Pivoting the Microsoft ecosystem is like trying to shove the Indian subcontinent a foot to the left.
On the plus side, continents may not move very quickly or in the precise direction that one might desire, but they do move.
On the plus side, continents may not move very quickly or in the precise direction that one might desire, but they do move.
It's not like pivoting an entire ecosystem. It's about launching a mobile browser that doesn't suck.
Using WebKit (and possibly even the JS-processing code Google pushes back to the WebKit community), they could get it up and running in far less time than it would take to build it themselves. A small (or large, well-organized) company wouldn't have legacy issues like this (or at least wouldn't let them get in the way of making the right decision).
The only reason Windows has a browser these days is that Microsoft succeeded in destroying Netscape, but, by the time they did it, it was too late to destroy the web. Had they arrived at the game when NCSA Mosaic was the dominant browser and succeeded in fragmenting the transport and presentation layers with competing protocols and formats, the web would be completely different today.
http://moishelettvin.blogspot.com/2006/11/windows-shutdown-c...
Sounds like it takes years to get the legs moving together, which means it's too late for IE9 on the phone for a while...
...Okay. It's not an easy job to align products and release cycles. Microsoft was already late on WP7. They probably missed a cycle and Android kicked in. Microsoft doesn't want to be late anymore. Meaning, they probably couldn't wait for IE9 for mobile to be released (which wouldn't be a HUGE job if you have a working, stable, and RC version of IE9).
In conclusion, Microsoft is being smart that they release the phone and let people dive/absorb/digest earlier instead of waiting for full featured phone OS with a HTML5 supported browser, which is still in beta for desktops. However, this just means..the next release of WP7 will be very interesting. Remember, Android and iPhone OS (which wasn't iOS at the time) weren't closed to feature complete with their first release. I'm an Android user, and I can remember when I first bought my Droid, it went through so many updates software updates. Companies just have to cut things if one or two things will block the entire release.