MS: Still a Smartphone Player?
wired.com | at | by Mike
Shortly after one of Microsoft's key partners unceremoniously dumped its software for one made by Nokia, the company said it remains a player in the combination cell-phone and PDA smartphone market.
A Microsoft manager said he was "baffled" by Sendo's decision to switch and Sendo's inability "to cross the finish line," by bringing the product to market. Microsoft added that since Java and MMS support can be built on top of the Microsoft smartphone platform, the switch to Nokia's software made no sense. "Nokia is trying to be all things to all people: a software provider to its hardware competitors, a handset company and portal for end users, an infrastructure company for carriers, etcetera," said Ed Suwanjindar, product manager of Microsoft's mobile devices division. "At the end of the day, Nokia is a competitor to Sendo and every one of its Series 60 licensees in the hardware arena. We're not."