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msmobiles.com interviews Derek Brown from Microsoft
Read the transcript of the interview...
that took place in Geneva, Switzerland on October 13, 2003, in a meeting room at Microsoft´s stand at ITU World Telecom 2003 conference, roughly one hour after Bill Gates had given his speech at this conference, in which Vodafone-Microsoft deal was announced for the first time. Derek Brown is a Director of global Marketing Communications in the Mobile Devices group at Microsoft.

We would like hereby to thank Shira Silbermann of Waggener Edstrom (Windows Mobile PR agency in USA) and Matt Warder of Weber Shandwick (Windows Mobile PR agency in UK) for help in organization of this interview.

[image]
(on picture above: Derek Brown holds his own Motorola MPx200 smartphone in his left hand, and Tanager smartphone of Matt Warder in his right hand)

The interview follows.

* * * * *

msmobiles.com: could you maybe tell about your role in the Microsoft? What are you doing?

Derek Brown: I´m a director of global marketing communications, so that means, I am responsible for a global strategy execution of everything from public relatations, to advertising, to events, to our Internet website, our web marketing, and a whole range of activities.

msmobiles.com: marketing stuff?

Derek Brown: marketing.

msmobiles.com: so you are in relation to Chriss Hill, Jonas Hasselberg, what´s the relation? Neil Enns, Ori Amiga?

Derek Brown: Well, actually they´re product marketing, so if you are trying to understand the mobile devices group, there´s two main parts of the mobile devices group. There´s devoloping group that everybody works for Cabbot Shields, and those are the actual developers, the people who lead development team, we call program managers. And then there is the marketing group under Juha Christensen, and under marketing we have product planning, product management, so Jonas and Chris are a part of product planning, product management team.

msmobiles.com: so you have different team for development?

Derek Brown: no. It´s product planning and product management. Now what that means, is that this team of Jonas, they drive requirements to the product development, they say "these are the features that we should have, these are thing that we need", they work through the development process, so for instance we have a process ??? we need all these features in next version, then they will come back to Jonas and say "that´s your product, what´s the prirority?".

msmobiles.com: so Jonas is in development or in marketing?

Derek Brown: he´s in marketing.

msmobiles.com: Jonas and Chris Hill are marketing and Neil and Ori are in development?

Derek Brown: yes, Neil in development.

msmobiles.com: I have seen new developments here: Smartphone 2003 in E200 in Orange and I have heard, that Smartphone 2003 has this "always up to date" Outlook functionality. And I understand that it may be not a directed to you question - you are a marketing person - but can you tell for example: there is a company in some country, for example in Germany and this company would like to establish an "always up to date" outlook in Microsoft smartphone and Microsoft Exchange in the company. How it is possible to it? Is it so that there need to be an agreement between operator in this given country and Microsoft?

Derek Brown: right, no, there´s two ways to do it. It is enabled through Exhange 2003, so EXchange 2003 has over-the-air e-mail sync, and it was previously provided in Mobile Information Server. When you synchronize... , and you can set up to synchronize...

msmobiles.com: ... but this is polling, this is getting information every 5 minutes for example?

Derek Brown: whatever you schedule, not question.

msmobiles.com: .... but the new development in Smartphone 2003 is the pushing of information. Can you provide explanation how ...

Derek Brown: ... a push is always going to be server-side, a push is not gonna be a client side, so there is a capability in 2003 to schedule the polls. The push doesn´t come from the client.

msmobiles.com: ... exactly, the push comes from the server, but... as I understand, what is needed for the server to push this information? Does it send some SMS or some WAP push?

Derek Brown: yes, it´s possible, to be honest I think it´s Exchange guys would be great to talk to, or maybe Neil in terms of specifics, ... I will make one thing that is important to understand about it: Exchange server can either be installed in the enterprise, in just over a web connection, or it can be a hosted Exchange at an operator. So that the deployment of Exchange and emails is not dependent on the operator deploying an email solution, operator needs to deploy smartphone...

msmobiles.com: ... sorry, shortly speaking can we have Microsoft Exchange plus smartphone solution with this push without operator? Or we cannot have it? Or operator is needed?

Derek Brown: well, the operator´s infrastructure is needed, it´s not required that operator hosts exchange.

msmobiles.com: ... ok anyway the problem is that I would like to propose a solution to the companies based on Microsoft smartphone and Microsoft exchange so that companies could start buying Microsoft smartphone instead of Nokia. So having Outlook where you can push not only emails but also contacts is very important... but I have heard rumors that Microsoft´s MSN has to have agreement with local operator in given country, and then this company in given country can use the service. Is it so or you are not sure?

