HTC Exec Compares Windows Phone 7 to AOL
By Speedway
on
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
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SAN FRANCISCO—HTC's president of the Americas, Jason MacKenzie, compared Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 to AOL on Tuesday.
MacKenzie, speaking at the Open Mobile Summit here, apparently meant the comparison to be a favorable one, otherwise praising Microsoft's newly-launched operating system as one that surpassed Android in both music and games integration.
Microsoft unveiled the Windows Phone 7 lineup on Oct. 7, which included both the HTC Surround<, the HTC HD7, and the HTC 7 Pro.
In a panel discussion, MacKenzie was asked what Windows Phone 7 did better than Android, Google's operating system that HTC has backed with the EVO 4G and other phones.
"I would say that for right now, a customer interested in gaming," MacKenzie replied. "The gaming experience is very rich with what they've integrated they've with the Xbox; music, the music experience is very good with what they've integrated into Zune."
"I would say that for somebody just getting into the smartphone space, the Windows Phone 7 platform because it's pretty simple," MacKenzie added. "So it's almost an AOL-type approach. And Android is very open – where here's the Internet; I don't want that AOL home page, I want the Google home page. So, you know for somebody going from featurephones to the smartphone for the first time, Windows Phone 7 is great."
In its heyday, America Online (later AOL) pioneered the "walled garden" approach to the Internet, bringing tens of millions of users online into AOL's chat rooms and other content sources. But the service was later criticized as a sort of training wheels for those who didn't or couldn't navigate the Internet at large.
Microsoft representatives were not immediately available for comment.
Microsoft has emphasized the lack of complexity in its operating system, launching a series of "Really?" ad spots that promote the concept of what Microsoft employees have described as "elegant coexistence".
Omar Khan, chief strategy officer for Samsung Mobile, said Microsoft's "out-of-the-box integration with Outlook is world class".
MacKenzie also said that HTC is considering a tablet, but hasn't committed. "We think there's a strong market there, but we'll see," MacKenzie said.
Although neither Khan nor MacKenzie work for carriers, both said they anticipate a mix of tiered and shared data plans, possibly across multiple devices, as the companies bring next-generation products to market using 4G services.
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