Friday, March 12, 2010

Excuse Me, That’s a Nice Looking Phone

Articles Written by: Mike Temporale on Monday, April 27, 2009 12:30pm
Google Buzz

MobileJaw-Imate-PdalOver the weekend I spent some time at a birthday party for a friend’s son. Through all the noise and commotion I spotted another Dad playing a game on his i-mate device. It’s not uncommon to see parents with their face buried in their mobile device at these events. However, I don’t often see people with i-mate devices. I’m seeing more and more Windows Mobile, but not so much with i-mate. So I figured that this person was either a hardcore i-mate fan, or a Windows Mobile fan who just happens to have settled on the i-mate PDAL device. Either way, I decided to talk with him and see how he liked Windows Mobile and i-mate.

I asked him how he liked that phone because I don’t see many of those around here. I even pulled out my BlackJack II so he could see that I am also a Windows Mobile user and hopefully jump right into a nice geek conversation about mobility. Ha! What really surprised me was that he didn’t really understand that he was running Windows Mobile. In fact, he didn’t even know the name. Now, a lot of people don’t know the Windows Mobile name. But someone running i-mate hardware is typically more aware of the OS than the average user who picked out the device from the carriers line-up. This person went on to tell me how great it is because he can open Excel documents on his device. Which clearly tells me that he didn’t understand that my device, although different in looks, runs the same OS.

What I’ve been trying to figure out since then is if this was a problem with him not understanding that Windows Mobile runs on numerous different devices? Or was it more that my device looked too “BlackBerry-ish” so he took one look and figured I was using a BlackBerry based device and felt the need to tell me why his was so great? Both of these are growing problems. So much so, that Microsoft is now calling Windows Mobile devices “Windows Phones” (the actual OS name will still remain Windows Mobile) in hopes that people will better connect with the OS of the device. I’m not sure that this will help people better understand that their Moto Q is running the same OS as the BlackJack II, or that the HTC Diamond is running the same as the Samsung Omnia. Both HTC and Samsung are doing their part to build iconic devices. Microsoft needs to do their part to take their OS to a new level and educate the consumer about Windows Mobile. What do you say Microsoft? Are your product and marketing team up to the challenge?

   Comments (4)
\ \ \ \


Comments

4 Responses to “Excuse Me, That’s a Nice Looking Phone”

  1. fowljr on April 27th, 2009 3:46 pm
    fowljr

    Hi Mike, don’t you feel that in one way this is quite a good thing, as in this instance Windows Mobile has transcended the need for a high level of IT awareness?

    I agree that education is good, but this goes part of the way to prove that WM can be used by those who don’t necessarily want to be aware of the OS that their phone is running!!

  2. heliod on April 28th, 2009 12:41 am
    heliod

    I agree with fowljr, I am not sure that this is necessarily a bad thing.

    People buy their phones because they like them, and the only ones that buy according to the OS are geeks like you and me.

    If i-mate and Windows Mobile 6 made this guy love his phone without understanding what is Windows Mobile, they have done together a great product. I hope many others go this way, then WM phones will be a success in the consumer market.

  3. Mike Temporale on April 29th, 2009 8:58 am
    Mike Temporale

    To a certain extent, I agree – the average consumer doesn’t need to know or care about the operating system on their phone. One of the ladies at my son’s daycare has an HTC Touch and she has no clue that it’s running Windows Mobile. And that’s perfectly fine.

    At the same time, wouldn’t it be cool if people understood that the phone ran a given OS regardless of who made the phone. Just like computers, people know that a Dell PC is running Windows, just like the HP PC. The hardware brings value to the purchase, but so does the OS. By knowing that the OS is a standard level, then it allows people to better compare and select from the wide range of form factors and features available.

  4. heliod on April 29th, 2009 11:53 pm
    heliod

    Yes, it would be cool, but after 2-and-a-half decades with PCs and seeing that many people still don’t differentiate OSs and their different versions also in computers, I’ve lost hopes that in the phones this will one day happen.

    Do you know how many people look at my Samsung Omnia and say “oh, what a nice iPhone you have!” ???

Leave a Reply




Additional comments powered by BackType