Really: A good Windows advert?

Now that the Microsoft answer to Google's Android and Apple's iOS is almost here Microsoft's advertising people seem to be awake. They never had the most compelling adverts for their products, but then they never needed to, when you have 95% of the market you don't need really great adverts. As clever as Apple's "I'm a Mac" adverts were they never came close to helping Apple get even 10% of the desktop OS market.

But Microsoft now finds itself in a real fight. Despite a 10 year head start their share of the smart phone market has collapsed to 15% and Apple's iOS has grabbed 25% of that market in just over three years. Microsoft are spending $400 million on the product launch and when you compare that to the $200 million spent on Windows 7 or the $100 million on Windows 95 it's clear that Microsoft want/need smartphone market share. And so we get to the advert, and in this case, an advert that I actually rather like.

However, as much as I enjoyed it, I don't actually get the message. The advert tells us that "Windows Phone 7 is the phone to save us from our phones", but I don't need saving from my phone, and while Windows Phone 7 may be "designed to get you in and out and back to life", I'm not exactly sure what that is supposed to mean, I'm rarely not 'in life'. My suspicion is that Microsoft are now selling us on the idea that the vast range of applications for Apple's iOS devices are distracting and preventing us from getting back to our lives. Which is rather ironic given the years they spent selling us on the idea that the vast range of windows applications was one of the key advantages of the windows eco system.

Having watched this advert I don't see what would make a Windows Phone 7 a compelling purchase. People need a reason to give up their iPhones, Androids and Blackberrys, and apart from being shiny and new, the advert for Microsoft's latest offering doesn't show me why it's different to what we already have. Apple offers a unified hardware software experience, Blackberry has the corporate market sewn up and Android is free (and can be customised by the manufacturers and network operators). At this point I see no reason to buy a Windows Phone, but to be fair, unless Steve Jobs burnt my house down, I'm unlikely to give up my iPhone for anything else on the market.