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Windows Mobile 7 info, 1,000 engineers working on project

Tom Warren
17 September 2009 - 14:16
64 Comments
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Microsoft has confirmed that the current team of 1,000 developers, working on Windows Mobile 7, are planning to feature social networks as a key element of Windows Mobile 7.

In a company job posting, spotted by Mobile Tech World, officials are looking for a senior program manager in the Windows Mobile 7 Communications Group:

The Windows Mobile 7 Communications group is building experiences on the phone that present your content - friends, pictures, messages, events - to you in immersive and engaging ways. Our vision is to bring social networks to life by integrating them into the core experience of the phone. For example imagine seeing all the newsfeeds from all the networks you care about in a single hub on the phone. Or imagine the phone instantly telling you what your friend is doing and where he is when you get a call from him.

Paul Spain, who attended Tech-Ed in New Zealand last week, confirmed that Microsoft announced there were currently 1,000 engineers working on Windows Mobile 7. Over at the Microsoft jobs center, there are currently 69 jobs posted concerning Windows Mobile. Clearly Microsoft is ramping up its efforts in the mobile space to provide some healthy competition for devices such as Apple's iPhone and Palm's Pre.

Earlier this month, UX "evangelist" Stephen Chapman unearthed some confirmed features of Windows Mobile 7. In a blog posting, Chapman posted various features ranging from a Windows Live ID feature to MEMS sensor capabilities in Windows Mobile 7, including accelerometer and compass.

According to insiders close to the Windows Mobile 7 project, Microsoft had originally planned to unveil Windows Mobile 7 at the Professional Developers Conference, Los Angeles, in November this year. It's not yet clear if this has been pushed back as the project has run into several delays during its time. Stay tuned for further information as Neowin will be attending PDC 2009.

Comments (64)

  1. Imran Hussain - 17 September 2009 - 14:20

    I really hope they get Win Mo 7 right for the sake of putting up good competition in the Mobile OS market.

  2. cakesy - 18 September 2009 - 01:32

    Imran Hussain said,
    I really hope they get Win Mo 7 right for the sake of putting up good competition in the Mobile OS market.

    There is good competition in the Mobile OS market already, BB, Google, Palm, Apple, Nokia. It is just the Microsoft isn't competing, and won't be until 7 comes out.

  3. +/- Razorfold - 18 September 2009 - 01:36

    cakesy said,
    There is good competition in the Mobile OS market already, BB, Google, Palm, Apple, Nokia. It is just the Microsoft isn't competing, and won't be until 7 comes out.

    (snipped)

    Microsoft has a decent market share with windows mobile, sure its not the best but it is one of the oldest and with a few tweaks and a custom rom it does a pretty dam good job of competing.

  4. Xero - 18 September 2009 - 17:39

    There is good competition but I'd like to see MS make a comeback with a quality foundation with Windows Mobile 7. 6.5 doesn't come close to anything already on the market, specifically WebOS and iPhoneOS which dominate their competitors. Hopefully they'll mix the Zune with it.

    While I expect it will axe support for all previous versions. I hope they will end it with 7 and support its predecessor with each new release.

  5. Schmoe - 18 September 2009 - 18:25

    /- Razorfold said,
    and with a few tweaks and a custom rom it does a pretty dam good job of competing.

    HTC does some really nice work making Windows Mobile just as functional as anything else. And it's had multi-tasking for years, so the Pre's big feature over the iPhone isn't exactly unique.

    I like the OS, but it is definitely for business and enterprise users. If you really want tons of games, etc, then just get an iPhone and be done with it. Otherwise I'll take an HTC WinMo device any day over the competition.

    The other WinMo manufacturers, I don't want to touch since I think everything is left default.

  6. WooHoo!!! - 17 September 2009 - 14:26

    Sounds like Windows Live Home feed put on the phone.

  7. mrmomoman - 17 September 2009 - 14:27

    GO WINDOWS 7 MOBILE GO!!

