Would WinMo even be relevant without HTC?

[bkrodgers]

Originally Posted by austin420

for phones. and i know this is a phone site, but like i said, theyve got the non phone pda market on lock.

True, but that's a rapidly shrinking market.

They've got a strong presence in non-PDA markets, such as the Symbol type devices that a lot of inventory and POS systems use. Even Apple used those WM devices up until recently! But that's a niche market. I'm not even sure if they can retain that without a strong phone presence. Even the iPhone is becoming a somewhat "corporate approved" device because it's captured the hearts and minds of the public.

It will be interesting to see what happens with WM7. It sounds like they're finally focused on delivering a strong "stock" experience. In fact there are rumors they're even going to prevent HTC from customizing the UI very much, at least in the "media" version. If true, I wonder how HTC feels about basically being told "thanks for keeping us on life support the last few years. We've got it from here."