Isn't it weird that Microsoft owns two big platforms, Windows Mobile and SharePoint, and that is has such a non-existing strategy for using these two together. If you do a search on SharePoint and mobiles there is not much to find, I think that is weird.

Business users have mobile data plans everywhere but they still heavily rely on Exchange and sync. for delivering corporate data to the mobile workers. Not sure if I understand why that is.

SharePoint has all the corporate data available and nowadays this is all accessible from home, so why has nobody showed me a cool SharePoint mobile app. lately (or what about ever)?

I think there are a few reasons:

- The mobile browsing experience of SharePoint isn’t that great;

- Exchange is a tough competitor.

Both are true and I think we should not focus on a SharePoint browser experience although the new browsers (like the iPhone) could make it easier to show SharePoint content in a more decent way.

Exchange is indeed the de-facto standard for Microsoft customers but I start questioning it because SharePoint contains more valuable corporate information compared to Exchange.
E-mail shouldn’t be your only tool to run a business.

I think SharePoint is ready for it with its extensive webservices to do anything you can imagine and we only need more native Windows Mobile applications. We should dump the /m browsing experience of SharePoint because it sucks.

We could have some quick wins with SharePoint and a mobile app:

- Integrate sim card contact lists with remote SharePoint contact lists (possible through your data plan);

- Start workflows on your device;

- Add contacts from your sim card to a SharePoint portal or the other way around;

- Publish Twitter style messages from your mobile to a SharePoint portal;

- Track your mobile workers by storing GPS information and maps in the portal.

This isn’t rocket science and can all be done by using the webservices and some very lightweight native Windows Mobile applications. Who is up to it?

And for the people that don’t believe in downloadable apps for devices (yes Daniel you too), see the latest iPhone stats J

It took 74 days to sell the first million iPhones in 2007.

Then, on July 11, 2008, Apple launched the App Store, and everything changed.

- Three days to sell 1 million iPhones.

- Three days to download 10 million applications.

- Eleven days to download 25 million apps.

- 60 million applications downloaded in the first month.

- $360 million in applications sold to date, even though the majority of downloads come from free apps.

Potentially a $1 billion marketplace in the next 24 months.

Sure, consumers but my big guess is that the iPhone will empower a lot of business users.