Reminiscence about Windows Phone
This is reminiscence about Windows Phone and its past, present and future. The first personal thoughts stuck me on Windays 2010 conference in Rovinj Croatia.
Windays 2010
Windays 2010. End of April in beautiful Rovinj in Istria, Croatia. One of the biggest IT conference in Croatia and maybe in region. Few days before (2010-04-20 to be precise) Eyjafjallajökull roared far away on Iceland and showed that the nature is still stronger than technology and mankind. The whole air traffic to and from Europe was brougth to standstill. Quite a few lecturers could not make it to Rovinj. Among them Miro Juric who was supposed to talk about new Windows Phone.
Miro got his replacement and presentation was ok, thou bigger part was some sales/marketing video (I really dislike this sales/marketing BS). At the end Q-and-As...
Due to the fact that Holisticware does VoIP integrations and custom development I had to ask about SIP. And did. And the answer was: "Yes we have SIP, sure!". I knew it immediately that we are talking about two different things. What they meant was Software Input Panel, a way to customize input keyboard for textual input in let say textbox. While I was asking about SIP protocol *the protocol* for VoIP. I knew the answer, but they did not. SIP clients are impossible to implement in WP, because in first version networking was not exposed, so it was impossible to write SIP stack and native coding is no-go in WP7. I stated that I'm .net programmer and I would like to see WP thrive, but device that has noun phone in its name and does not provide VoIP protocols cannot be called phone and that I'm afraid for the future of Windows Phone. Facebook and Twitter and games are just not killer features for business phone what WP is...
Then I added that on my iPhone I had 5 SIP clients and they register to my IPPBX as soon as I get back home or enter into office and can use my iPhone as office phone.
I could not resist to discuss the scenario shown in video where one plays game on xbox, continues the same game on WP in bus on his way to work and continues playing there on workstation... There is something wrong in this scenario! First I haven't seen company that will allow me and pay me to play games and secondly $300+ device (in 2010-04 it was more like 500+) just to play game? Sorry in Croatia where average monthly income is something about $1100 this is a huge obstacle.
2 years later there is still no real SIP client for WP see: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/winphone/forum/wp7-wptips/windows-phone-and-voipsip-client/7fb228f3-824d-e011-8dfc-68b599b31bf5
The future is bright according to Gartner in 2015 WP will hold 18-20% of market share, but I would like it brighter...
See: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1622614
Current market shares: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1764714 . Nice, but I'd like to have more.
With Mango sockets are here, so it is to expect SIP clients to come very soon. This would help WP share to grow faster.