[smoove21]

Originally Posted by Malatesta

Look at the biggest Android devices: Moto Droid and HTC Eris, etc. (Nexus One is not that huge...yet)

The most popular ones have some sort of customization. Moto's BLUR is going to be huge. HTC Sense is very popular.

Point is, OEMs have a choice: do a "Google" phone (basic OS) or a custom version (Sense, BLUR, etc.)

It's working very well for platform, no? Why would MS take years of OEM customization away from them? The ability to customize the UX/UI is a way for an OEM to fly their colors, make themselves standout, define their brand. You take that way, they are all stuck riffing on the same tune. It's exactly why WinMo was so boring when Wm5 came out; only Palm was seriously hacking it.

I've personally spoken with Microsoft before on this topic: they love HTC's Sense. They think it's a selling point for their OS. This was in October and I find it hard to believe they would do a 180 on the topic.

All evidence I have suggest MS is doing the Android route: have both a Zune UX version and one that can be customized. Heck, they even mention they will be making custom UIs for carriers. I think OEMs would be ticked "Oh you can do custom UI's, but we can't?"

There may also be a Zune-type feature phone (very locked down, guaranteed performance/experience).

Going further, if the HD2 is getting the update (and I'm confident it will), do you think HTC is going to let users go from their Sense 2.5 to "X"? You don't think that would, you know, disrupt the customer experience?

That's my bet.

Actually the droid and nexus 1 are pure google experience devices. Only consumers like all of us that are well informed about the devices we use consider what phones we want off the phone's os. The average customer doesn't think(or maybe even know) about windows 6.x,7, webos or android. Usually they want features(wifi,mp3 player,camera etc) in the phones they select. On top of that, as I said before, the droid is an amazing piece of hardware.. It sold because it has almost everything a buyer could ask for. Verizon marketed as that, not cute but powerful. It runs plain old android and it didn't (or still doesn't I'm not sure) have multitouch when it was released. The same goes for the touch pro2..no one cares about the os because it's still a very powerful,sexy and useful phone...