Summary: Mainstream press heralds the decline of Windows Mobile while Linux phones are selling exceptionally well

Microsoft's Windows Mobile seems like a lost cause and while RIM is doing OK rumours persist that Microsoft may attempt to buy them one day, maybe next year. If smartphones (or mobile devices in general) are the future, then Microsoft has no choice. It tried to save itself by buying Danger, but this ended up as a total mess. It is an issue that we wrote about in:

• Microsoft Pink is Already Declared Dead and Danger Dies with Permanent Data Loss
• Microsoft Sued for Data Loss
• Lawsuits Against Microsoft Turn to Class Action Lawsuit While Microsoft Mobiles Become Dying Breed
• Microsoft Recovers Sidekick Data? Not So Fast!

CNN has just published an article blasting Windows Mobile, which is strange because CNN is run to serve the very same corporations that fund its operations.

Windows Mobile has lost nearly a third of its smartphone market share since 2008, research firm Gartner reports. Windows Mobile had 11 percent of the global smartphone market in the third quarter of 2008, according to Gartner, and last quarter Windows Mobile's market share plummeted to 7.9 percent.

A Microsoft booster, Danny O'Brien from the Irish Times, has also published a negative piece about Windows Mobile and as a loser's defense ("sour grapes"), Microsoft is now saying that mobile apps aren’t important. To quote:

This week at the Microsoft Professional Developer Conference, chief software architect Ray Ozzie stated that mobile apps aren’t an important factor in the success of a smartphone platform.

Guess which phone is a hot item at the moment. Reuters reports:

Why is the Motorola Droid apparently gaining traction in the smartphone market, when Microsoft and Nokia are failing so miserably?

The Droid, built on Google’s Android mobile operating system, sold 250,000 in its first week on the market. That’s way behind the 1.6 million iPhone 3Gs sold in the first week after its launch, but it’s still enough for Motorola to see possible salvation after years of decline and for Google to feel self-congratulatory about its venture into mobile.

Those who believe that the general message about Linux is a negative one are perhaps paying too much attention to the desktop, easily forgetting that there is a lot more to computing than just stationary machines. The trend is clear; Linux is up sharply, Windows Mobile is down sharply. Let the morale soar and development carry on. GNU/Linux has already won.⬆