Windows Phone Fragmentation Under Way

Windows Mobile got a facelift and was rebranded as Windows Phone. And then Windows Phone 7 Series was renamed to Windows Phone 7. All of this rebranding has not ended the fragmentation of Windows Phone. See, that little word ‘Series’ was dropped but it unfortunately is applicable. There are currently 3 distinct lines of Windows Phones. To start, we have Windows Phone 6.5 and earlier (which is probably going to be renamed Windows Phone Classic shortly). And of course we have Windows Phone 7. On top of this, if you check out the Kin it states on the website and in their promos that it’s a Windows Phone. Try to go to WindowsPhone.com and you’ll see a site that’s about WM6.5 and earlier, with a Kin banner and a Windows Phone 7 link.  So yes, Windows 6.5 and 7 and Kin are all Windows Phones…danger Batman. So when talking about your phone you may say something like “it’s part of the Windows 7 series.” And we were trying to not go there…

It’s known that Kin and WP7 will have some convergence as time goes on, but they’ll remain distinct product lines. But Microsoft needs to continue to work on branding because three series of Windows Phones is going to lead to a problem in marketing and sales unless they have a clear message so people can talk about the products with ease. My Windows Phone and your Windows Phone and your Windows Phone may all have different software, operating systems and specs. So the naming overhaul took no time to lead to fragmentation when the goal of WP7 was consistency. I really thought they were going to learn from the past – maybe this is just part of the Windows Phone series of thinking…