[Opinion] Windows Mobile is a placeholder

[resle]

I am starting to feel that, in the grand scheme of things, Windows Mobile is a placeholder for - simply - Windows on mobile.

In the last few years there have been several Microsoft efforts that may have appeared as uncoordinated and unrelated, but now seem to fit together in a (slightly messy) chain of events.

- The "Windows RT" thing was an exercise in porting Windows to ARM. It must have been a tremendous engineering effort.
- Windows on Arm, in turn, allowed to build Windows Mobile (8, then 10).
- Windows Mobile 8/10 allowed MS to put a foot in the door of mobile and:
1) start the painstaking process of designing a "responsive" UI for both Desktop and Mobile
2) wait for Intel to catch up with Arm through R&D and acquisitions
3) ...buy time to avoid falling into the irreversible irrelevance of a < 1% market share

so, in the end...

- By the time X86 Phones and Tablets will be out, the UI will be better unified, the Universal App platform more mature, and.. BAM!, Microsoft can suddenly deploy one OS for one architecture (and able to run legacy Win32 software as a bonus), to mobile devices too, transparently, with no perceivable user experience revolution

 

[ajayden]

They won't release x86 phones

 

[justonlumia]

Even if it is coming it will be a long long time in the future

 

[resle]

They won't release x86 phones

Intel? Smartphone - A Faster Experience

Others did already.
Microsoft is still, by a huge degree, Intel's largest partner.
So why shouldn't they?

 

[resle]

Windows 10 on ARM: Microsoft's ultimate mobile device vision comes into focus | Windows Central

hmmmm....

 

[Grodelj]

I totally agree with your first post, but it looks like future windows 10 tablets & phones will run on ARM instead of x86.

 

[Pynchmail]

I totally agree with your first post, but it looks like future windows 10 tablets & phones will run on ARM instead of x86.

Unless of course Intel did what they did the last time by upping the performance and reducing the price of their Atom processor to match ARM when Windows RT was introduced.

 

[digitaldd]

The battery life was horrible on most of those Intel based phones. Intel has a lot of work to do in that space.

 

[mattiasnyc]

Well there's always AMD for competition. AMD hasn't been competitive in the high end in years, but they've managed to put out products that are competitive in some areas. With their new chip architecture due in just a couple of months there's hope that either AMD provides a good energy efficient chip and/or that Intel lowers it's prices in response to it.

I find this an exciting time. I'd say that within a year we'll have some really interesting products to choose from. To a content creator it's very interesting....