My Phone? You Crazy!
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News Analysis. Only Microsoft could so badly name a new service that it makes another badly named service suddenly sound good. MobileMe, meet My Phone. |
That's right. Microsoft's MobileMe-imitating synchronization service is called My Phone. Why not call it Me-Too-Me or My Second Best? Based on the feature set, Microsoft is playing catch-up with Apple and Google rather than truly innovating. I come to this conclusion solely on Microsoft's My Phone information page, which offers a list of me-too features.
Early yesterday, Engadget spotted a My Phone, which had been previously referred to as SkyBox. Apparently, somebody at Microsoft accidentally flipped the switch on the beta sign-up site, which was done even before I could get there yesterday. By last night, Microsoft had acknowledged My Phone and the coming "invite-only beta."
My Phone will bring to four the number of sync services from major mobile operating systems developers:
I'll explain how the services stack, but first problems about their direction. The major mobile OS developers are cuing up the 1980s and 1990s, and, folks, you really don't want to go there. Longtime computer users surely remember the days of application and OS silos, where nothing worked together and sharing data was messy because of disparate file formats. Let me unwarmly welcome you to the past because that's where Apple, Google, Microsoft and Nokia want to take you. What's missing from any of these developers is universal sync that works across devices and PCs. Microsoft could have and should have leapt ahead of competitors by launching a universal sync service.
OK, now for the blow by blow.
Apple. MobileMe is heavily siloed, but offers real push sync—and it's fairly robust, too. Service costs 99 bucks a year, but, hey, you get what you pay for, right? MobileMe had a terribly rocky start, but Apple finally brought service reliability up to an accessible and acceptable level.
Among the four services and sync providers, Apple offers the best service by far. MobileMe is the gold standard for sync and for pushes services, from the device to the cloud to the PC, or visa versa. Mac users get some additional benefits, such as personal domain hosting and Web site publishing using iWeb.
Google. The T-Mobile G1 shows what the future of sync—from mobile phone to cloud, with no PC required—should be like, Single sign-on takes the user to all of his or her cloud services—calendar, contacts, mail and more. People who use Gmail can get push mail.
Google still has a ways to go in terms of the breadth of its sync support. But foundationally, Google is most likely to offer universal sync across multiple devices. Google Mobile already offers a surprisingly wide variety of services for cell phones. What's missing: availability to all the services and sync capabilities built into Android phones like the G1.
Apple isn't going to open MobileMe to anybody but iPhone users. The same can be said of Nokia and, so far, Microsoft. Android phones have enough going for them such that Google doesn't have to use its services and sync as differentiators. A broad approach of supporting any mobile operating system better resonates with the company's mobile search and advertising priorities.
Microsoft. My Phone isn't even yet available as a beta service, which is going to be it for a while. During the beta, testers will get a measly 200MB of storage and sync limited to calendars, contacts and photos. Lovely, there's no push either. From the My Phone info site:
If you accept the recommended settings, Microsoft My Phone will automatically synchronize information between your mobile phone and your Microsoft My Phone web account once per day between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., except when your phone cannot connect to your default data network—for example, when your phone is turned off, out of range, or roaming. You can also back up your data manually at any time by selecting Sync in the Microsoft My Phone application on your phone.
Where's the push mail? If that's cutting-edge sync for Windows Mobile, iPhone users should laugh and point an accusing finger at every person who pulls out a Microsoft-powered phone. At this post's start, I called My Phone an imitation, me-too service. It's a bad imitation. This is the best Microsoft can do? To Microsoft Watch commenters: Please, dispatch any excuses about My Phone being beta. Microsoft is walking way behind competitors. At the least, the beta should be comparable, not less.
I suppose Windows Mobile users should be glad Microsoft will offer them something. But, preliminarily, I'm uninspired. I wonder how much Microsoft spent on market research to come up with My Phone as a service name? Then again, what do I know? I heard about some whacko animated character from Japan called Hello Kitty in the early 1980s. Hello Kitty? I was sure that Americans would never go for something as lamely named as that. You know what happened.
Nokia. Where Apple has got a tightly consolidated service in MobileMe, Nokia has got scattered offerings. Nokia's main service is Ovi, which is full of promise but not enough potential. The promise is Nokia's enormous reach. In the most recent quarter for which there is Gartner data, Nokia shipped 117 million handsets—or more than twice as many as second-ranked Samsung. Nokia's mobile phone market share is 38 percent. Nokia also shipped more smartphones than any competitor, nearly four times that of Apple.
