Menlo: Will Microsoft Staying in The Mobile Game Be A Good Thing?

According to a paper recently published, Microsoft Research has been working away at a product (OS like Android, or integrated device like iPhone remains unclear) which would compete against the iPhone and Android phones on the market.  While it may be easy to “poo-hoo” Microsoft (after all, from what seems to be known about the Menlo project, it would simply bring them even with the pack at best, and it is only a research project), that knee-jerk reaction may be misguided.

The first reason it may be is that extremism still seems to be alive and well in technology, just as it is elsewhere – just as there are rabid Republicans out there in the political world, so too are there Democrats foaming at the mouth.  So merely the introduction of a similar yet acceptable Microsoft phone would be greeted as manna from heaven from Microsoft lovers and Apple haters.

But it is also important to remember that Microsoft is still a very, very big kid on the block.  With some deep pockets.  And if you look at the original text of the research paper, you’ll see that their focus seems to be on understanding the architecture of mobile, from the standpoint of mobile/PC interaction, mobile/sensor/surroundings interaction, etc., all focused around end user utility.

ZDnet commentator Mary Jo Foley expects the result will be consistent with Microsoft’s past openness to multiple outside device producers.  She thinks that “the Menlo team is continuing to focus on a new mobile operating system — not just the existing Windows Embedded Compact-based ones — that will work on a variety of processors.”

In many ways, just the presence of additional voices in the landscape of mobile computing will benefit the consumer – added competition and innovation will create better products and better prices.  And while your technology religion might be strong, over time, good products at good prices tend to trump technology brand affiliations.

(Paper source, “User Experiences with Activity-Based Navigation on Mobile Devices,” Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., Proceedings of MobileHCI 2010, http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/121932/activitybasednavigation%20mobilehci2010.pdf)

(Article source, ZDnet, Microsoft Research shows off a prototype ‘Menlo’ mobile phone,

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-research-shows-off-a-prototype-menlo-mobile-phone/7029?tag=nl.e539)