Derek Brown: the deploying Exchange in enterprises is independent of an operator and the features in terms you would get, synchronizng email, I mean it depends on the network infrastructure obviosly that it´s connected to

msmobiles.com: ... ok, mabye really we could take some technical guys.. hm... I was speaking to people from Sierra Wireless, this company - they announced the new smartphone, and they claim that it is a part of their additional thing, that they are offering, because they want to offer this RIM-like functionality with this opening keyboard, they wanna offer always-on email but is it Microsoft solution or is it RIM solution? And where is operator in this?

Derek Brown: Let me make sure I understand this question...

msmobiles.com: ... hm, I am still trying to find out: there is a country, let´s say Germany, and there is not much Microsoft presence there [smartphone-wise] and there is company which has Exchange and this company buys Nokia [phones] for employees, and I would like to convince them to use Microsoft smartphone instead, and this "always up to date" would be... [great selling argument].

Derek Brown: they will have always up to date features in Exchange and smartphone independent of the service offering of the mobile operator.

msmobiles.com: it´s independent from the operator?

Derek Brown: yes, I mean they are using the operator´s network, but operator doesn´t need to ...

msmobiles.com: ... you mean that they should buy some device to send a message from the Exchange server? in this way?

Derek Brown: I am not exactly sure how wake up goes from the Exchange server, so we´ll answer this technical question from you... I have to make it clear: Smartphone 2003 by itself does not bring "always up to date" - that is server side. Smartphone 2003 is a client side. It´s enabled by what happens on Exchange. So for instance there is not always up to date feature in Smartphone 2003 that is always up to date email with IMAP, with POP3, with Lotus Notes, with all kind of things. It´s an Exchange solution. We´ll get you connected with the Exchange server people to understand this solution. Does it makes sense?

* * *

msmobiles.com: yes ... OK, so I have another question: everybody is saying that Microsoft doesn´t care about consumer market, so are you running for mass market or are you just in business market?

Derek Brown: I will give a long answer to that. First of all I have to say last year, I and my team, we have listen to consumers in Hong Kong, Japan, Stockholm, Rome, Munich, Paris, London, Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and I think I am probably forgetting a few. We´ve spent a lot of time listening to consumers. I think to view the world as consumers and business, it is a little different than that. What you have you have consumers, you have customers, who have jobs, and those customers they have mobile phones.. span both their personal and professiona life. So this [Derek points to his Motorola MPx200] is my only mobile phone, my wife uses it to call me, and my boss uses it to call me. And we certainly are right now... have a compelling offering and our focus is on consumers who are very interested in bussiness productivitiy of given device. That´s the productivity to manage their business calendar, that´s the productivity to manage, network productivity to manage their personal life.

msmobiles.com: So you want to combine them?

Derek Brown: I think they are combined today, but, you know, in the near term we are very focused on the consumer, who is very interested in this personal and work usage for the mobile devices. Interested in Outlook, connecting to these sorts of things. Certainly over the next the two years we will increase it with our partners to access broader whether it is teenager market...

msmobiles.com: I know Eric Levine who takes cares of these Club Smartphone website, but I have impression that you are not marketing, you are not branding it globally. You have just some small activity, that is not comparable Club Nokia for example. So it is a customer binding solution and at the same time you get feedback. So are yo planning any effort in this direction? I think that you are relying on enthusiasts things like Club Nokia - giving some free ringtones, some other marketing stuff, that is binding the end user. You are not planning it?

Derek Brown: Well, I will answer to it. One: we are always looking at what sorts of services, whether they are web based or otherwise based that give a better experience to customers, but we are very focused on working with the mobile operator and do them with the mobile operator and making sure.. the mobile operator has a relationship with the customer that we think is important, and I think you know that Club Nokia has not always had a liking of the mobile operator. I wanna make this very important point: we are focused on being great partner to mobile operators, because if we create great experience for customers and great business for mobile operators....

msmobiles.com: I have been at CeBIT in Hannover and I have seen great desire of vendors like SonyEricsson, Motorola, Nokia to attract popular consumers. But not at Microsoft. Microsoft expects that operator will be doing this stuff, but operators...

Derek Brown: what do you mean "mass customer"?

msmobiles.com: I mean: children.

