As reported by Silicon Valley Insider. Their analysis covers the challenge to the current wisdom (that buyers want customised models) that this poses, and the fact that other manufacturers seem to be turning to non-Windows OSes such as Android to counter Apple.
All of which must be deeply embarassing for Microsoft. I suppose they'll just have to grin and bear it (there'll be a lot of people wanting to help them with that — at least with the grinnning part) while they do yet another revision of Windows Mobile.
It looks to me like Microsoft's in real trouble here though. It wouldn't be so bad if they'd "only" been pushed out of the number three spot (after Symbian and BlackBerry). Symbian is clearly in trouble itself and has been more or less abandoned by Nokia (that's the perception at least, after the recent open-sourcing, whatever Nokia might say) so you might expect its market share to be gobbled up by the others over time. However Windows Mobile shipments were actualy down in real terms, not just as a proportion of a growing pie: by 3% over the year.
In a world where perception matters, Windows Mobile is looking weak: the only one doing all-around worse in the mobile space is Linux. Manufacturers, like investers, tend to stampede. Will 2009 be the year Windows Mobile collapses?
