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
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
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