Windows 7 offers little for mobile phone users

Rating: Alliance with Nokia probably sticks in the throat

For a company which talked about the mobile phone as the third screen, there was surprisingly little in the very latest incarnation of Microsoft’s OS – Windows 7 – for the mobile phone community. It officially launched today.

Microsoft made great play of the fact that with Windows 7, the battery life on netbooks could stretch as far as 11 hours. But it’s hard to see how this acquired knowledge could be transferred over to Windows Phone, for example.

The emphasis with the Windows 7 is that it’s aimed firmly at consumers. Great play was made at the UK launch of a tie-up with Sky (the satellite TV provider) and how ‘media’ could be streamed to PCs.

Yet there was no effort to explain how the heavily emphasised Windows Media Centre could possibly integrate with a mobile phone. There was plenty of talk about building slideshows using photos stored on the PC.

However, there was scant acknowledgement that for large number of people, their digital photography has been created with a cameraphone – not a standalone digital camera.

Curiously in the demonstration video played before the event actually officially kicked off, GoMo News actually spotted a demonstration of a mobile phone recognising a 3D bar code.

Sadly, despite my best endeavours,  nobody at the launch had the remotest clue why such a facility had been featured in the video. I’ve left my details and maybe somebody will come back with an explanation.

I had to reach the conclusion that the obvious alliance – with market leader Nokia, would stick in the throat of those working in Redmond and so no deal appears to have been done.

Which is a shame really because Microsoft has obviously learnt its lesson from Vista and has listened to criticism when creating Windows 7.

A very telling comment was made,  however, by DSGi’s Jeremy Fennell who admitted that his company had sold more copies of the pre-ordered Windows 7 in three weeks than it did in an entire twelve months of attempting to flog Windows Vista.

A bit of a clue, there.