The promise is huge, given the large number of existing and new Symbian OS users. But the potential is far from realized. Conceptually, Ovi is closest to Apple's App Store and MobileMe.
- There is calendar and contact sync, which can be done from multiple Nokia handsets.
- Files on Ovi offers online storage in 10GB or 30GB options, for $80 and $150 annually, respectively.
- Share on Ovi provides unlimited photo and video storage. The service is robust and well-suited to Nokia handsets with high megapixel cameras (like the N79, N85 or N96), and there are automatic upload capabilities.
- n-gage is Nokia's gaming service. It lives!
- The Nokia Music store isn't available here in the United States. But it's there as one of the options on the Ovi page. Now why is that?
- The Mail on Ovi beta provides an e-mail address and mail service for Symbian Series 40 devices. Nokia plans support for S60 devices, like the N96 and forthcoming N97, during the first half of the year.
- Nokia Messaging is the company's push e-mail service. It looks promising, but I can't use it. Can you? The North American version of the N96 has older, unsupported firmware. Then there are questions about the future of the service, which is free during the beta but will cost later on—through carriers. What carriers? Nokia is tops everywhere, but here in the United States few carriers carry just a few phones.
Believe it or not, this is just a short list. Nokia has a bunch of other services in various stages of development. Pretty much everything other than perhaps Share with Ovi is a work in progress. There is too much disparity and not enough integration here. But Nokia would be the hardware, software and service provider to watch should all the pieces fit together. Nokia has the biggest number of mobile users to tap and also least reason to make its services available for competing handsets.
[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com].
Comments (13)
I liked your comment about "back to the future" in the mobile OS folks bringing us the 1980s and 1990s. But so far that's been true about the whole mobile experience, perhaps iPhone excepted, that we seemed to have dragged geek OS developers out of their cracks and said "hey you've stalled on the PC for the last 15 years how about giving us the same on a mobile phone?".
So we have phones that take 5 minutes to boot, that have infathomable settings which are beyond the average owner, which lock up until you remove the battery, and which are incompatible with every other moving object including battery chargers and earphones.
The whole phone thing is totally wacked because we still have telephone companies locked away on internal think-tanks plotting how to "own" the customers, and mobile phone makers who knew nothing about software and were convinced by geeks to give them another chance to impose their troglodyte views of computing onto communications and the mobile world.
Google are a welcome entrant, its just a pity that their track record on everything outside search and possibly email continues to demonstrate incompetence in delivery, reliability and functionality e.g. Chrome. Microsoft's a great company and I think will succeed better in mobile than commonly acknowledged, provided they can get past their accumulating track record of unbelievable business misjudgment combined with astounding destruction of value in everything they touch e.g. the Foldershare.com to Live Sync disaster where a simple working product was mangled into failed release which caused only grief to existing users.
Posted by Walter Adamson | February 7, 2009 11:32 PM
lol get your own exchange server for home (I run sbs) and you already have all the My Mobile functionality and more).
Though Ovi with media sharing sounds cool.
I dont get what the big deal is.
Cheers,
Dean
Posted by Dean Collins | February 8, 2009 12:13 AM
To All
Windows Mobile phones lock up and have major issues with signal strength. I know because my last phone unknown to me at them time of purchase had WM5 on it. My opinion of it is Utter Crap.
I know have a Nokia N96 and it is the most wonderful OS i have ever worked with on a smartphone ever and i use all the features for work. Believe me without my phone and smartphone features i would not succeed in my work.
Nokias OS is stable , reliable, never needs rebooting, uses minimal power in comparison to WM5 and always keeps the settings that i want.
Granted the N95 was a bit of a freeze junkie but there is an update availiable to fix that. So they DID fix the issue.
Windows Mobile still freezes if you actually use it. And try to just keep it on 24/7 and then look at your signal strength after a few days, your lucky if you can make a phone call because the Windows OS degrades significantly after just a few days of being on.
If you want a reliable phone use the Nokie N series , an IPhone , a Google phone or Palm but NEVER NEVER EVER use a Microsoft OS Phone if you actually need your phone for work or business or you will be really sorry. I guarantee that personally in writing.
Posted by kitkat | February 8, 2009 2:39 AM
Hi Kitkat!