  8. neodorian - 17 September 2009 - 14:39

    Sounds like they are shooting for a WebOS type experience. I hope they put out something good. Solid, modern mobile OSes from Palm, Google, Microsoft, and Apple will be awesome for the market. I always liked the core functionality and integration of WinMobile but the OS just fell too far behind a year or two ago. I would love to see something integrated with new hardware like the Zune HD and Tegra.

  9. Epic0range - 17 September 2009 - 14:49

    The rumor is Zune will become the main Media center of Microsoft, Meda player, portable device, Windows Mobile with the "Zune media player" Zune Market place on 360. and the Zune portable device is supposed to be the underpinnings of the same OS as the WM phones.

    If MS pulls everything together like they can and should do then they can be a large challenger in many markets.

  10. Tola1005 - 17 September 2009 - 17:31

    I'm really looking forward to the "immersive" integration of the Zune experience in all MS media functionalities (devices & services); just curious what becomes of WMP. I guess time will tell

  11. neodorian - 17 September 2009 - 19:49

    ZX2 said,
    The rumor is Zune will become the main Media center of Microsoft, Meda player, portable device, Windows Mobile with the "Zune media player" Zune Market place on 360. and the Zune portable device is supposed to be the underpinnings of the same OS as the WM phones.

    If MS pulls everything together like they can and should do then they can be a large challenger in many markets.

    Good. Microsoft seems to be a company that tries lots of things and keeps what works. It has the dual effect of making things seem fragmented at times while still producing great products.

  12. cakesy - 18 September 2009 - 01:34

    neodorian said,
    Good. Microsoft seems to be a company that tries lots of things and keeps what works. It has the dual effect of making things seem fragmented at times while still producing great products.

    Yes, while also producing a lot of crap as well. Microsoft is not focused, they tend to stray into a lot of areas, and since they have loads of cash, they just throw it at anything they think can have a return. Cash has actually been a bad thing for Microsoft IMHO. Apple have loads of cash as well, but seem a lot more focused. They also have good and bad products (apple tv), but they are still in focused.

  13. neodorian - 18 September 2009 - 12:58

    cakesy said,
    Yes, while also producing a lot of crap as well. Microsoft is not focused, they tend to stray into a lot of areas, and since they have loads of cash, they just throw it at anything they think can have a return. Cash has actually been a bad thing for Microsoft IMHO. Apple have loads of cash as well, but seem a lot more focused. They also have good and bad products (apple tv), but they are still in focused.

    Exactly. The problem with Apple is that they focus so much on form factor and hitting a certain profitable segment of the market that they don't make many products that appeal to me. Microsoft takes a lot of chances and throws a lot into R&D. Only some of the things developed end up used in a retail product but it leads to some pretty solid software that runs on just about anything and (in my opinion) offers the best of three worlds as far as deskop/notebook software goes. You get the support and development of a commercial OS like OSX but you aren't told what brand of hardware you can run it on a-la Linux.

    Spending cash to develop something that doesn't pan out does zero to hurt the consumer but it helps immensely when it leads to useful new technologies.

  14. bob_c_b - 17 September 2009 - 14:54

    What's that line about a million monkeys at a million keyboards....

  15. cakesy - 18 September 2009 - 01:35

    I thought about the old saying, too many cooks spoil the broth. Lets just hope these aren't the same developers from the Longhorn project

  16. omni - 18 September 2009 - 07:28

    cakesy said,
    I thought about the old saying, too many cooks spoil the broth. Lets just hope these aren't the same developers from the Longhorn project :)

    The longhorn project had a lot very good things come out of it programmatically -- the main issues were in marketing and project management so you should probably move your trolling to a topic you're educated on.

