Ask Microsoft

This column sponsored by Windows MobileTM

What is your job within Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices Division?

I work on the Retail Channel team, specifically on what we call the "ecosystem"—all the cool stuff you can buy for Pocket PCs and Smartphones, like accessories, software and the like. My job is to help retailers understand what's available from Microsoft and our partners and help get new products ready for retail. I also work on software publishing. The channel team works on retail merchandising, reseller training, and mobile operator and online retailer merchandising and promotions. Our partners usually lead the relationship with the retailers, but we have many opportunities to help and ensure that people understand what Windows Mobile brings.

Jeff McKean

Why is retail important?

Most people buy devices from retail stores. Even though lots of folks like us are enthusiasts and often know exactly what we want to buy and where we want to buy it, most people aren't like that. They need help to make a purchase, and they want to touch and feel the merchandise—I think the presale is vital in helping the customer understand what they want and to make sure they buy the right product. Because of this, we really need to make sure that retailers have an understanding of these products. We have worldwide online training courses for retailers, just for Windows Mobile. Over 20,000 retail salespeople around the world have taken these courses. We also do some live training and demonstrations with Windows Mobile Specialist programs—there are 10 people doing demos in the U.S.—and we measure how well we are doing in retail through a mystery-shopper program. Our retailers worldwide are really the ones who sell the product, and are often the first line of support for any issues that a customer may have.

What's meant by "merchandising?"

We and our partners do a lot of work making sure the devices are nicely displayed. We get input from our device-maker partners on how to best display their products. We also try to make sure the devices and their accessory and software products are close to each other, so customers can make the association between the two. We've made a lot of progress, but of course there is always more to be done. One of the cool things we've done—with a huge amount of help from the gurus at Sprite Software—is to make a self-restoring Flash demo. Every few hours the device hard-resets and restores itself from a storage card and restarts the demo. This ensures that the device stays "clean" and ready for a customer to try.

What is the Windows Mobile ecosystem today?

Software applications really form the heart of the Windows Mobile ecosystem. A lot of folks, enthusiasts like ourselves, get their applications as an electronic software download. I anticipate that this will increase as more people discover the incredible variety of just plain cool applications that they can get. Since I'm a retail guy, I really believe that people who are just getting into Windows Mobile need to be introduced to software applications at the retail level, which means that software will also have to be available in boxes, on shelves. People often start buying applications in retail and then begin buying them online, and that's great. But as Smartphones become more powerful and more mainstream, more folks will be discovering that they can put applications on their new device. So we expect to see more applications become available at the retail level.

What software publishing are you doing?

We have a retail mobile applications business with a few titles, such as our Entertainment PocketPak, Voice Command, and Pocket Streets. We also recently began helping independent software makers come to retail by doing some boxed-product publishing: Right now we're publishing some products like Digital Concepts' (Douglas Beck's company) Motocross Stunt Racer. We plan to do more in the future.