Android's Success Comes From Copying Windows Mobile

An interesting blog post from Andrew Burst points out that just about everything that the Android platform is being praised for, is exactly the same as what Windows Mobile has been doing for 10 years. And Andrew is only talking about the methodology. Android and Windows Mobile are both designed to run on a wide variety of hardware and are both managed by entities completely separate from the hardware manufacturers. Application development is open to anyone, and anyone can choose to install whatever they want to on both platforms. Android and Windows Mobile are also both highly customizable; offering the opportunity for manufactures to differentiate their offerings with significant OS customizations without having to re-invent the wheel.

While Windows Mobile still has plenty of features not available on Android, Google is catching up quickly. Andrew thinks that Microsoft’s success with the Windows Mobile platform already happened at the turn of the century when it beat Palm in the PDA market. Is Windows Mobile really past its prime, or are we just waiting for the sleeping giant to awake once again?