Original by Swampyank, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.

Summary: Linux-powered phones steal Apple's thunder these days and Microsoft is just sliding into oblivion with decreasing market share and a disappointing new platform on its way

THE PAST week has been exceptionally weak for Microsoft. There is nothing about "Silverlight" in the news and looking at the past week's headlines matching "Zune", there is not a single one. With "KIN" permanently over (code overlap with Zune), Zune is on its death throes and Microsoft can only plan/time the announcement of its death (KIN gets its final updates [1, 2] on the face of it). So far this year we've heard about dead products from Microsoft more than once a month. Signs indicate that in the mobile space Microsoft remains with nothing to show.

Over in the US, "Microsoft Windows Mobile drops to single-digit market share" and it's probably worse outside the US. Since mobile platforms are taking away from the desktop in some areas/applications, this is bad news to Microsoft's future.

Dave Methvin agrees with what we wrote last week about Peter Bright's not-so-bright idea (he is a known Microsoft booster). "Microsoft Phone Idea Is Nuts," Methvin argues.

The article argues that Microsoft has a better chance of succeeding if it can attain better vertical integration. The problem (for Microsoft at least) is that it can never attain in mobile platforms the kind of integration that made Windows so successful on the desktop. Microsoft just does not have the kind of leverage in the mobile world that they do in desktop PCs.

Now comes vapourware from Mary Jo Foley -- an oversized phone which is intended to give the illusion that Microsoft is preparing something better than Vista Phone 7 [sic]. It has received some bad reviews so far. According to this report, Vista Phone 7 can't even handle HTML5:

It appears that the newest mobile platform by Microsoft — Windows Phone 7 — might not support the now popular HTML5.

Look at the very ugly phones which are coming. Several sites claim to have 'leaks' and if these are genuine photos of a real Vista Phone 7 device, then Vista Phone 7 is a sure way to replicate the failure of KIN and Zune. All Microsoft did was Sevenwashing, i.e. it branded something something similarly to Vista 7 (which Microsoft spent about half a billion dollars just aggressively promoting).

In the next post we'll proceed to discussing Microsoft's attempt to catch up with Linux (Google/Android) and Apple when it comes to tablets. ⬆