “For us, the cost of going from good to great is a clean break from the past.” Of course, since Microsoft had but little investment in old software for their mobile platform anyway, it is clearly not they who will pay the cost. Instead, it will be the major vendors who have written software for the older versions of Windows Mobile who will be paying a lot of that price.
Moreover, there are any number of companies who have written Windows Mobile software specifically for their employees, then issued those employees Windows-compatible phones, according to an AP story. They are faced with the same decision as the big software vendors, though with less in the way of probable payback. They can either jettison their old software and write new programs for the new Windows 7 mobile platform or they can continue to use their old software on the old Windows Mobile platform, a platform which even Microsoft itself is blasting as “good” rather than “great.” That is a significant dilemma in which to throw a loyal customer base: “Come, follow us, but start over first!”
Microsoft says, of course, that they will continue to support Windows Mobile 6.5 for some time to come, but what customer in their right mind wants to continue using something that Microsoft itself is abandoning with such fanfare and finality. One has to wonder if perhaps a lot of those customers will dislike being abandoned enough to throw their lot in with Android or the iPhone, both of which are less likely to jettison them without mercy in the near future.
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March 7th, 2010
The price of progress, stop crying.
And if you think major platform upgrades from the likes of Apple or Google or RIM or Symbian or whoever don’t also obsolete thousands of apps and leave millions of users behind, you’re seriously out of touch.
March 7th, 2010
The other platforms haven’t made all previous applications 100% obsolete like Windows Phone has.
Google’s Android has made incremental updates. Sometimes apps need a minor tweak, but most run on all versions. Software for the first version of Apple’s iPhone runs on the newest 3G version. But all the Windows Phones on the market today, and all the software they run, will soon be completely obsolete.
Business and enterprise will port their apps to Android. They are not going to use Microsoft’s next ‘Zune phone’ WP7S platform, which probably will not succeed.
March 8th, 2010
Lee, you have to remember that the Android and iPhone platforms have only been around for 2-3 years, hence the changes from the first releases are going to be minimal compared to Windows Mobile. Therefore there’s not going to be many issues at all for the relatively small number of legacy apps for these platforms.
Compare that to Windows Mobile, which is based upon Windows CE, a platform that has its origins in the early 1990′s. In the same way that Apple had to ditch the past when it moved from the Mac 9 OS to OSX, Microsoft has no choice but to do the same with the future of the Windows Mobile/Phone platform. There’s just too much historical baggage that is now quite redundant, and mobile processors are now much more powerful than desktop processors were when Windows CE was launched. A new platform is needed to get the best out of modern hardware.
Sadly, that will mean a fresh start for users, but they would have faced that anyway by migrating to a non-Microsoft option.