    Particular things of note, since you'll probably argue in a completely uninformed way:
    Windows Explorer re-written to .NET (and the rest of .NET/WinFX),
    Graphics installer (& accompanying imaged based distribution for the enterprise),
    TPM support,
    Any number of kernel libraries rewritten with 64bit awareness,
    UAC (which despite your obvious distaste for it is programmatically a good step forward),

    and that pretty much excludes any of the low level kernel changes that were driven by Server 2008, which was also developed under project Longhorn. Despite the consumerist distaste for the result (Vista) Longhorn represented a good period of development for the NT kernel line. It is not uncommon to have 2000+ individual developers working on an operating system... and despite being mobile, WinMo 7 is still an operating system with many of the traditional challenges and some new ones.

    I don't think it's a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth here.

  17. dangel - 18 September 2009 - 08:53

    omni said,
    Windows Explorer re-written to .NET (and the rest of .NET/WinFX),.

    I agree with your point overall but this isn't true - even in Windows 7 there's almost no managed code and all of the API's are WIN32 or COM (to use them from .NET they're all wrapped).

  18. omni - 18 September 2009 - 11:56

    dangel said,
    I agree with your point overall but this isn't true - even in Windows 7 there's almost no managed code and all of the API's are WIN32 or COM (to use them from .NET they're all wrapped).

    I was under the opposite impression but I haven't spent a lot of time with the Windows 7 code pack or Vista for that matter so I'll stand down from this point if that's the case.

    I was under the impression much of the original interfaces and libraries have been re-written to use much more .NET through frameworks like WPF and WCF and a whole lot less COM/GDI and Win32 (though they can co-exist). I'm happy to be corrected though.

  19. dangel - 18 September 2009 - 12:38

    omni said,
    I was under the opposite impression but I haven't spent a lot of time with the Windows 7 code pack or Vista for that matter so I'll stand down from this point if that's the case.

    I was under the impression much of the original interfaces and libraries have been re-written to use much more .NET through frameworks like WPF and WCF and a whole lot less COM/GDI and Win32 (though they can co-exist). I'm happy to be corrected though.

    Well it makes sense if you think about it - the big push on 7 is speed after all and moving everything into managed code isn't a great idea in that respect for the OS itself. An example - the new superbar's interface is exposed as ITaskbar3 which is a COM interface - to use it from c# MS are pushing the "Windows API Codepack" which wraps this (and other new) interface(s) exposed in Windows 7. Moreover MS are pushing DirectX as the new platform for UI development - it's what the desktop window manager uses, it's what WPF uses, it's what direct2d uses - which is completely unmanaged code (part history and part 'cos it makes sense when you're writing highly performant code that controls hardware). It also makes sense when you see how slow WPF actually is - there are certain things it's just too slow for (displaying 3d models for example) compared to full-fat-directx.

    None of this is bad though - and none of it reflects badly on your original assertion; I couldn't agree more that the major architectural upheaval of Vista set the scene for 7 and that for a project as large as the Windows operating system (and it's requirement to cover ALL users on ALL hardware with ALL the software that comes with it) it is ALWAYS large scale development.

  20. omni - 18 September 2009 - 13:55

    dangel said,

    Well it makes sense if you think about it - the big push on 7 is speed after all and moving everything into managed code isn't a great idea in that respect for the OS itself. An example - the new superbar's interface is exposed as ITaskbar3 which is a COM interface - to use it from c# MS are pushing the "Windows API Codepack" which wraps this (and other new) interface(s) exposed in Windows 7. Moreover MS are pushing DirectX as the new platform for UI development - it's what the desktop window manager uses, it's what WPF uses, it's what direct2d uses - which is completely unmanaged code (part history and part 'cos it makes sense when you're writing highly performant code that controls hardware). It also makes sense when you see how slow WPF actually is - there are certain things it's just too slow for (displaying 3d models for example) compared to full-fat-directx.

    None of this is bad though - and none of it reflects badly on your original assertion; I couldn't agree more that the major architectural upheaval of Vista set the scene for 7 and that for a project as large as the Windows operating system (and it's requirement to cover ALL users on ALL hardware with ALL the software that comes with it) it is ALWAYS large scale development.

    Yeah that makes a lot of sense, I haven't had much of a chance to go over the new API documentation for W7 yet that's why I was curious -- thanks for the clarification.

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