In the early days of mobile phones, when smartphones were new on the market, most of them were working on Symbian OS (Nokia and Ericsson) and Palm OS. Later Blackberry and Windows Mobile came on the stage. For Windows Mobile Microsoft used the same strategy they used for MS Windows, namely, this system supports a lot of different devices not being specific to one manufacturer. Due to that reason, this platform became very popular, a lot of applications were created for it. However, Microsoft did not work much to develop this system. As a result, it now looses its positions to iPhone and Android. Will that finally result in complete disappearance of Windows Mobile from the stage? Most likely that will not happen. Let us have a look at the strong points of Windows Mobile that should help it to stay afloat.
Many professionals still choose Windows Mobile because they prefer its simple straightforward interface to the overstuffed environment of iPhone and Android. Besides, Windows Mobile supports a very wide variety of different phone configurations, like phones with physical buttons, touch-screen phones, those that combine both physical buttons and touch-screen. iPhone does not offer that flexibility of choice and there are not many Android devices that have solid buttons. Many of younger readers may be laughing at my old-fashioned approach but in fact this is not just a matter of habit, those who have to do a lot of typing will find real keyboard much more useful than its on-screen counterpart. The variety of different configurations of Windows Mobile phones is not limited to the keypad, apart from the standard "candy bar" configuration, there are flip phones, slider phones, vertical and horizontal layout and many other different features.
Of course the user interface is not the only strong side of Windows Mobile. Its main advantage lies in the best system compatibility with MS Windows. PCs running Microsoft Windows occupy by far the largest share of the computer market. And being created by the same developer, Windows Mobile has the best compatibility with MS Windows of all the mobile platforms. Maybe the competition may result in Windows Mobile loosing all its other advantages but this one will never change. One of the outcomes of this compatibility is the possibility to use Windows Mobile phone as a wireless modem for laptop or PC. As for me, this is so useful that just this feature alone is sufficient for me to not to even think of switching to a different platform (those who travel a lot and often need Internet access will understand me).
Now let us turn to the future. Towards the end of 2010 Microsoft is expected to release Windows Mobile 7. For the first time in the history of this system, Microsoft completely did away with the old versions and designed the new one from scratch. And, according to the reports, the new interface seems to keep pace with the competitors in every sense. Its well developed but at the same time simple and plain structure appeals to many. Let us see what new technical capabilities this system will have. One of the features that have been announced so far is a possibility of life update. So, unlike the current situation, when in most cases one has to buy a new phone to get updated to the latest version of Windows Mobile, updates will be done online like in PCs.
In the end let us give one more example, which is not a part of Windows Mobile but which works only with that platform. Sprite Backup software available only for Windows Mobile, allows one to make a complete backup of the phone on the storage card. This backup includes a complete system image and all user data. So, if anything goes wrong, one can just revert to the latest working condition by running the backup file. The backup file is self extracting, so no computer is needed. One can also transfer all user data and installed programs to a new phone. As for me, this is very useful and I haven't heard of similar software for iPhone or Android.
As you see, Windows Mobile still has a lot of advantages, at least for some specific categories of users. Of course, its competitors are tough but I think all existing platforms will find their users.