Elop's choice: Microsoft and Nokia take a bruising

What now for IE9 on mobile?

MicroBite Stephen Elop's decision to make Windows Phone the Nokia smartphone operating system of choice could be rationalized, even defended, right up until the point where Microsoft's new phone platform bricked Samsung Omina 7 phones.

Suddenly, and without any real explanation, Windows Phone 7 couldn't be updated on 10 per cent of phones. Imagine if a Windows Update wouldn't update 10 per cent of the Windows PCs out there.

Now, there's are questions over the operating system's reliably. And the incident highlights the hoops customers must jump through simply to update their phone's software.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is putting Internet Explorer 9 on the Mango release of Windows Phone later this year. That's right - IE 9, not something that's "IE-like". How will getting rid of Microsoft's creaky old browser for mobile change the browser market-share war? Will it mean Microsoft can shift attention from talking about Javascript, HTML5 compliance, and privacy?

And where, oh, where is Microsoft's Windows Azure appliance, promised with such fanfare last summer? The thing was supposed to arrive by now, from Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Fujitsu. And could the device's future be threatened by the new executive Steve Ballmer picked to lead Microsoft's business group responsible for Azure?

Join Reg software editor Gavin Clarke and All-About-Microsoft blogger Mary-Jo Foley on the latest MicroBite as they assess the impact of the Microkia Samsung bricking, look at where IE is headed, and put the microscope on Microsoft's new Azure man.

You can listen using the Reg media player below, or by downloading the MP3 here or Ogg Vorbis here. ®

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