Depending on who you talk to, the launch of Windows Phone 7 this past fall has either gone quite well or has been a complete and utter disaster. Of course, I'm presenting this like it's some kind of debate, but if you've been paying attention to the news, it's been all bad. By all accounts, in fact, Windows Phone 7 is careening toward inevitable disaster.
Windows Phone has what it takes to succeed in the market from technical and consumer experience standpoints, so the naysaying doesn't bother me too much, except for one important thing: In this day and age, there's precious little reasonable discourse out there, and sensationalism sells. And with Microsoft taking the high road—i.e. not saying a thing, one way or the other—those hoping to find out what's really happening have little to go on.
This is important because Microsoft is trying to establish Windows Phone as one of an estimated three or four smartphone platforms that will be able to carry on successfully going forward. (The top two, of course, are Google Android and Apple iPhone, in that order, and the fourth player is often seen as either Nokia or RIM Blackbery.)
There's precious little evidence that Microsoft is establishing itself as a player of this caliber right now, however. Sales are reported to be low, and certainly far, far lower than either Android or iPhone, which see hundreds of thousands of device activations each day. Microsoft, again, is not saying.
Microsoft, too, is positioning Windows Phone as a consumer device first, pitting it squarely against those more established players in a market that is both trendy and fickle. That's arguably the right strategy, given that consumers are buying smartphones in droves, and are bringing them to work. But it also sacrifices one of the few strengths Microsoft had with its previous mobile platform, Windows Mobile.
Indeed, for businesses, Windows Phone is a mixed bag right now. It supports only a subset of the available Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) policies that most corporations would require, and in fact supports fewer of these policies, currently, than either Android or the iPhone. Some key missing policies include those concerning device and storage encryption and complex password requirements. It's also missing some key Exchange 2010 functionality like Conversation View in email, which seems kind of crazy.
(For more information about which EAS polices Windows Phone 7 supports, please refer to the TechNet document Exchange ActiveSync Considerations When Using Windows Phone 7 Clients. Also worth looking at is Microsoft's Exchange ActiveSync Client Comparison Table, which doesn't (yet) list Windows Phone 7 but does compare EAS support between other smartphone platforms.)
It gets worse.