More testing for Windows 7 planned, with Microsoft confirming that it will send all of its employees a phone running the mobile OS. Set to ship before the holiday season, the internal efforts to familiarize and further probe the Windows 7 devices indicates that Microsoft is still on track with its mobile platform initiatives.
Testing really got underway earlier this week, with Microsoft sending devices out to carriers for an early look. The OS isn’t complete, with a few expected features like copy and past not yet included in the test version. Similar to Google’s roll-out method for Android, Microsoft will be updating Windows 7 with such features. Such large-scale testing isn’t uncommon for Microsoft, and will hopefully help the company avoid situations like Apple’s Antennagate. According to PC Magazine,
“All of Microsoft’s estimated 93,000 employees will receive Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 phone, which so far exists only in a technical preview of the platform, however impressive it was in a hands-on. Microsoft has said that Windows Phone 7 phones will ship before the holiday season.
If Windows phones are being shipped to every Microsoft employee, it’s likely, although not certain, that those phones will be available on all of the major carriers, simply given the number of users.”
Such a move also shows Microsoft’s seriousness in this latest mobile effort, looking to make a power-play that shows its prowess by the end of the calendar year. Seeing the growing dominance of Apple and Android, it’s important for Microsoft to find its way into the party as well. One of the biggest proponents of the mobile economy is platform integration, so extensive testing will need to be done in order for Microsoft to truly own its portion of the space.
The Bing default search is one way Microsoft is working towards this, particularly as Bing has been updated regularly to offer more personalized tools. On the mobile end, Bing search is quite nice, giving speedy filters for localized and social results. Mobile search is full of opportunities for whichever platform can best optimize re-purposed and socially-shared data, as mobile devices work towards providing the missing piece of the query-to-solution puzzle. Good thing Microsoft has so many employees to utilize for this kind of testing.
[...] – whose prices are getting lower. If Dell speculates the move as a marketing tool, Apple and Windows are pushing the app industry forward. The same strategy applied Microsoft with its Windows Phone [...]