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MOUNTAIN VIEW, California -– Microsoft is usually on the offense when it comes to rallying developers around its platform.
But in a routine conference held at its Silicon Valley campus Wednesday night, company officials were defensive in seeking support -– more like reassurance -– for its software for wireless devices, Windows CE.
"We are running a startup inside of Microsoft," said Juha Christensen, vice president of Microsoft's mobile device division. "We are focused on a separate set of competitors, different from the rest of our competitors. I would like to hear your views on whether we are doing the right things."
While Microsoft's Windows CE software is already in Pocket PCs, Microsoft is attempting to make its way into the cell-phone market.
Verizon Wireless is the only U.S. carrier to sell a Windows-powered product. Sprint PCS plans to carry the Audiovox "Thera" Pocket PC phone, too, but not until later this year.
Another smartphone by Microsoft isn't scheduled for a test trial until the summer. Never mind that the phone isn't commercially available. It's going to be sold to a test market first, at a time when half the population already owns a cell phone and every single handset manufacturer is coming out with a new device -– mainly running on Microsoft's competitors' operating systems.
Needless to say, Microsoft has scaled back its expectations.
In March, during a major cellular communications tradeshow, the software behemoth said it would capture 25 percent of the cell-phone market by next year. When Christensen was asked how many smartphones he expected to sell, he replied, "I don't have the answer to that question."
He did have harsh words for Microsoft's main rival, Nokia, though. Nokia, the biggest seller of cell phones in the world with 35 percent of the market, recently decided to license its handset user interface, which runs on a competing operating system called Symbian, to handset manufacturers. Symbian, of which Nokia owns 20 percent and computer manufacturer Psion claims a 26 percent stake, has gotten pretty much every handset manufacturer on board except for Samsung, which is a Microsoft partner.
"I think it's hilarious that the word 'open' is used in selling its platform," Christensen said of Nokia. "I don't think it's hugely credible to say it's open when it's based on patents belonging to Nokia."
Christensen, who worked at Nokia and helped found Symbian, added, "They are not traditionally a company used to driving a huge ISP community. I think they will have some challenges."
Nokia adopted the Symbian OS in response to Microsoft's attempts to enter the mobile-phone space. In 1998, Nokia, which already was the biggest mobile-phone supplier in the world, was approached by Bill Gates, who wanted the two companies to work together to develop mobile-phone software.
Nokia CEO Jorma Ollila rebuffed Gates because he feared that Microsoft would eventually eat most of the profits generated by the mobile-phone industry. Ollila then got together with Britain's Psion, a maker of handheld computers, and rival phone maker, Ericsson, of Sweden. The three companies created a mobile-software venture, which they named Symbian.
Two years ago, Microsoft teamed up with Samsung to make the prototype for its Windows CE-powered smartphone. Samsung currently claims 7.3 percent of the cell-phone market.
That doesn't mean that Nokia isn't worried, though. Apparently it, too, needed reassurance Wednesday night.
At the end of his spiel, Christensen drew a couple of business cards from a box to give away Compaq Ipaq Pocket PCs. To the audience's amusement, the first device went to a Nokia employee.
