Is Windows Phone 7 fit for business?

This week Microsoft and its partners unveiled the launch details of Windows Phone 7, including the actual devices, tariffs and availability dates. From 21st October in the UK, or 8th November in the USA, you will be able to get a smartphone running the new mobile operating system, and made by HTC, Samsung, or LG. Dell has also announced a device, though availability may be a little later.

With Apple's iOS and Google Android both now well estabilished, it has been easy to dismiss Microsoft's chances with Windows Phone 7 - Gartner is projecting just 3.9% market share for Microsoft by 2014, well behind Symbian, Android, RIM and Apple iOS. Nevertheless, the launch so far has gone well for Microsoft, with endorsements from unlikely sources including Apple enthusiasts such as Stephen Fry and John Gruber. There are flaws and omissions; but usability is streets ahead of the old Windows Mobile series, and Microsoft has managed to maintain control of the user interface and specification so that OEMs and operators cannot do too much harm with their, ahem, value enhancements. The devices are actually enjoyable to use.

One puzzling aspect of Microsoft's launch is the business versus consumer positioning of Windows Phone 7. It was made clear from the first Windows Phone 7 announcements that Microsoft's primary target is consumers, and that businesses are meant to soldier on with the old Windows Mobile operating system. Clearly this does not make sense long term, since no futher development of Windows Mobile is planned as far as I know. It is a delicate matter though, since there are plenty of Microsoft-platform businesses which have built custom applications for Windows Mobile, using either Visual C++ or the .NET Compact Framework, and these applications will not run on Windows Phone 7. Continuing to support Windows Mobile lets Microsoft claim that these users have not yet been abandoned, even though in reality they are casualities of the company's decision to start over in mobile. Developers may feel that they have no desire to trust Microsoft again - might this new platform also be replaced in a few years with some other incompatible thing? It is a fair point.

That said, there was more business focus in the Windows Phone 7 launch than I had expected. At the UK press conference, there was a business-specific section highlighting mobile Office, application development, and management features such as remote wipe. Exchange support looks good, including support for multiple accounts, there is strong integration with Sharepoint 2010, you can create and edit Word, Excel and OneNote documents, and you can edit PowerPoint presentations.

Most interesting to me is the potential for custom applications. The Windows Phone 7 development platform is .NET with Silverlight or XNA, which means most likely Silverlight in a business context, though you could do some interesting visualisation work in XNA in some specialist scenarios. What this means is that you can run up Visual Studio, and build clients to business applications relatively quickly.

I was reminded how productive this can be yesterday, when I picked up on Twitter that National Rail Enquiries has an ASP.NET web service which gives live departure times for UK trains. As a frequent train traveller, I figured it would be handy to have an app that told me quickly whether the train I am runnig for is on time or not, so I opened Visual Studio, started a new Windows Phone application, added a service reference to the web service, and a couple of hours later had a working prototype - there are a few more details here.

You could do the same thing in Adobe Flash and AIR and have it running on Android, or with a bit more effort write an app for iOS - in fact, National Rail Enquiries has an app for iPhone which apparently uses an extended version of the same web service. Even so, I'd guess that Visual Studio is the fastest route to an app like this, particularly if you have C# skills.

Taking all this together, it strikes me that Windows Phone 7 could work pretty well in a business context.

There are a few caveats. One is that you cannot easily deploy applications other than via Windows Marketplace. You could put your corporate client app up there as a free application, but I doubt that will appeal for many organisations. You can also deploy to a limited number of devices for test and development, which could work in the smallest organisations.

Another weakness is the lack of any local database engine, though there are a few pure C# database managers you can try.

My guess is that a business-oriented Windows Phone 7 release is not too far off, and that both these issues will be fixed, though Microsoft has made no specific commitments that I am aware of. In other words, it has promise as a business tool. It also looks like a device that employees will not grumble about too much if required to use it for a custom business app. This last point really is signficant, since it impacts how much that custom application gets used.