Windows Phone 8

Another non-event.

To keep banging on with a very tiresome and repetitive theme, "Windows" as a brand stands for "we wish we were back in the glory days when we just owned stuff by default".

That's not an idea which inspires me as a customer. What does it even mean? A "Windows phone"?

There is just - barely, but just - time for Microsoft to pivot to using Skype as a brand for a cool mobile device / operating system. Skype already is a well recognised phone and communication brand. There would have to be some cosmetic changes to differentiate it from what people have already seen as "Windows Phone 8". But there is an opportunity. (Another year or two like this and M$ will have destroyed the Skype brand so badly that that it won't work.)

Bonus link : my original post on Microsoft's Skype opportunity.

As far as I can see, the only real hope for Microsoft in the smartphone market is to buy RIM (Blackberry).

There is no pure software market in selling mobile operating systems. Just as there wasn't in selling operating systems for web-servers.

As with web-servers, the only os likely to gain traction is one which is effectively free like Android.

Or you make your own handsets.

Buying Blackberry would give M$ a handset manufacturer, a valuable enterprise brand, and the headache of merging its engineers and software with RIM's. Nevertheless, I suspect that the latter is a price worth paying for the first two.

Ideally, forget the "Windows Phone" brand and concentrate on using M$ muscle to promote the Blackberry with enterprises, carriers, retailers etc. Then merge specific interesting new M$ technologies, apps, UI innovations, engineering teams into Blackberry.

Won't happen, of course, as long as the "cult of Windows" remains dominant at M$.

Good overview of smart-phone market in light of latest Droid phone.

Pundits seem to agree : motorola + android == win. Bad news for RIM, Palm and Nokia.