Has Microsoft placed its last mobile bet?
PC World | at | by Mike
When Microsoft first started talking about building mobile-phone software back in the late 1990s, handset makers that had been in the market for years scoffed. Sure, Microsoft was a huge software developer, but making software for mobile devices is different and more complicated than for PCs, they argued. After all, by the late '90s, some companies had already spent decades developing their mobile platforms.
But Microsoft, with its deep pockets, worked away at it and by last year, after first launching in 2002, Windows Mobile had a respectable 13.9 percent of worldwide smartphone market share, according to researchers at Canalys.