Steve Ballmer had an hour-long meeting with local notaries in Boston. Microsoft’s Mobile OS came up in one exchange:
The one sparky interchange — no surprise — seems to have been initiated by angel investor (and former Lotus exec) John Landry, who said it seemed to him that Microsoft is still very much focused on desktop computing, and considers all other devices to be peripherals to the PC. Landry waved his iPhone and said he does 80 percent of his work on that device. Ballmer responded by saying that Microsoft was aware that it has to do much better with Windows Mobile 7, its forthcoming mobile operating system (the release of which has been pushed back into 2010). "We know we have to kill on that one," a meeting attendee recalled Ballmer saying. (I’ve got a call in to Landry, to get his version of the discussion about the iPhone.)
Twitter entrepreneur Laura Fitton also noted that very few people are developing Twitter apps for Windows Mobile. Ballmer responded by saying Microsoft realizes that the company is engaged in a long campaign to get more developers writing apps for the Windows Mobile OS.
Its pretty clear Microsoft is not going to escape from questions about Windows Mobile, which will continue to raise the profile of the OS with its executives, despite it only being a tiny fraction of their business. Microsoft has already said Windows Mobile is their second priority after Windows 7, implies our expectations for the next version of their OS should be pretty high.
Via WMExperts.com