Mobile Microsoft fights for China — against the odds
China has about 650 million subscribers which makes it the largest mobile market in the world and with plenty of room to expand. Microsoft wants a bit of or most of it and is working in that direction.
Often it seems Microsoft simply does not understand what it is up against. The Chinese have long memories and all the threats and pressures that Microsoft has brought upon that market in recent years will not be forgotten this century. And that is not a misspelling.
Sin Lew and David Lindheimer, respectively the general manager and the director for the Microsoft China Research and Development Group seem to have got the idea and say the company is following an approach that strongly suggests deep understanding of the characteristics of the Chinese market. Talk is good, proof is better. If Microsoft sues one more software distributor it may as well pack up and go home.
Sure Sin Lew and David Lindheimer a deep understanding. And perhaps that can remember Microsoft heavied every American government to lean on China to stop what it saw as blatant piracy.
Microsoft was willing to cut any corners, use any means to have it software control Chinese computers. Microsoft failed.
Now the government is seriously thinking of using Open Source software for assorted departments. Against that it Microsoft expects China Mobile to roll over and have its tummy rubbed it is wildly mistaken.
Most Chinese have, correctly, not yet forgiven the British for the Opium Wards.
However, Microsoft has come up with some interesting and worthwhile observations.
Sin Lew, general manager, Microsoft China Research and Development Group, said, correctly, ‘People would rather lose their wallet than their cell phone. Their cell phone is a physical presence of who they are.’
David Lindheimer also seems to be getting the point. : ‘There are lots of big, hyperbolic claims made about China. But one thing I’ve learned living there for a year and a half is that with every layer you peel back, you learn a little bit more and get to the deeper truth.’
To gain share in China’s market, Microsoft must peel back those layers and understand their particular characteristics.
It is no good Microsoft trying again and again again to bring the world’s attention to China’s piracy of Microsoft software — much of which Microsoft did not create in the first place — when the cell phone far outnumbers PCs, is a mobile device which is much more than a convenient hunk of plastic. Where often desktop computer is something you use in the office or play in an Internet cafe.
Text messaging, rather than e-mail, is far and away the most common means of communication. A cell phone is a passport to friends and family, a tool to use the Web, even an extension of an individual’s identity.
Microsoft may be starting to get the message.
An increasing number of device makers, including well-known international brands such as Samsung and Motorola — and key local brands such as dopod, Lenovo, and Amoi — have joined the Windows Mobile partner ecosystem in China and are offering devices with a broad range of designs and capabilities for different people and lifestyles.
For example, in WebWire we are told Microsoft worked with partners China Mobile and Samsung to customize the phone interface specifically for Chinese users.
The Samsung i908E, Samsung’s first flagship device powered by Windows Mobile 6.1, is the first mobile phone in China with deep customization requirements for China Mobile. That includes a home page with dedicated buttons for China Mobile services, and the inclusion of China Mobile’s ‘139′ push e-mail service — which expedites the use of mobile e-mail — as a standard account in messaging setup.
In addition, Microsoft worked with dopod on its Touch family series of devices, including Touch HD and Touch Pro, as well as with Motorola on that company’s Motorola Q8 and A3000 devices
Will all this work?
It is very early days to say at the moment and it is quite, quite certain that most Chinese do not associate Microsoft in any way with mobile pones.
And opening a Windows Mobile concept stores suggests that they have a long way to go. Yet there are plans for 35 concept stores in 22 cities, offering demos of capabilities and user experiences, and showing the complete range of Windows Mobile devices in the market. It might all work. I am not sanguine.
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