Windows Mobile 7 not ready until late 2010

by Stevie Smith - Dec 18 2009, 09:22

Microsoft’s new Windows 7 computer operating system may well be currying favour with consumers and critics alike, but eager mobile phone users looking forward to enjoying the delights of Windows Mobile 7 will have to put their expectations on hold for perhaps another year.

Moreover, Microsoft’s Phil Moore, the software giant’s UK head of mobility, has relayed to technology magazine NetworkWorld that the company’s latest iteration of Windows Mobile will not be ready for launch until the latter part of 2010.

Yet Moore also promised that the nudged release will enable Microsoft to give enterprise users and general consumers exactly what they want from the package, which will include focused flexibility across a significantly easier touch-based User Interface (UI).

“[Windows Mobile 7] has been put back until late next year,” outlined Moore in the NetworkWorld article. “but it is definitely coming.”   

Microsoft’s decision to push Windows Mobile 7 further back on its release schedule is perhaps not especially surprising given that platform stopgap Windows Mobile 6.5 was released to fill the hole when the seventh version of the mobile operating package missed its initial 2009 completion target.

However, grand promises related to a product some 12 months away are unlikely to help Microsoft’s position in the global smartphone market, which, according to a third quarter report by Canalys, is presently just 8.8 percent – a notable year-on-year drop compared to the 13.6 percent it amassed in Q3 of 2008.

The quarterly Canalys report places Nokia’s Symbian at the top of the pile with 46 percent of the market, followed by the BlackBerry platform with 21 percent, and Apple’s iPhone operating system with 18 percent. Google-backed Android, which is new to the market this year, has already managed to secure 3.5 percent of the market.

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