Windows Phone 7 launch announcement

Last night Microsoft launched their new Windows Phone 7 product which certainly looks very interesting. We now have Apple's iPhone, Google's Android, Windows Phone 7 and I suspect early next year we'll see HP enter the market with the WebOS, which is the Palm operating system they acquired. I should also mention Blackberry, but I find in Australia the presence of Blackberry tends to be very low, even though in the States it has massive market share. Nokia may still be the leader in mobile phones by volume, but from what I see it hasn't captured the mindset of people in the Smartphone era.

I recently read that more than 50% of people are now using Smartphones. That is a massive uptake of what really is quite an expensive device that for most people will have a useful life of around two years.

The Apple iPhone based on my logs is showing considerable penetration in the market place (now being the third most popular operating system after Windows and Mac) with the other players hardly appearing as a blip in my logs. It will be interesting to watch how Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 performs in the market and whether it gains traction.

This is certainly going to be an interesting time in the Smartphone market. The pressure on all players to keep ahead is going to be immense. Microsoft will certainly gain a presence simply by the number of businesses bringing out product. There is LG, Samsung, HTC and Dell. Now consumers will be presented with a very large range of options and a lot of the options will be running Windows Phone 7. Apple has the market advantage due to its considerable time lead in the market. Android hasn't really taken off in Australia (based on my logs) but with Android tablets about to appear the broader range of devices may help Google's presence. Until of course Apple bring out their new models and perhaps Microsoft finally get a decent tablet product to market.

For the consumer the choice just became a little harder, but perhaps a little more exciting.

Check out Microsoft's Steve Balmer's announcement Windows Phone Newsroom: Press Event Video to keep updated on the state of play with the new entrant. Interesting to think of Microsoft as being the new entrant.

Kelvin Eldridge