The “Microsoft” Strikes Back!

In the years since the arrival of the iPhone, it seems that Microsoft has been taking a real beating from Apple time and time again.

Apple kept throwing amazing devices like the MacBook Air, more innovations on the iPhone and record sales on the AppStore and iTunes Store, awesome Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems and lately the announcement of the iPad tablet.

On the other hand, Microsoft kept throwing out duds like Windows Vista and lack luster efforts on the Windows Mobile platform. In fact, it seemed that the only competition for Apple was from Google’s Android phones.

But last week at the Microsoft MIX10 event in Las Vegas, they finally showed off some stuff that could turn out to be a significant counter strike to Apple and Google’s advances.

For starters, they showed off some amazing things on the Windows 7 Phones. Things like playing Xbox Live games and live streaming of video from Netflix. What’s more impressive is that these are actually working examples and not digital mockups. See videos below:

Demo of Xbox Live game:

What makes this interesting is that some of the technology is proprietary. For example, the video streaming (which looks pretty good by the way) is done using the Silverlight plugin. This means that you won’t be seeing the same thing pop up so soon on the iPhone or Android platform.

Although I am a self-confessed Apple Fanboy, I am really excited about these latest announcement from Microsoft. It means that consumers like us are in for more treats in the future because sooner or later, all the successful innovations on one platform will be implemented on the others too. Yay!

While I am on this topic, I should also mention the Microsoft Courier. That’s a dual screen tablet to match the iPad announcement. As impressive as the video looks, I’m not convinced yet about this one. No. 1 – its not real! Its just a “what if” type of video. And No. 2 – that pen. I really think devices that uses pens and stylus’ are not the way to go.

So what do you think of all these initiatives form Microsoft? Do you think they can reverse the trend and strike back at Apple and Google’s market share?

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Tags: ipad, iphone, microsoft, microsoft courier, windows phone 7, xbox