There is tremendous pressure on Microsoft for a timely release of Windows Phone 8 (WP8). With manufacturers expecting to ship Windows Phone 8 devices in the coming weeks, Microsoft has still to complete their latest mobile operating system.
While Windows Phone 7 was released years too late allowing iOS and Android to rise to dominance, Microsoft decided to leap forward by building Windows Phone 8 on the same core kernel as Windows 8. However reports suggest that Microsoft has missed their initial time frame or early October, prior to the release of Windows 8 and Windows RT. Microsoft has reportedly shifted their Windows 8 release schedule to October 29th, with devices to follow in November.
Bugs and feature delays are cited as reasons for the postponement and HTC had particularly had issues with eliminating bugs from WP8 builds, which they cited as the reason for their delayed event to announce their WP8 devices.
Samsung and Nokia have already made their announcements but neither launch allowed journalists to spend time or interact with the devices.
Microsoft has been working on Windows Phone 8 for some time now. We know that several Windows Phone 8 devices started appearing on U.S. carriers, indicating that devices running early builds of the operating system were being tested. Microsoft hopes to have WP8 completed by the end of this week or early next, but even those dates would give manufacturers very little time to finalize their devices.
Nokia is hoping to have their Nokia Lumia 920 launched on November 2nd, with a mid September completion of WP8, the Finish company will have just a little over a month to integrate, troubleshoot and finalize their handsets before shipping them out to carriers. Carriers themselves are known to take several weeks to integrate their own software and run tests on the devices before releasing it to the public.
The report goes on to suggest that carriers may choose to omit installing their own software to reduce the testing time before devices hit the market.
With Windows 8 coming by the end of October, Microsoft has to quickly follow suite with their Windows Phone platform. Windows 8 and Windows RT will be Microsoft’s greatest selling point for their modern (Metro) UI, and giving users the option to complete the Windows family with a Windows Phone is essential.
With the holiday season close approaching, Microsoft and their partners have a big opportunity to market Windows Phones. They have a mountain in the form of a new iPhone to compete against and they will need to make a huge impact to stay relevant.