Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"LG has gone on record saying that Windows Phone 7 hasn't performed as well as it thought it would, following the launch of the mobile OS in October. "From an industry perspective we had a high expectation, but from a consumer point of view the visibility is less than we expected", James Choi, marketing strategy and planning team director of LG Electronics global told Pocket-lint in a one-to-one interview."

Much has been made about this in the blogosphere, but I think if you cut through the fluff you get to a couple of key points: one, that LG was hoping for more "visibility". I think that means advertising and promotions - a bigger bang in the market. I can't speak for other places in the world, but in Canada I don't think I've seen a single TV ad for Windows Phone 7 on a Canadian wireless network. What I've seen instead is a steady stream of promotions on US TV networks - so some promotion is clearly being done. The other comment from the LG representative is related to the minimum hardware spec for the phone; he feels that a lowered hardware spec would result in more sales. I'm not sure that's the case - although there's supposed to be an HVGA (480 x 320) option in the pipeline, will lower-resolution phones really be what drives sales? I tend to think better-designed phones will do that - and that's in LG's court.

One of the comments on the PocketLint article also made a lot of sense: none of LG's Windows Phone 7 devices are available on his carrier, and he's not going to switch carriers just to get an LG phone. What about you? Do you have easy access to an LG Windows Phone 7 device, or would you have to switch carriers to get one?

"Canadians will soon have a fourth wireless company offering services to them after the federal government has allowed Globalive Wireless Management Corp. to start operating immediately. On Friday morning, Industry Minister Tony Clement said the cabinet has determined that the wireless company meets Canadian ownership requirements under the Industry Canada Act. Globalive was previously unable to set up shop after the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission turned down its prior attempts, citing the fact that it was owned by Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding."

This is good news for Canadians - it's hard to say whether this is a play that will include data, or if it's just voice, but I'd have to think that any new player could realize the vital importance of wireless data. I was impressed with Rogers Wireless last year when they introduced a 6 GB data plan for $30 as part of their roll-out of the iPhone - and in fact became a Rogers client at that point - but earlier this week I looked at their data plans again and was stunned to see that their top-end smartphone data plan is 5 GB of data for $80/month. Even their iPhone plans top out at 2 GB of data and 400 week-day minutes for $80/month.

Hopefully Globalive can bring some increased competition in this market - with Rogers and Fido being the only GSM carriers in Canada, and with Rogers owning Fido, there's really only one option for GSM in Canada. And before anyone tells me that Telus is now GSM, they're HSPA-only, so your regular run-of-the-mill GSM phone won't work. And, bizarrely, my HTC HD2 wouldn't recognize their network with a Telus SIM in it even though their IMEI checker says it should. Of course, it's not reassuring that the Globalive Web site won't load for me right now. Hopefully it's not a sign of their competence as a company...