Smartphone Thoughts: Talking with John Starkweather of MED Division at Microsoft - Part 1

Mike: Would there be any plans to add, um, with Exchange Sync, some people only use Exchange Sync now, so they’re not getting Favourites, they’re not getting Outlook Notes, they’re not getting File Synchronization, which obviously was a bit more tricky because Exchange doesn’t really handle that.

John: Right.

Mike: But is that something you’re going to look at doing, to make that experience more complete and more similar to what exists when you do it with a PC?

John: There are a lot more features that are being rolled into Exchange, a bunch of additional synchronization features that are going into Exchange. Ah, off the top of my head, I’m not gonna list them off, because I may get myself in trouble, but what I can say is I know that a lot of the features are public. Exchange is doing Exchange 12 Betas right now. In the near future, the rest of Exchange is going to move to a public Beta. It may even be public on that date, but I’m not sure so I’m not gonna say it, but in the near future, they’re gonna move to a public Beta of Exchange 12, and people will be able to see a lot of what those mobile features are. So that’s coming, so to your point, we’re absolutely seeing that.

Mike: Okay, excellent! Back to the manufacturers for a second. HTC is obviously the number one – they just reported some amazing earnings again, I think it was 80% rise over last year. Does it worry you that your major manufacturer, I mean you’re really reliant on the one manufacturer, Motorola’s doing some stuff, Samsung’s done some stuff, but they’re really not penetrating the market as much as HTC.

John: HTC has done a great job of, together with us, of focusing on making a number of investments in manufacturing, making a lot of investments in developer resources, so they can put out some good product. And I think they’ve shown that. With a good business model that is right for operators. Not to say that an OEM label and things, isn’t the right model for the operators, um, it definitely is. But HTC, we believe will continue to play a very important role in the market. In fact, if you were to sit down and talk with HTC and ask them about who they view as their competitors, they won’t list off any of the major OEM labels - even those who would never consider using them to build a device. They will list off a bunch of other Asian ODMs who are copying HTC and going direct to Operators. And there have been a number of those doing that. We really think that the HTCs of the world will continue to be a force to be reckoned with with mobile operators. They’re innovating. They’re making products that, ah, with a quality bar that’s pretty high. They’re getting things to market really quickly. And, they present some opportunities for operators to really control their brand and experience, and there’s more stuff that we’re doing with Windows Mobile, ah, you’ll see some stuff here in the fall especially, where an operator’s really gonna be able to have a custom device experience, but yet, underneath it, you’re still gonna have all the, for you as the user you’ll still be able to add all your applications, and still be able to do a lot of the neat synchronization things that you’ve become accustomed to with Windows Mobile.

Mike: Hmmm, excellent.

John: Now, having said all that, the big OEM names, if you look at who actually is shipping devices in bulk, you know, in big numbers, you really have three companies that really are, kind of, top tier. You’ve got Nokia, you’ve got Motorola and Samsung. Motorola’s doing great stuff.