[Flerdourdyged]

7:00AM BST 23 Jun 2012 The Telegraph

In January, Stephen Elop, chief executive of Nokia, announced the company’s flagship handset.
The Lumia 900 was considered the exemplar of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows Phone.
This week, just six months later, Microsoft announced a major Windows Phone update that it said would
not be available to Lumia 900 owners. Nokia sold two million Lumia handsets in the first quarter of 2012
but the company's top device has essentially been rendered out of date within a year.

The move highlights the pace of technology developments, especially in mobile phones, but it also
emphasises the growing problem of so-called ‘fragmentation’. This means that relatively new devices are
often unable to run the latest version of the software that powers them. For software developers,
fragmentation means they can’t be sure how, or even if, their applications will run successfully on the
latest handsets.



While Microsoft points out that the major shift in software will bring huge improvements, it also
concedes that for some time shelves will carry a range of devices labelled ‘Windows Phones’ that are in fact
fundamentally different. The idea of some models being more equal than others is not attractive for
manufacturers trying to encourage reluctant users away from Google and Apple. For Nokia, sales down
more than half in the first quarter, it could be critical.

What was once a battle of hardware between the manufacturers, has now become a battle of software. Both
customers and developers can look forward to reaping the benefits in the coming months, as Windows
Phone 8 brings some much needed variety and depth to the market.

There are some very exciting devices due this autumn sporting the new operating system, and they will be
fundamental to its success. By implication, the existing devices are now far less attractive because they will
soon be usurped.

For consumers, it makes the issue of when the best time to buy a new phone is significantly more tricky.
Nobody, after all, wants their phone to be in fragments within months of buying it.