'Wired' weighs in on Windows Mobile: Microsoft blew it

Well, I have some difficulties agreeing with the "branding bla bla" part. I have just read an interview with the Volkswagen chief designer, and he said quite the opposite: If the design of the car is not appealing, the marketing people might as well pack it in. I think this is absolutely true, and the iPhone is proof of it. It is desirable, so marketing just made exactly this known to prospective buyers. If it had been utter crap, "branding, marketing, consumer appeal and making it desirable" would just have been laughable.

appple has a well designed phone - but it's success is based on more that just physical design. the success tapped into: 1) an interface that was revolutionary to the market of its day;
2) very successfully iTunes to provide regular functionality updates, easily and to continue delighting it's target customers;
3) advertising that in clear, understandable terms d e m o n s t r a t e d cool capabilities that spoke to real-world needs (eg visual voice-mail);
4) hype - everything connected in a virtuos self-affirming cycle that kept the device on the front pages for months and months. and months. msft has shown it is completely stupid when it comes to any consumer product marketing. advertising and branding are about establishing a connection with the tarhet customer. it's about building a positive affinity with customers and bestowing your product or service with attributes that appeal to your customers. apple has brilliantly leveraged its ipod franchise into the phone market, and them into the pc market. and combined with vista bashing, it's all taken its toll on the msft pc mothership. The years of apple's mac v pc ads unanswered by msft have greatly hurt the overall msft brand. it's really important not to underestimate that! here's the thing - assume windows 7 addresses every conceivable issue and leaps ahead of apple and android and blackberry and nokia - will sales of winmo phones change much? probably a bit, but not in terms of a revolutionary market swings to adopt windows phones. why would that be? well, because for anyone under age 40, microsoft is not cool. the brand is already tarnished as undesirable! like general motors - msft could come out with some amazing consumer products - but people are already negatively disposed to the brand and won't try it, so they won't discover the changed experience. what can be done then? start now with this recepie: 1) start building a unified, integrated marketing vision that ties together the screens and a cloud vision now - so that it's professional and crisp for June next year.
2) stop those embarassingly stupid windows mobile ads that do nothing to bestow any emotional desirability to the platform;
3) replace them and engage immidiatetly in co-marketing with all winmo device manufacturers and phone carriers to d e m o n s t r a t e interesting benefits and capabilities;
4) immediately start attacking apple mac ads where it hurts - lack of aps, cost, lack of choices.
5) get 50,000 apps into marketplace by february 1
6) provide app developers the best tools possible to build apps of all kinds;
7) organizationally separate the phone division from anything else so it's success or faliure is not masked by other solution lines,
8) the msft board needs to ask if balmer understands anything about consumer solutions, if not what are they going to do? bottom line: right now, the msft brand is being defined to consumers by apple. msft needs to retake control of defining its own brand. if it doesn't start now, winmo7 will have underwhelming sales.

I don't see Windows 7 mobile being that much different than Windows Mobile 6.5. Microsoft does not have the capability to develop slick looking user friendly interface. HTC with the Touchflow3d/Sense is much more advance than Microsoft can ever think of producing.

so you're saying the zune interface isn't a "slick looking user friendly" one?
ms definitely blew it, but they're big enough to be viable again (though I doubt they'll ever be the leader)