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This move allegedly set the release of the devices back 18 months This sure says a lot about the crazy pace of the SmartPhone market. I picked up my iPhone 2G

by jsz0 16y ago

This move allegedly set the release of the devices back 18 months This sure says a lot about the crazy pace of the SmartPhone market. I picked up my iPhone 2G the other day and had the sense of nostalgia typically reserved for things like my Apple 2, NES, Atari ST, etc. 18 months might as well be a decade with the current pace of innovation.

danudey 16y ago
To put it into a specific timeframe, 18 months ago was approximately 6 months after the iPhone 3G's launch (and 6 months before the 3GS). In fact, that puts it right around Christmas 2008. Wow. They could have launched that Christmas. That's around when the first Blackberry Storm came out too. It feels like forever and a day ago. They could have been on their second generation by now. Instead, they bungled it. I wonder how much the project cost them.
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  It's not just about the fact that this particular project cost them a significant delay, it's the fact that they are operating on time schedules which are wholly inconsistent with the pace of the market at the moment. Apple, Google, RIM, and maybe even soon HP (via their PalmPre acquisitions) are all well inside WinMo's OODA loop. Not just inside it a little bit, but running laps. You can't survive in this market with an 18 month release cycle, let alone a release cycle so long that 18 months is just a fraction of it. Even if MS manages by herculean effort to come out with a high-quality, highly innovative winmo 7 release they'll still be dead in the water due to the ability of every other competitor to iterate N times over between then and the next winmo release sometime in 2015. Step 1 in the winmo division should be making every effort toward a much, much shorter ship cycle otherwise they have no chance.
hga 16y ago
On other directly related factor reported at the time of the Danger/Sidekick back end data loss was that when Microsoft bought Danger, they, or by the time the decision above was made, ignored Danger's contract requirements with T-Mobile for the Sidekick. This wasn't one of Microsoft's normal "heads I win, tails you lose" (note at least for Microsoft the first option doesn't mean you'll necessarily lose). So Microsoft was forced to put much/most/nearly all? of the Danger development team to work on one last version of the NetBSD based Sidekick.

by jsz0 16y ago

danudey 16y ago

To put it into a specific timeframe, 18 months ago was approximately 6 months after the iPhone 3G's launch (and 6 months before the 3GS). In fact, that puts it right around Christmas 2008. Wow. They could have launched that Christmas. That's around when the first Blackberry Storm came out too. It feels like forever and a day ago. They could have been on their second generation by now. Instead, they bungled it. I wonder how much the project cost them.

InclinedPlane 16y ago
It's not just about the fact that this particular project cost them a significant delay, it's the fact that they are operating on time schedules which are wholly inconsistent with the pace of the market at the moment. Apple, Google, RIM, and maybe even soon HP (via their PalmPre acquisitions) are all well inside WinMo's OODA loop. Not just inside it a little bit, but running laps. You can't survive in this market with an 18 month release cycle, let alone a release cycle so long that 18 months is just a fraction of it. Even if MS manages by herculean effort to come out with a high-quality, highly innovative winmo 7 release they'll still be dead in the water due to the ability of every other competitor to iterate N times over between then and the next winmo release sometime in 2015. Step 1 in the winmo division should be making every effort toward a much, much shorter ship cycle otherwise they have no chance.

hga 16y ago

On other directly related factor reported at the time of the Danger/Sidekick back end data loss was that when Microsoft bought Danger, they, or by the time the decision above was made, ignored Danger's contract requirements with T-Mobile for the Sidekick. This wasn't one of Microsoft's normal "heads I win, tails you lose" (note at least for Microsoft the first option doesn't mean you'll necessarily lose). So Microsoft was forced to put much/most/nearly all? of the Danger development team to work on one last version of the NetBSD based Sidekick.