Microsoft

Engadget is reporting that Microsoft gave up the goods at their Mobius conference and showed off the next version of their Win Mobile OS.

Our first impressions: very slick, and has a lot of features that just about any WinMo user will agree is way overdue. In other words, we're expecting users will be stoked -- no doubt about it.

I run WM 5 on my HTC and it's about thrity different kinds of suck, so Microsoft has nowhere to go but up.

There seems to be some reticence brewing on the developer side over adoption of Android. Zdnet is reporting on the issue.

What it basically comes down to is fragmentation of the market. As MobiTV CTO Kay Johansson says in the piece, “Right now, Android just adds to the headache of developing different versions of our applications for different operating systems.”

On the PC side, the Microsoft and IBM-compatible (remember when they were called that? Now it's known as x86) combo standardized the platform, for better or worse. This means that a developer can write for Windows and be sure that the vast majority of users will be able to run the software without any additional development work.

Of course the Mobile phone market is different. We have Symbian, Palm, Windows Mobile, Java mobile (sucks!), etc. On the mobile LINUX front there are a number of initiatives: LiMo, OpenMOKO, Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded, Qtopia. It's ugly out there. This is undoubtedly the prime impetus for Google's move in forming the alliance and releasing Android: an attempt to standardize. Whether it succeeds of fails in that goal is what make Android either an industry-changing product or just another mobile OS.

What happened to the day when Microsoft would rip your heart out and then kill your children (so as to wipe your seed from the earth) for even considering another OS?

HTC's European VP Florian Seiche is confirming that, although it's in the OHA and anticipating a second-half-2008 release for its first Android-based offering, it's still “...keen to confirm [its] commitment to the Windows Mobile platform on which it has built much of its business.” Too bad.

I own an HTC smartphone, and I love the hell out of it despite the Microsoft ichor that drips from its seams. I was kinda hoping that with HTC's inclusion in the OHA it would take the opportunity to tell Redmond to kiss its Taiwanese ass, but alas it seems to be not so.

In case you were waiting for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to say something:

Well of course their efforts are just some words on paper right now, it's hard to do a very clear comparison [with Windows Mobile]....Right now they have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they're welcome in our world.

Ballmer, and Microsoft in general, truly fears Google. We all know this. He puts on a brave face but we can all see the spreading wet spot around his crotch.

Meanwhile, the same article quotes the CEO of Symbian dissing Linux. It seems Android has a knack for bringing out the haters.

Is anyone surprised that the other guys are pretending it's no big deal?