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Originally Posted by zim2323

Where did you read there weren't 2 editions? What I read was a quote from a Microsoft Exec early on at the conference. Granted I can't find the article now, but I do remember that specifically.

That being said, I'm an IT Consultant with almost 10 years of experience with Exchange. For those of you who don't have any real world BUSINESS experience, then your conclusion would seem rational. However, if you also knew how much money Microsoft has poored into Unified Communications for their mobile phones, you would realize just how different the end result may actually be. Either a lot more functionality is going to be integrated before launch, or there will be two phone editions. One for the corporate user and one for the home user.

For those that aren't in the know, the entire Exchange, Sharepoint, Office, and Communication server/application suite is literally built around the Windows mobile phone platform. I see no reason why they would outdate millions of dollars in research and development. Everything they have been working on, and still developing for, the past 5-7 years has been integrating the enterprise environment into the mobile phone world. The whole idea is that you can use your phone as a complete office assistant to manage calendars, email, voicemail, etc.

Too many people look at this from a personal/home based viewpoint. Microsoft is DRIVEN by the business world. If they can't integrate their Exchange/communication product line in with their phone, then they just waisted the last 7 years of development. Why do you think they've been working so hard on remote sync capability. You honestly think they would do all that work just to throw it away?

From the business world, there may be more iPhone, Blackberry, etc., but to TRULY have a unified communication environment, you HAVE to have a Microsoft Windows phone. I personally have sat in classes over the last 2 years where half the class was Lucent communications engineers learning how the Exchange and mobile phone products work in order to integrate their PBX systems and develop unified communication suite software to match.

The "big picture" is a LOT bigger then what the non-business mind can see.

what they showed us has exchange and every other business function included into what we saw demonstrated. the only thing that a business edition my have would be less hubs (ie the xbox live hub) or an additional looking business hub for all business products in one place but the overall look and ui isn't going to change at all and the functionality of the phone isn't going to change. So the only thing left to ask is what you mean by business customer? They didn't show how mobile office or excel works because there isn't anything new with that. the ui is new and that is what was shown off, but if you mean business where you think you can unlock and run custom ui's, or run custom roms, or decide where apps are loaded from, there isn't going to be any difference from business customer or regular consumer. At most there is going to be a business hub.