Derek Brown: Oh yes, so if could get how we view the world. So this is one billions mobile subscribers in the world [Derek draws big circle] ... everybody, everybody in the world, all the teens, the mobile subscribers, the people in China - I´ve been over there you know working recently - there is a part here in the middle that we call mobile professionals [Derek draws small circle in the middle of the big circle] ... we kind of defined it as somebody who has a PC, who has a job, who is interested in productivity information and we size it as something 120 million people. This is today. I will let you to understand it. This is our target market today. But our target for the next several years is to bring a product offerings that reach the entire market [Derek draws arrows from the inner, smaller circle to the edges of the big circle]. You succeed by having focus, and our focus today is this [Derek shows the small circle inside of the big circle] but our plan for the future is to go total mass market.

msmobiles.com: Ok, so what about marketing of Microsoft brand and Microsoft smartphone? People in UK are complaining that they see big advertising of Nokia for example but they don´t see big advertising of Microsoft. Are you planning such stuff or not?

Derek Brown: Yes, you see we do mobile advertising coming this fall. It´s important to understand...

msmobiles.com: it´s in TV also.

Derek Brown: no.. it´s important to understand something: that Windows Mobile and Microsoft is not the same thing as Nokia. We don´t make handsets. We make the software, that runs the handsets, and so our marketing... we could say Motorola will be doing lots of marketing for smartphones... will be doing marketing for Windows Mobile platform, we´re working with handset manufacturer, that is not to say we´re not one to one with Nokia.

msmobiles.com: so you´re bringing some smartphone marketing campaign?

Derek Brown: yes it´ll be global advertising. We´ll be advertising in Europe, US, Asia.

* * *

msmobiles.com: I want to keep it short so last two topics. So Microsoft smarthone is a nice device, and maybe you know that now almost everybody has wireless LAN and we have theoretically this SDIO card slot in this Microsoft smartphone but we cannot use it for wireless LAN. I was speaking yesterday with Intel and they were stressing very much this combination of GSM and wireless LAN and do you have in Microsoft any plans to, for example, buy drivers from bSquare for Wi-Fi for smartphone and integrate them into system as you did, for example, with MMS in Smartphone 2003? SDIO Wi-Fi cards are on the market. The only problem is software.

Derek Brown: We don´t have any specific announcement about future product plans that we will integrate a technology, but certainly we think Wi-Fi has great potential...

msmobiles.com: ... as Bill Gates said today..

Derek Brown: ... yeah so, we can to integrate things into product map that make sense.

msmobiles.com: Wi-Fi is enabler for other technologies, for Voice over IP for example...

Derek Brown: At this moment I have nothing I can share in terms what our plans are.

* * *

msmobiles.com: OK, last question: what about 3G smartphones? Can you give any estimation when we will see the first 3G smartphone? 3G is now starting in Europe very much and customers want to know: I am buying a [Microsoft] smartphone with GPRS, but my friend, who is at operator "3" in UK, is buing nice NEC device that has videotelephony and is very fast. So should I buy the smartphone or should I buy this [3G] NEC phone?

Derek Brown: You know, it´s important to understand that Windows Mobile - the underlying operating system is network interface independent so we work on CDMA, we work on GSM, we work on EDGE, we work on 3G, but implementation of specific phone whether for instance you know Motorola is working on GSM, or Samsung is working on someting else, or HTC is working on something, but for 3G phone .... we don´t do the underlying radio

msmobiles.com: Motorola is already sellling 3G cellphones and they could put Microsoft smartphone on this...

Derek Brown: we´ve architected it to put it on whatever radio they wanna do. If Motorola would say "we wanna do 3G phone on smartphone" we would work with them [on it].

msmobiles.com: You have this Texas Instruments reference design that is available in form of the smartphone for developers and I have heard that Microsoft was actually involved in this reference design.

Derek Brown: We work very closely with Intel, with Texas Instruments on the reference design work. Absolutely.

msmobiles.com: so do you have any reference designs for 3G..?

Derek Brown: we don´t have any reference design for 3G that we could announce today.

msmobiles.com: so can I get an estimation when we will see reference design for 3G with WCDMA radio interface?

Derek Brown: There is nothing I can announce.

msmobiles.com: companies in Taiwan are not interested in making research, they want to buy reference design and make the smartphone...

Derek Brown: we are extremely involved in understanding... reference designs. We have teams that work with Taiwan, with Intel, with Texas Instruments, we are deeply involved in enabling the platform. Releasing the 3G smartphone is depended upon the chip manufacturers, the hardware manufacturers.

msmobiles.com: so what is your message to hardware manufacturers in Taiwan that want to bring out 3G smartphone?

Derek Brown: well, you know, they work with reference design manufacturers and we provide assistance in terms of integration with our software.. they´re integrators, they take the reference design, they make some different additions for IP or software... we work very very close on that. We make sure we have great hardware design, we´re working on low power consumption, we´re working on low cost. We don´t do ourself. We work in partnership.

msmobiles.com: OK, thanks.