Microsoft completes Danger acquisition, creates new Premium Mobile Experiences division

by Nilay Patel, posted Apr 15th 2008 at 2:33PM

Microsoft's just announced that its $500M buyout of Sidekick maker Danger is complete, and that it's rolling the new team into its own unit, the Premium Mobile Experiences division. Ready to follow the chain of corporate command? PMX is under the Mobile Communications Business unit at MS, which itself falls under the Entertainment and Devices Division responsible for the Xbox and Zune. Got all that? Good. Danger's management team won't be directly calling the shots at PMX, though -- they'll be reporting to Roz Ho, who you might remember as the former head of the Mac Business Unit. Ho says the goal of PMX is to have people "smile every time they look at their phone," which hopefully means we'll be seeing a lot more Danger influence on Windows Mobile than the other way around. Still, "Premium Mobile Experiences" is an interesting choice of name, especially in the same division as the 360 and Zune -- dare we dream of a Microsoft-branded consumer phone?

[Via MocoNews]

Filed under: Windows Mobile, Danger

Tags: buyout, microsoft, pmx, premium mobile experiences, PremiumMobileExperiences, sidekick

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Juice @ Apr 15th 2008 3:02PM

"hopefully means we'll be seeing a lot more Danger influence on Windows Mobile than the other way around"

Huh? You think the OS on the Sidekick is better than Windows Mobile? Huh? You think M$ makes it own devices? You don't know what you're talking about.

Neutral

Matt @ Apr 15th 2008 6:14PM

What are you talking about? Where in the article does it say that the author believes Microsoft makes it's own devices?

Neutral

fyreblazer @ Apr 15th 2008 5:30PM

PMX sounds so extreme! haha. Seriously I think they should follow that branding and never mention the complete name. The marketing pretty much writes itself.

Neutral

xB Owner @ Apr 15th 2008 6:01PM

Zune, 360 and the former Danger all in a single MS division? Depending on how tight knit this group is we could potentially see some pretty amazing devices. Perhaps MS can team up with Nvidia to create one amazing "convergence" device.

Take a Zune, a 360, WinMo 6.1 (7), Sidekick and APX 2500 platform and throw it in a blender. With any luck you would be pouring one sweet multi-media device out into your cool frosty glass.

Platform capable of 3D UI and Gaming (APX 2500)
Customizable advanced OS with a large pool of developers (WinMo)
Slick form factor (Sidekick)
Multimedia Support (Zune)
Access to Online Media Content and Games (XBOX Live)
Connection to a home gaming platform (XBOX 360)

The stars are aligned for Microsoft to do far more than introduce a youth oriented texting "smart phone." It is all a matter of how far Microsoft wants to take it. If done right they could compete with Sony in the portable gaming market, and Apple on both the "trendy phone" and portable media player market.

I guess all we can do is sit back and wait.

Neutral

xB Owner @ Apr 15th 2008 6:11PM

OK... that post was a bit off. I got a little confused in posting. Obviously Danger is a platform, they do not manufacture devices. So I guess what this does is provide MS an internet-centric "dumb phone" platform to go along with their WinMo platform.

The convergence device would still work on the Danger OS, and probably more so to MS's liking. A less open platform is what they would likely desire for a device like this. The only difference is they would need a new platform to build off of as the Nvidia option is currently being designed to work exclusively with WinMo.

I still think the Sidekick Slide form factor would make an awesome transition to a gaming device. Make the screen larger, make it a touch screen and keep the QWERTY keyboard underneath for messaging (mms, sms, etc.), in-game messaging, and advanced gaming controls.

Neutral