Melchet mobile
HEXUS was out in force at the launch event for Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system yesterday, and we'll be bringing you our thoughts on the product itself shortly, but we thought we'd dwell on a twist at the end of the UK show first.
When we heard there was going to be a ‘simulcast' of Steve Ballmer shouting at US journalists we feared it was going to be a bit of a non-event - schlepping into central London merely to watch something we could have done from our PCs. But Microsoft did wheel out a fair few unique spokespeople.
First was UK consumer boss Ashley Highfield, fast becoming the face of Microsoft in the UK. Then we got the overall Microsoft mobile boss - Andy Lees - who we didn't realise is a Brit expat based in the States. Other guest-stars included Everything Everywhere boss Tom Alexander, who looked surprisingly stage-frightened before giving us his now familiar, superlative-ridden corporate line.
But the surprise act was comedian, Twitter phenomenon and smartphone lover Stephen Fry. The reason it was such a surprise is that Fry is a very public fan of all things Apple - especially iOS devices. Furthermore, Fry had in the past gone on the record with his disdain for Windows Mobile, as Highfield humbly acknowledged by referring to a quote in the first image below.
So what the hell was he doing at a Windows launch event? Well, Microsoft had chucked a few handsets over to him a week ago and he was pleasantly surprised. So Microsoft took the opportunity to invite him to the event - unpaid except for one phone he gets to keep - to do his thing. Despite Fry's generally good opinion of the new OS, this was still a bit of a risky tactic, as revealed when Fry proclaimed there is "shit on my shoe that's better than Vista," but on the whole it was a win for Microsoft.
Fry's main theme was that smartphone users are human beings too and that Microsoft, in contrast to Apple, had lost sight of that. But Fry insisted "I'm not a monotheist," with respect to the iPhone, and added "you'd have to be very stony-hearted not to welcome another player. I never thought the day would come when I would be on stage praising Microsoft."
You can see part of Fry's talk on the video below taken by BBC tech correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones on his iPhone. An indication of the size of the challenge still faced by Microsoft was revealed when we spoke to Cellan-Jones at the event and he revealed he was struggling to sell the WP7 launch story to the main BBC news editors, but we feel Microsoft is definitely taking steps in the right direction.
