With an interview with the Seattle Times, Andy Lees: President of the Windows Phone division at Microsoft, answered some questions about Windows Phone, Mango, OEMs, advertising and more.
Lees: “In the United States, the operators own the vast majority of the retail through which phones are purchased. That’s not true in many other parts of the world. I would say the OEM is disproportionately important in most parts of the world. And in the U.S., it’s probably a balance between the OEM and the operator.”
Q: So are there commercials that Microsoft is producing that they will all use?
Lees: “What we want to do is allow each hardware manufacturer to celebrate what’s unique about their phone.”
Interpreting this means that do not expect any Microsoft commercials or at least a broad campaign for some odd reason. The other interesting part was the true 4G LTE support to which Lees responded:
Lees: “All the phones in the U.S. are 4G. What’s interesting with this release, instead of all the phones coming out on the same day, there will be a season that will carry on into the next year that will include LTE phones as well.”
Finally Lees’s comments on the upcoming year and times to come.
Q: Is this going to be your breakout year, do you think?
Lees: “A few things: The Xbox will be updated in November. The UI (user interface) is very similar (to Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows 8) with the tiles and panoramas. Windows 8 is going to help. In terms of just the phone, having the choice of hardware and the quality of the experience are going to be accelerants. Over the next 12, 18, 24 months, I can see a lot of stars lining up.”
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