Ray Ozzie: all good apps on iPhone will be ported to Windows Mobile

18 Nov,2009 by . Saijo.
Category: News

Ray ozzie on Apps

At the PDC ( Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference ) conference for developers, Ray Ozzie ( Microsoft’s chief software architect ) said, that smartphone apps will not be a differentiator among smartphones.

“All the apps that count will be ported to every one of them,” he said. It’s a completely different situation from the PC market, where software’s built to run on a Windows or a Mac, he said. Mobile apps require very little development, so it’s much easier to bring them onto every platform. So according to him all good apps on the appstore and android market is going to come to Windows Mobile.. What do you guys think ? I couldn’t help but laugh at this. When you look at the things in the past its true.. all the good apps on Windows were ported to Mac, Linux, etc….

There are many news site covering this issue with the title ” Microsoft says : Apps don’t make your phone special ” as usual this goes in line with the Windows Mobile hate campaign on the web. Microsoft is pushing the need for apps by getting a marketplace in place , a web version of the marketplace and tutorials on how to port apps from the iPhone. The only thing to see is will the developers of good apps on the iPhone / Android consider porting their apps to Windows Mobile.

via msmobiles.com

Tags: windows mobile hate campaign, windows mobile news

Eddy

I want to some of whatever those microsoft execs are smoking. I believe that the Iphone's success primarily relies on its app store and to the thousands of apps available. And to believe that those thousands of apps will be ported to WM.....

Mort

I don't think AppStore was *the* killer feature.
OK, WM is really terrible with its several installation methods (exe/PC, exe/PPC, cab, zip), and it could have been so easy - just rename .cab to e.g. .pcab, and when run on PC, install it via ActiveSync. Anyway, most users got used to that, and in most cases, it was a quite simple PC exe...
But the main reasons are 1. iPhone had big marketing (hey, how many people even knew about WM before? Even S60 was pretty unknown to the common user!) 2. iPhone offers quite easy development, given you own a Mac - WM has to cope with old APIs and a plethora of different hardware (and again, missing unified APIs for that. There even isn't a 3D API supported by all devices with 3D chip, some do DirectX, some OpenGL ES, some propietary APIs...).
(Not to mention difficulties with stability and user experience...)

Mort

Seems like he thinks all mobile apps are just simple single-purpose tools with the complexity of Windows' default calculator...
This just shows again MS has no clue about smartphones and their users and developers...

Besides: To port an app from iPhone to WM, the iPhone developer would also require licenses for Windows and Visual Studio 2009 Pro, which sum up to about the sum (s)he paid for the Mac that was necessary for iPhone development. I doubt a lot of hobby developers would do that... But of course, all "important" apps come from professional software companies, where this and Marketplace fees are just minor costs compared to developer wages...

PPCInformer

I agree , there are many apps / games from indie developers on the iPhone that are really great and they might never get to Windows Mobile. The apps from big software companies will most likely get ported to all major platforms.

Mort

I just wonder how many of those "big software companies" consider WM a "major platform". Some business software companies might, but what made iPhone such a success was mostly entertainment software...