Gestation is a period of development and maturation of a child as he/she becomes prepared for life outside of the womb.
During that vulnerable stage, the child is prone to many dangers. Caring parents, therefore, provide a host of necessary supports to nurture the child prenatally to ensure his/her healthy development, survival, and long-term health.
Since Windows Phone 7's introduction in 2010, Microsoft's renewed smartphone agenda has been in full swing. Despite several starts and restarts along the way, however, Microsoft's mobile phone efforts are once again in a state of gestation. This position is a result of Microsoft's retrenching from the general smartphone market last year.
During this retrenching phase, the company is focused on fans, enterprise and value markets and is determined to release only two phones a year for each segment with little marketing and limited distribution. During this stage of "re-development," the company must nurture its evolving mobile OS, developing OEM partnerships and growing app ecosystem to ensure the vitality and long-term success of its gestating mobile strategy.
In part one of this series we took a birds-eye view of Microsoft's strategy during this state of "gestation." In this piece, we will look more closely at specific components of Microsoft's ecosystem that the company is or should be nurturing while retrenched.
Full story from the WindowsCentral blog...