Windows Phone 7

Derided heavily by none other than yours truly for its frankly ridiculous name, the Windows Phone 7 Series was unveiled in full by Microsoft today. Several things spring to mind upon first glance, none of which have ever before been used to describe a Mircosoft product before. Things like "Damn, that looks cool" and "Is that the new iPhone?". Divided into several "hubs", apps on Windows Phone 7 finally break free from their gridlocked positions on the iPhone and Android platforms and are arranged in a refreshing format. Each hub slides smoothly open to reveal the apps contained within - take the 'People' hub, for instance, described by Microsoft as a "social central, a place to stay connected and in the loop." In other words, you'll find Facebook, address book, and other social apps located there.

From what we can see, Windows Phone 7 is very speedy - partly because of the high standards that need to be met by 3rd party hardware makers in order for their phones to qualify for the software, and partly because of the software itself. After all, Microsoft is a software company.

And yet for all its slick, polished user interface and innovative home screen, Windows Phone 7 in its current form lacks something vital. It lacks a sense of self. Microsoft themselves say that their phone delivers "A phone to save us from our phones" - i.e. a device that lets us get in, grab the information we need, and put it away. In other words, not a smartphone. Yet, of course, this platform is a smartphone platform. Contradiction? Definitely.

All WP7 enabled phones come with XBox Live, a fantastic way to integrate social networking and gaming, and a classic use of the 'halo effect' between the Xbox and WP7 devices. And yet Microsoft seems to be trying to target the enterprise crowd with its Microsoft Office suite. They are trying to entice the social crowd, the young crowd, and the geeks, attacking RIM, Google, Nokia and Apple all at once.

I'd like to remind Microsoft of a wonderful little company called Palm who, much like Microsoft, was blown off the smartphone scene, casually tossed aside by Google, RIM, Nokia and Apple. Palm fought back with the clever, but inevitably doomed Pre, and now they and their excellent WebOS operating system are no more. The Pre was like Windows Phone 7 - it had an excellent user interface, a clever design and some new and innovative features. But like Windows 7, the Pre had no focus. Blackberry has business, Nokia has mass market, Google has the geeks and Apple has the regular consumers and, of course, their cult followers. Have Microsoft spread themselves too thin? Only time will tell.