An article in the New York Times offers some insights on the development process for Microsoft’s new Windows Phone (News - Alert) 7 operating system, which is expected to start showing up in mobile devices later this year.
As the article points out, the current version of Microsoft’s (News - Alert) mobile OS was sort of clunky, requiring the user to click through a lot of menus to complete the most basic of tasks.
The new Windows Phone 7 operating system, on the other hand, will offer a more intuitive user experience, turning a mobile phone “into something akin to an electronic butler that tries to anticipate the user’s needs. It automatically taps into the carrier’s data network to pick up appointments, photos and messages from friends, and it presents all this information in a slick fashion that resembles a Zune music player more than a personal computer,” New York Times reporter Ashlee Vance wrote.
To help make the new OS more user-friendly, Microsoft reportedly took a few queues from Apple’s (News - Alert) iPhone.
“To be entirely candid, the iPhone opened our eyes as to some things that needed to be done that were not in our plan,” Terry Myerson, vice president in charge of Windows Phone engineering, was quoted as saying in the report. “Some execution had really gone astray.”
Microsoft is hoping that its new mobile OS will help boost its sagging position in the mobile market. According to IT consultancy Gartner (News - Alert), Microsoft’s share in the smartphone software market fell to 8.7 percent last year from 11.8 percent.
To check out the article, click here.
Patrick Barnard is a senior Web editor for TMCnet, covering call and contact center technologies. He also compiles and regularly contributes to TMCnet e-Newsletters in the areas of robotics, IT, M2M, OCS and customer interaction solutions. To read more of Patrick's articles, please visit his columnist page.
Edited by Patrick Barnard