The market for cell phone operating systems is highly segmented. Many cell phones run operating systems other than Microsoft Smartphone; indeed, Microsoft is relatively new to the cell phone platform market. The stronghold in this market is Symbian OS, which is funded and supported by cell phone makers such as Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Siemens, and others. Palm is historically strong in the PDA market. For people with a background in those types of platforms, it is necessary to present a quick tour into Microsoft Smartphone. Those of you who have used a Smartphone device for some time can feel free to skip this section.

To a typical user, a Smartphone is a much more powerful cell phone. It provides many more types of applications, and the user interface is more sophisticated than a traditional cell phone. Like most other cell phones, a Microsoft Smartphone actually refers to a combination of the handset and its running applications. The aesthetic design of a smartphone handset may vary significantly, but the principle user interface - how a user interacts with the device - is almost the same across different devices from different manufacturers. Let's take a look at the Smartphone emulator, a software tool that helps developers quickly develop and test Smartphone applications without using a physical device.

Although color doesn't appear in these screenshots, a color screen at the top and the number keys at the bottom are the most common elements. What separates a Smartphone from a PDA are the software keys. Notice the two soft keys (left and right) directly below the screen. These correspond to the menu bar and commands at the bottom of the screen. Depending on how applications define the functions of the menu bar, these soft keys may perform specific tasks. Also note the five-way (up, down, left, right, and "Select") navigation pad and the four fixed function keys: Call, Home, Hang Up, and Back. Pressing the Call key will bring you to the phone call screen, where you can enter a phone number. After you enter a phone number, pressing the Call key again will initiate the call. The Hang Up key, of course, is used when you want to end a call. The Home key always takes you to the home screen shown in this figure, and the Back key enables you to go back to the previous screen. At the home screen, pressing any number key will automatically bring you to the phone call screen.

A Smartphone usually has a power button, a record button (for voice recording), and two volume control buttons. Some Smartphones have a built-in camera, so there will be another button for it (some have a high-quality digital camera, such as Nokia N90, which features a Carl Zeiss lens, 2-megapixel resolution, and a 20x zoom).

The first-generation Smartphone applications are mostly clones of desktop Windows applications, enabling users familiar with those desktop applications to avoid learning a new one. Typical Smartphone applications are Pocket Outlook, calendar, contacts, Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, Windows Media Player, MSN messenger, games, and some accessories. The second-generation Smartphone applications are exclusively designed to leverage the advantages of mobility and ubiquitous wireless access. In the next several years we will see a whole new set of applications that utilize real-time location information in conjunction with always-on wireless data access.

Overall, the design of a Smartphone aims to take advantage of a user's prior experience with Windows desktop systems. After all, a Smartphone is a small computer running a stripped-down version of the Windows operating system. This greatly helps users familiar with Palm or Symbian cell phones because the learning curve is largely eliminated.