Windows® 7 Secrets®

Chapter 19. Windows in Your Pocket—Using a Windows Mobile Smartphone

In This Chapter

• Understanding the evolution of Windows Mobile

• Integrating and syncing a Windows Mobile device in Windows 7

• Using My Phone to back up phone data to the Internet

• Using Windows Live for Mobile Web sites and applications

In mid-2007, Apple released its iPhone smartphone in the U.S., touching off an explosion in sales of smartphones—cell phones with Internet connectivity and computer-like capabilities. But the iPhone isn't an ordinary smartphone. Instead of targeting the business market, like Microsoft, RIM, and other smartphone OS makers had in the past, Apple went after its bread-and-butter customers, consumers. And just as they did with the company's other wildly successful iPod products, consumers couldn't snap up the iPhone quickly enough.

Apple had created a new market. And existing players, including Microsoft, began to respond with iPhone-like systems of their own. Microsoft, of course, is no stranger to the smartphone market. Devices based on its Windows Mobile system sell in the tens of millions of units per year, or about 12 percent of all smartphones sold worldwide. That's enough to put Microsoft in the top five for this crucial market. But by the time you read this, it's very likely that iPhone market share will surpass that of Windows Mobile, which is astonishing given the short amount of time it has been available.

Microsoft's response has been to bolster Windows Mobile with iPhone-like touch ...