CTIA Ballmer Keynote
We just finished watching the day 1 keynote by Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO), and Dieter has posted the details up on WMExperts.com. It was a fair keynote; Ballmer was better in person than I thought he would be. His stage voice and personality are both ridiculously brash.
He had a lot to say about Windows Mobile, this of course being a mobile conference. He didn't have a lot to say in regards to competition with the iPhone. Windows Live Search, Microsoft's one-stop app for personal searches, crashed on stage. The presenter handled it quite well, there will be no horror stories of 5 minute waits for devices to reboot, etc.
The biggest news of his keynote is that Microsoft is bringing all of the parts of Windows Mobile phones further into their domain network structure. Windows Mobile devices will be further managed by the network administrators. They can push applications out, settings, practically the entire phone experience. It looks like it will be quite popular with the enterprise; but not by any means at the cost of the iPhone. No, this isn't a shot across the iPhone's bow. It's a direct hit on Blackberry. I've said over and over in our Treocast podcasts that RiM plays a very dangerous game in the mobile space -- they compete directly with Microsoft, and their job just got a lot harder.
It's curious to me that Ballmer never really even mentions Google. Thinly-veiled insults are hurled their way a fair amount by both Ballmer and former Seahawks player / former U.S. Representative / current CTIA president Steve Largent, but Microsoft curiously has the decency to mention Yahoo!. Anyway, we're off to the show floor. I'll be posting more later.
| Tweet |
|
|
