Problems develop because MS treats the carriers as its customers instead of the endusers.

by JD Hancock

The carriers are not your customers: the Windows Phone 7 update mess
[Via Ars Technica]

A month ago at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft announced that the Windows Phone 7 copy and paste update, known as “NoDo”, would ship some time in the first half of March. That’s not going to happen now, as the company has formally announced in a blog post that the update is delayed until the second half of the month.

The reason given is so that Microsoft can take a little extra time to ensure that the update “meets [Microsoft’s] standards, your standards, and the standards of [Microsoft’s] partners.” The statement assured users that the updates scheduled for later this year won’t be impacted by this delay, and that multitasking, Twitter integration, and an Internet Explorer 9-powered browser are all going to ship as expected.

[More]

People will not feel comfortable if MS is seen as a supporter of wireless carriers at the expense of its real customers – the people who use the phone. Who will advocate for their problems?

The carriers don’t care. They have a two year contract. If MS only cares about keeping the carriers happy, it’ll just have more problems keeping the end users happy.

Unhappy endusers makes for poor sales, no matter how much you service the carriers.

It’ll be interesting to see if this relationship can be saved and strengthened because MS really has little incentive to.