7 reasons why Windows Phone 7 could potentially beat Android in the mobile OS wars.

As the mobile wars heat up, the one OS that normally takes a backseat is Microsoft’s often ignored Windows Phone 7.  Google’s Android has slowly become a leader in this space and as of this time, more than 500,000 Android devices are being activated every day! At this rate, there will be more Androids than people in the next few years.

According to Gartner, 1.7 million smartphones using a Microsoft mobile OS were sold worldwide in the second quarter of 2011, for a 1.6% market share. In the third quarter of 2011, WP7's worldwide market share dropped slightly to 1.5%. Compare that to Android’s current market share of 25% of all smartphone shipments.

Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do, but recent developments in the company as well as in the mobile industry seem to point to the fact that the company might still be able to get a leg up in the competition. I will talk about 7 reasons that in my opinion can give Microsoft the much desired boost it’s desperate for.

1) Exclusive partnership with Nokia – No one builds as many phones as Nokia on the planet. With all its PR mishaps and declining sales, it still is one of the most prolific phone manufacturers in the world. The company has over 132,000 employees in 120 countries, sales in more than 150 countries and global annual revenue of over $54 billion. Its global device market share was 23% in the second quarter of 2011.

In a stunning move, Microsoft managed to secure an exclusive OS partnership with Nokia. Under the terms of the deal, all future Nokia smartphones will be powered by Microsoft’s new OS and Nokia will eventually abandon its own Symbian OS. Microsoft had almost put its new OS on the sidelines when this deal happened. It’s now investing billions of dollars in R&D and strengthening its OS from end to end. This deal has become such a PR miracle for the company that a lot of other cellphone manufacturers are planning to build more Windows devices too. This may be the single biggest driver of Microsoft’s success and also help the company in entering developing countries (India, China, Africa) because of Nokia’s dominance there.

2) Consistent interface across all platforms – One of the biggest complaints about Android is the unbelievably inconsistent User Experience across a range of devices and manufacturers. Google made the business decision to let cellphone manufacturers build their own customizable UI on top of Google’s base system. This strategy is slowly turning out to be a huge mess because most cellphone manufacturers are unable to keep up with Google’s latest base OS updates. They take months, or sometimes years to optimize their UI to work well with Google’s newest iterations. Customers often complain about this but then Google is helpless. Because of this, user interest in Android has been waning and a lot of users are even switching to (or switching back in my case) to the iPhone because of its clean and consistent experience. This is one of the primary reasons why Google decided to incorporate a single UI across all devices for its upcoming Ice Cream Sandwich OS.

Microsoft on the other hand, has decided to stick to a non-customizable UI. This is actually a great business model because it helps the company in releasing updates at a much faster pace and every device (irrespective of manufacturer) can be automatically updated at the same time to the latest and greatest. The company has also made sure that the UI is consistent across its other tablet and PC platforms too. So the upcoming Windows 8 OS for PC’s has a similar look and feel as that of the Smartphone OS. And the new Xbox UI looks the same too. This strategy is drastically different from Google’s and is more similar to Apple’s strategy. And we all know how that has worked out for Apple!

3) Xbox community and integration – Google has been struggling with its social network Google Plus. It has bet the whole company on this initiative and if recent statistics are to be believed, it doesn’t look likely it will ever be able to challenge Facebook’s dominance. Let alone come a distant second place. Traffic slumped by more than 60% after the initial boom period. For that matter, even after being in the market for so many years, Facebook is growing much faster than Google+. Even Google Plus's mobile version has not gained much traction at all.

Some approximate figures as of December, 2011 are:
Facebook: 800+ million users
Twitter: 300+ million users
LinkedIn: 131+ million users
MySpace: 50+ million users
Google Plus: 40+ million users

Anyways, Microsoft already has some advantages here. It has a pretty sizeable Xbox gamer community who can be easily integrated with the company’s mobile offerings because of XBOX live. Xbox live is already built into the mobile OS. A presence of a good default games selection would definitely help (Who wouldn't want to try out HALO on a smartphone!). And on top of all that, Microsoft’s Hotmail service is still the world’s largest email provider with a user base of more than 360 million accounts. Gmail comes third after Yahoo.

Because of these reasons, Microsoft stands a good chance to build out a strong and dedicated mobile fan following if it tightly integrates all these services.

4) No Carrier IQ software fiasco (yet) – As of now, Microsoft has not been hit by any major legal nightmares with its mobile OS. Android is currently being hammered by legal groups because of the whole Carrier IQ software deal. For the uninformed, a hacker recently showed a video which provided proof that a software named Carrier IQ currently resides on every device running the Android OS and logs user actions and keystrokes. It’s so intrusive that it even logs your passwords as well as any secure website that you are visiting. Thousands of customers are upset about this and new lawsuits are springing up every single day against Google as well as cell-phone carriers who supported this software.

This seems the right time for another mobile OS to spring into action and showcase its ‘secure’ abilities. And Microsoft is already doing that by announcing the launch of its first Nokia handset with the updated Windows Mango version in January. And it’s obviously touting how much more secure its OS is (sure).

To add fuel to fire, Microsoft recently announced that it will give out 5 Nokia smartphones to anyone who can give them a great story on how they were affected by this Carrier IQ mess! Call it a PR stunt, but it still works.

5) Stronger partnership with Facebook – Microsoft enjoys a great relationship with Facebook. Facebook has even incorporated Bing search into its core search functionality. This partnership is crucial for Microsoft because it helps the company in gaining access to over 800 million Facebook users and understanding their habits and interests. This in turn helps the company in customizing its offerings to suit the customer better. And of course, in case you didn’t know, Facebook despises Google. Put them both in a room and only one will come out alive.

6) Gesture based integration – One of the greatest technologies that Microsoft has been working on is gesture-based systems like the Xbox Kinect. This technology has unparalleled scope if it’s incorporated properly into Windows Phone 7. Just imagine being able to move from screen to screen on your Smartphone by simply waving your finger, or being able to open an app by simply pointing at it. Both Android and iOS are touch-based systems so Microsoft has the potential to literally disrupt this industry if it builds out a mobile equivalent of Kinect. And it’s a no-brainer that Microsoft will eventually build out such a system.

7) Better enterprise software integration – Think about it, which is the word processor you use the most? MS Word? Yup! How about presentations? MS PowerPoint? Yup! Microsoft has the world’s most popular office suite and can easily appeal to enterprise users by tightly integrating MS Office onto its mobile OS. It has already done this but because of low consumer acceptance of its devices, has not succeeded. All this can change once the Nokia initiative takes off. As its OS becomes more widespread, both enterprise users as well as gamers will relate better to this OS and help drive its success. Android on the other hand, has not found wide acceptance with its enterprise software (Google Docs, Google Chrome OS) even on the PC platform and the mobile version of Google Docs is a joke. And lastly, it does not have a gaming equivalent to Xbox.

These are some really interesting times in the industry. For a few more years, it’s unlikely (read impossible) to beat Apple’s dominance but whoever comes second place will be the fight to witness. I would love to hear your thoughts on other reasons why Microsoft may or may not have a chance for a good fight.

You can follow Aabid on Twitter @aabidsiddique to stay updated about his latest articles. You can also check out his latest articles on the Pocket Full of Apps website (www.PocketFullOfApps.com).