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Quote Kitkat "Windows Mobile phones lock up and have major issues with signal strength. "
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Everytime Ive mentioned my "Annus horribilis" of WM on a MDA Mail, we get a "happy customer" popping up and telling me there were no problems and its great.
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3 returns to the shop, same problem with the phone. I binned it.
Posted by Goblin | February 8, 2009 5:37 AM
"Where's the push mail? If that's cutting edge sync for Windows Mobile, iPhone users should laugh and point an accusing finger at every person who pulls out a Microsoft powered phone."
Exchange, Hotmail, Yahoo 2 Go... any other service has this already. Before the iPhone even existed.
I don't know why your managment still pay your wage.
Posted by Jon | February 8, 2009 6:21 AM
Hey idiot, you could get push Hotmail for ages now using Windows Live for Windows Mobile. That includes IM too using MS Messenger.
Its amazing how idiots make so much noise without doing any research. It the lack of push e-mail was the crux of your argument maybe you should have googled a bit before spouting nonsense.
Posted by knows more than you | February 8, 2009 7:27 AM
apple zombies...
You're really making apple users look like morons. Worshipping every half-assed app that Apple puts out, while mocking every competing product MS puts out without honest compare of them. Intentionally slanting arguments is a form of intellectual dishonesty no better then creationist idiots trying to disprove carbon dating with seashells.
Bitch and moan when MS has a monopoly over something, but god forbid apple have competition.
Not that this post will be looked at as anything short of 'another MS guy disagreeing with me'... but I own both a Zune and an iPod... and frankly they both have about the same number of problems.
Posted by Digital | February 8, 2009 10:44 AM
@Goblin :
I don't know about WM 5. But my whole I.T. department uses phones with WM 6.1. Sorry they work.
Now I understand where you're coming from. If My first experience on a platform was horrid I wouldn't use the the next version of it either when there was an acceptable competing product.
But don't simply discount the stories of people who say they get good service out of such devices.
My Samsung Omnia might just be the best damned phone I ever used. And it's on the Verizon network so I'm not seeing any flaky voice reception either.
Posted by Shilo Norman | February 8, 2009 1:01 PM
@shilo
I can only comment on what Ive used, and you dont have to appologize for your experience. IMO the platform should never have been on the MDA Mail (in my experience) and before anyone calls me an Apple iphone fan boy, Ive already said (many times) that I dont want one of those either.
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What I will say though is that the problems of WM do not seem to be restricted to WM 5 and the whole platform seems to be a bit of a hit and miss affair on the mobile platform (IMO)from what Ive read.
Posted by Goblin | February 8, 2009 1:42 PM
"Microsoft is playing catch-up with Apple and Google rather than truly innovating."
Question for the author?
Where have you been for the last 10 years? MobileME (like WindowME?) is a me-too Exchange Active Sync, which is almost 10 years old.
Google? I own GOOG stock. Miserable. The only thing that Google is successful at is search. Event that is suspect, because it is not a federated search and depends on WikiPedia too much.
Microsoft is the first service to offer backup and restore through MyPhone for all mobile devices . . . WM today, then other (iPhone) in the future. The plan at Microsoft is to consolidate all the storage services. The BE of SkyBox (which is only the codename, like SkyNext, etc) will be Mesh in v2.0.
Posted by SkyTV | February 8, 2009 3:49 PM
"Where's the push mail?"
What is the status? That is a new project that is in the first phase of the SDLC, because hosted Exchange Online currently won't do it.
Posted by SkyTV | February 8, 2009 3:52 PM
Hmm, where does Live Mesh fit in with all this. I've been using the beta for some time, and is generally very good, and clearly there is the intention that you can add mobile devices (and Macs) to your device rings.
Posted by Nick H. | February 9, 2009 8:59 AM
WinMo version 6, or 6.1, works fine. Get a phone with enough memory (one of the Moto Q9's, the Palm Treo Pro, or an HTC Touch Pro/Fuze as long as it's not the Verizon version) and it will run perfectly well with no resets, no issues.
I should know... I'm a phone slut and I get a ton of new phones, and I try out many more than I actually buy.
If a small business wants to get up and running quickly with push e-mail and does not want to have it hosted elsewhere, they can easily put in Windows Small Business Server and connect WinMo phones to it with very little difficulty.
Yes, WinMo isn't as sexy as iPhone. It works, though.
Posted by Centerfield13 | February 9, 2009 9:48 AM