Sometime last year we heard and saw what sounded like the resurrection of the once famous mobile Operating System, The Windows Mobile OS now Windows Phone. But the year 2013 seem to have quenched all the tingles of this OS from Microsoft especially after the release of Nokia Lumnia devices last year. All we hear today is Android, Android and Android! So the question we ask is: Has the Windows phone come to stay? Will it survive the unpredictable Market filled with Android, Blackberry and iPhones?

Today I got a Nokia Lumnia 510 which runs the Windows 7.8 Mobile Operating system. One of the main reasons I got this phone is to check if it is high time I came back to the Windows phone that I used to be obsessed with. In case you still wondering I used to be a diehard fan of Windows Mobile phone back in the days when the world and Africa was blinded by the Nokia Symbian Syndrome. I have used a WM 2002, two WM 2003SE and a WM2006 Pocket PC which was my last on the Windows list until we all discovered the formerly despised Android!

Back to the main topic, do we think The new Windows Phone will survive or at least thrive in this mobile phone market that is now been overwhelmed by Android phones? Sometime ago I wrote an article on what Nokia must do if they still cherish dominating the developing world market, they have taken a long anticipated bold step by loading the Lumnia series with a Windows OS. We all thought this development would launch the former boss (WM) into the top mobile OS, yes it actually did, but alas! It also exposed to the world the deficiencies of the old new mobile platform.

A GLANCE AT THE WINDOWS PHONE

The new Windows Phone will remain a blessing to the 40+ year old mobile phone world only if it can withstand all the competition odds.

User Interface: If you are familiar with the old Windows Mobile phones, then the new User Interface of Windows Phone will certainly amaze you, if not for anything, for its uniqueness! The UI of WP phone is so unique that it is in no way a mimic of other platforms UI say the Apple iOS as Android (almost) did! Not only that the WP interface is unique, believe me, it boasts of the best seamless UI one can find in the Market. The sensors are always there to respond to your movements (unlike in Android) and its entire menu links are not as sophisticated as the iOS and Android but very User friendly and highly accessible.

Internet Explorer: Oh its certainly not what you probably think. The mention of Internet Explorer reminds many of these terms: Crash,slow,hand,etc. But I can assure you that the IE in Windows Phone is back and better. It is stable and fast. Back in the days when I used a WM 2003 SE device, I remember accidentally stumbling upon the Opera browser. Then I met no single Nigerian that used the browser mainly because Symbian was not supported then to the best of my knowledge. What made me search for an alternative then was because the default IE in my phone was very poor.

Having said all these, I leave you to explore any Windows phone yourself. Unfortunately, one single thing that threathens the long existence of Windows Phone in the Market place is its empty MarketPlace.

Windows Marketplace is Microsoft’s equivalence to the Google Play store. Because of the old age of Windows phones, one will readily expect the Marketplace to be heaped with hundreds of thousands of apps but this isn’t what we get. Microsoft thinks they presently have about a 120,000 apps in their store (compare with over 400K in Android store) and we wonder how many of them are free. This is a big threat to the survival of our risen again Windows Phone. Of what use is a nice techy gadget say the Galaxy S4 if it has little applications to boast of? This simply means that no one shall be willing to feed on Windows Phone hardware alone.

We shall not predict the future of Windows Phone because the market has proven itself unpredictable especially considering the fact that the much celebrated iPhones may also become entirely obsolete soon. All we say is that Microsoft must endeavour to support and encourage app developers to write applications in the native Windows language, if not the future of Windows phones may be dimmer than it appears now.