Congratulations all round to the team at Microsoft’s Windows Phone team. As I suspected, the consumer has reacted warmly to the platform’s simplicity, nice looking handsets and keen pricing.
It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s certainly winning legions of admirers. Wherever I took the Samsung Omnia 7 or HTC HD7, it drew many-a-glance. And when you look deeper, it does a super job of the main functions that your average consumer wants. There’s now a good amount of apps, there’s a healthy developer community (18,000 developers now) and even Apple users haven’t been forgotten with the release of the stunning Windows Phone Connector (beta)app that will sync all your iFavourites (iTunes/iPhoto and so on) beautifully with your Windows Phone.
Achim Berg, Corporate VP of the Mobiles Communications & Marketing Group at Microsoft is quoted on Microsoft’s News Center explaining:
We are pleased that phone manufacturers sold over 1.5 million phones in the first six weeks, which helps build customer momentum and retail presence.
Achim points out that Microsoft is working to a long view strategy:
We know we have tough competition, and this is a completely new product. We’re in the race – it’s not a sprint but we are certainly gaining momentum and we’re in it for the long run.
I’m pleased the company’s having success. The marketplace needs an aggressive and capable competitor in Microsoft to keep pushing the rest of the players.
The HTC HD7, by the way, is a very nice handset with a super screen. More on that soon!
