Windows Phone to launch in October, first adverts released

After a sneak peek preview last month, our interest in Microsoft's Windows Phone OS has gained steadily. We were impressed at the slick new interface and apparent ease of use of the new OS which is Microsoft's attempt to regain momentum in the hot smartphone market. Above is one of the new advertisements  for Windows Phone which may be formally launched in the UK on October 11  with a possible early November release in the US and Canada. 

Its interesting to see how the new advertisements focus on "less glance and go" aspect of Windows Mobile. The push seems to be the new OS' ability to capture all the essential information, real-time, on that large 4-inch srcreen. The second advert (below) seems to make fun of competing smartphones and their lemming-like users who are constantly glued to their device's screens.

The commercials, which feature the HTC Mondrian (the third Windows Phone handset so far with the first two being from Samsung and LG) are not your typical smartphone hardware or OS commercials.

Instead of featuring on the awesome hardware or novel software features and benefits, they instead seem to be offering a rather sad but somewhat accurate representation of smartphones and their obsessed users. How Windows Phone is a viable option to the other phones isn't really clarified. One may take it as a statement that Windows Phone has been designed to offer information in a more efficient way so we can spend less time searching for stuff and use more of it enjoying life.

Detractors will likely argue that the reason users won't be spending much time engaged with their Windows Phones is that the relative newness of the OS means there will be a very limited number of applications and features on the phone, so not much time to waste on it. We think the adverts are clever and show a lot of moxie from Microsoft who is, strangely, now the upstart in the mobile OS race.

We feel there is a legitimate place in the market for Windows Phone, if even just to erase the memory of previous iterations of Microsoft's mobile OS. Despite being new, not having cut-copy-and-paste or multitasking, there's a lot of potential for this upstart brand provided they can learn from their competitor's mistakes and focus on the user experience.