It’s a great time to be a smartphone buyer — assuming you don’t mind wading through all the choices. Ever since Apple’s iPhone jolted the industry at its debut in 2007, competing developer platforms have emerged and vendors have ramped up with a slew of new smartphone models.
Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) Android if one of the relative newcomers to the smartphone game, ascending while the more established Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) mobile business fizzled. Microsoft has since overhauled its mobile software with the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 positioned as a competitor to the iPhone and Android-powered devices. And, as Enterprise Mobile Today reports, the software giant is already going on the offensive, challenging claims that the open source Android software is truly free.
As the launch of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 devices nears, the company has been telling those who will listen that one of its prime competitors’ mobile operating system — Google’s Android — is more costly than its own offering, even though the open source OS is free.
Earlier this week, industry commentator Henry Blodget published a short list of “gotchas” that he said a Microsoft source trotted out to explain how “free” isn’t really free when it’s Android, while Windows Phone 7, at a reported cost to OEMs of $15, is more economical.
