Microsoft Phone Launches on TeliaSonera
The wolf is at the door. Microsoft is eager as a teen on prom night to get into the mobile handset OS market, and has been pushing its quirky OSes on the players for some time. The big six handset makers quickly took a look at the brandless “clone” hardware makers in the PC world of razor-thin margins, and decided that is not what they wanted to become. Instead, they have mostly lined up around the capable Symbian OS to stave off the Redmond attack. Microsoft, unphased, decided to go to the carriers directly, and sell them on the concept of a MSFT OS powered phone. “Hey, if Nokia won’t do it, don’t worry, Mr. Gates can get cheap, brandless hardware from Taiwan or China” (hmmm, guess the big six were right). This argument has had some traction among carriers, who are merely suspicious of MSFT, yet not scared witless like the OEMs. As such, TeliaSonera launched the SPV, a MSFT-powered phone made by HTC today. I wonder, occasionally, if there is some kind of financial incentive offered by MSFT to get the carriers on board, because their relationship with the customer is somewhat under threat as well. Why not just say, “no thanks”? So far, the SPV has had very poor sales with Orange mobile in France, and has had its launch date delayed at the last minute by T-Mobile. I just hope they put the ‘reset’ button somewhere handy.
