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Whether your are walking the dog, jogging or just commuting to work - here comes a fresh dose of podcasts (audio files) about Windows Mobile phones, where you can find what is going on in the world of Windows Mo...

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[alcedes]

I'm making a rather myopic statement here, so I will preface what I saw by pointing out that my use of the word "consumer" is to refer to people within my social circle and reach. This may extend out further than the people I've observed, or it may not.

I don't think the iPhones lower resolution causes any perception of lower quality to its typical consumer (I'm curious as to whether a typical consumer even knows the resolution of their phone). I may be totally wrong, but I believe it is common for consumer's to just choose a small subset of features that they use to compare products. For cars it may be horse power and distance per unit of fuel. For desktop computers it tends to be clock speed, ram, and hard drive capacity. For the iPhone it seems to be memory and eye-candy.

I don't think that Microsoft is in a good position for reacting to the iPhone since they don't make hardware. As pointed out in the podcast anything Microsoft does will have to go through the makers of these 150 devices and then in some cases also go through the carriers before it makes its way to the consumer. Even if such a progresssion were rapid there's not a common discovery method for firmware updates; unless the consumer is regularly checking or is told, how would he or she know that there is a firmware update available? If the consumer knew that there was an update would eh or she know where to get it? Keep in mind that some consumers may never connect their windows mobile device to a computer whereas an iPhone user would be expected to connect their phone to a computer to load music and videos (during which he or she would be prompted for firmware updates)