Android: "I'm a phone and a slate, and lots of other touch friendly devices"
iOS: "I'm a phone, or an iPod, or an iPad"
Windows Phone 7: "I'm a phone only. My boss doesn't think I can work on a slate, and will use something else"
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer gave analysts a glimpse at the software giant’s potential marketing around Windows Phone 7. The plan: Let Windows Phone 7 ride shotgun with Windows 7. The possible punchline: “I’m a phone too.”
Here’s a slide from Ballmer’s presentation:
Will this pitch work? Ballmer thinks the ‘I’m a phone too’ line certainly won’t hurt. He said:
I think it’s probably fair to say we have a lot of work to do and all not going to happen over night. The opportunity to do interesting work, differentiated work, to build marketshare, it is actually pretty good in the phone space right now.
The focus we had on two things, number one, to make sure that we’re doing the software right, the end user experience right. We actually designed kind of the core hardware platform for these things, chassis specification, the OEMs, the hub vendors innovate on top of that so we have guaranteed set of hardware on which to do this kind of interesting and exciting and usable software. I think it’s been — gives us phenomenal opportunity.
And then there’s the marketing hook:
Part of what we’ll be doing is driving kind of integrated set of thinking, branding. We’ll be really aggressively marketing Windows Phone. Both Windows PCs in all form factors and Windows Phones will get pretty aggressive marketing support, if you will.
What’s your take?
Update: Microsoft said that the ‘I’m a phone too’ is not an official marketing line and I updated the post accordingly. A Microsoft spokesperson said:
Steve Ballmer did not announce a new tag line or marketing pitch for the company’s Windows Phone 7 phone. The “ I’m a phone too” comments he made were simply part of the dialogue that he was having with the audience. Microsoft has not confirmed or announced any details about its marketing plans for Windows Phone 7.
More from Microsoft’s analyst meeting:
