Microsoft in Trouble After Windows Phone General Manager Quits?
Charlie Kindel who has worked for Microsoft for 21 years participating in the development of past projects such as IE 3.0, Windows NT, and Windows Millennium, announced his departure via a lengthy e-mail posted on his personal blog on Monday.
The post directed to friends and colleagues disclosed that the purpose of his exit was to build a new company that he revealed would involve "sports advertising, mobile, social-networking and, of course, the cloud." It also read that his last day at the company would be September 2.
Kindel's arguably most prominent position at Microsoft would be his latest position – general manager of the Windows Phone development project – in which he played the important role of drawing the attention of developers to develop apps for the Windows mobile platform, according to the Guardian.
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Having a plethora of apps available for a platform is crucial for the platform's overall popularity and success in the mobile market. So far, some 27,000 apps have been made available in roughly one year, according to the media outlet. Although 27,000 is still dwarf to Android's 250,000 apps as of May 2011 and Apple's iOS 500,000 apps, Kindel told Geekwire that the 27,000 were the "best toolset [with] amazingly high customer satisfaction."
Microsoft hasn't reaped good results in mobile sales so far losing 1.7 percent of the smartphone market during the second quarter of this year, according to comScore. After Kindel's departure, however, it is still early to tell if Microsoft's latest mobile operating system, code-named "Mango" and slated for release this fall, is headed for a nose-dive or not.
Microsoft is teaming up with Nokia to launch its next high-profile smartphone but should face intense competition from Apple's iPhone 5 which could be released in a similar period either in September or October and from Google Android phones which are currently dominating the market.
Kindel leaves Microsoft just after Microsoft finished development for its latest mobile operating system he helped develop. He considers this product "The BEST product Microsoft has ever built," which leaves us thinking why he can't wait to quit if it is such a great product.
