Perhaps realizing that "Windows Phone 7 Series" is too cumbersome for any normal person to utter, Microsoft announced that it's dropping the last word.
From now on, it's "Windows Phone 7", the company announced on its official Windows phone Twitter feed. "Tis the season for Series finales," said the Tweet. "We've got one too - dropping the ‘Series’ and keeping the 'Windows Phone 7.' Done."
Good, because I'm the one that had to write out that ridiculous moniker every time we covered the upcoming operating system. I guess Microsoft looked at Android, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian and WebOS and realized that a simple buzzword is where it's at. Unfortunately, "Windows Phone 7" doesn't quite get there, but it's a start.
See, Microsoft is stuck because it needs the word "Windows" for marketing purposes. But it can't just call the operating system "Windows 7" because there's a computer OS by the same name. Nor can Microsoft drop the number and stick with "Windows Phone" because the new operating system is profoundly different than the existing Windows Mobile 6.5, so a number is necessary to avoid confusion. WinPho7 will suffice for the hip techies (and headline writers), but it'll be foreign for the layman.
So here we are with Windows Phone 7, still not an ideal situation, in part because we have to refer to specific devices as Windows Phone 7 phones. If Microsoft flipped the "7" and the "Phone" around, you'd have Windows 7 Phones ready to launch by year-end. But that would be too easy.
