News Motorola ditching Windows Mobile?

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/bits/2009/01/28/motorola-ditching-windows-mobile/1

Motorola has announced the closure of its Windows Mobile development centre in Florida, prompting speculation that it is ditching the platform in favour of Google's Android.

 

Now thats a kick in the nuts for proprietary mobile software, even tho Symbian is going Open-Source. Curious to see how this move goes.

 

Does anybody even buy Motorola mobiles anymore?

 

Meh, I'm too jaded to get excited about mobile operating systems anymore. For the 2% of the time I use my phone for something other than making calls it just isn't worth all this fuss.

 

I am not a fan of the one-does-it-all machines phones are nowerdays. I use my phone to call/text people, that's it. For music I have an iPod Touch [I know, it's more than just a MP3 player... ], for pictures I grab my girlfriend's camera because mine's still in Germany. So basically I am just not part of the target market. Still I think there should be competition in the market and at the moment everybody seems to go Android, just like [almost] everyone went MS before. Let's see what happens.

 

Windows Mobile is still lightyears behind Symbian. I used several HTC smartphones (Vox is my all-time favourite), but every time WM fails (again) my trustworthy E61i is there to save me. WM is just like any other Windows - looks and feels nice and easy, but when it comes to serious business it simply doesn't work good enough. Symbian is way better. I haven't used Android too much (still waiting for my dev pack to arrive) but it seems more like a multimedia oriented platform (although, being open-source it is very flexible)

And remember, Motorola started making Linux based phones in 2003, and most of their current high models are based on a Linux/Java platform so moving to Android seems like a natural step.

 

Weren't Microsoft hinting that they wanted to reduce the range of WM models anyway so they could focus on models that could compete with the iPhone etc?

 

What exactly is Windows, the normal one not Mobile, not good enough for? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Windows is flawless or perfect, actually far from it, but I don't see it fall short in day-to-day use in comparison to Linux. At least not for the vast majority.

 

Dear Motorola,

Please die, you been milking the razer for what seems almost a decade now, every year your phones have been getting cheaper and less intuitive and from the looks it this is just clearly a cost-cutting measure. Usually i wouldn't mind but i can't imagine what piece of crap phone you are going to put android on. Switching to android isn't going to save you.

 

You kidding me? Try running Vista in a multilayer network with more than one domain controller. Or try to control the usage of multiple network connections. Oh, wait, Windows can't do that. Link aggregation? No. QoS? No. Safety? Oh no. Parallel computing? No. load balancing? No. The list goes on and on.

Windows was made for casual, day to day usage and in that it beats any other OS (maybe not for long). Serious stuff? No Win please. Even Windows Update servers run on BSD.

Win Mobile is just like that - good for casual use, but try having a few hundred contacts and you'll see what I'm talking about. (I'm talking about business usage, that's what interests me. Symbian handles everything well, not to mention Blackberry)

 

Oh and we all know internet is serious business.


(haha couldn't resist!)

 

That's what I said, isn't it? It's not falling short on a day-to-day usage comparison with any other OS. I do however agree for servers there might be better options in certain/most scenarios. I worked for a company with a network for 2000 employees 100% Windows based. It worked. Maybe not perfect but everything worked exactly as it should.

 

@perplekks45

I make a living from designing and building corporate networks, and believe me - windows always gives problems. Not a day goes by without some windows-related emergencies. Windows is good for ignorants/people that don't care how everything works and just want to browse their facebook. Windows + business = epic fail.

And yes, the "vast majority" of users fall under the "ignorants" name so windows is perfect for them, I have to agree with that, so for day-to-day usage it's ok.