Lots of buzz on the Web today about a fascinating question: Why isn’t Windows Phone catching on? You can read thoughts from Robert Scoble, MG Siegler, and former Windows Phone honcho Charlie Kindel, among others. Everybody has a different set of theories.
And Daring Fireball’s John Gruber makes a parenthetical remark that I find intriguing:
(And, as I’ve said before, I think the “Windows” brand hurts them here. Windows Phone 7 doesn’t sound like a new platform. It sounds like an old one. They should have called it Metro 1.0.)
Windows Phone’s market failure to date surely stems from a confluence of obstacles rather than one overriding issue. But there’s no denying that “Windows Phone 7” and “Windows Phone 7.5” are willfully mundane monikers for operating systems that aren’t the least bit mundane. They suggest business as usual, when what Microsoft actually did–rather bravely–was to start from scratch.
The controversy over the nature 
I’m a little behind on this, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting that 
Yesterday night, we didn’t know much of anything about Palm’s new phone based on its next-generation platform for sure. And then Palm unveiled it today at CES–and while there are stray bits and pieces of information that may still be missing–including the price–we now know an awful lot about the phone, even though it’s still months from release. Ultimately, I think this phone is going to be judged primarily on its user interface, which looked damn impressive in today’s demo. But it’s worth recording the specs, facts, and figures we know so far, and comparing them to Apple’s iPhone 3G is irresistible.