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Win­dows Phone 7 actu­ally stepped out­side the Microsoft box in many ways. A break­through prod­uct for them. But way too late for the already wowed by iPhone con­sumer market.

The screen con­cept and tile based inter­face along with the idea of scrolling con­tin­u­ously (shown below) are actu­ally pretty impres­sive. The inter­face stands out among mobileOS’s, dis­tinc­tive. But that’s where the out of the Microsoft box think­ing ends.

Why in such a super com­pet­i­tive mobile land­scape would Microsoft name their mobile OS Win­dows Phone 7? Sim­ply because the cul­ture in the orga­ni­za­tion is still stuck in the days where tech­nol­ogy buy­ing pat­terns were deter­mined by IT depart­ments at cor­po­ra­tions and Win­dows brought you job secu­rity. Microsoft doesn’t have brand equity as an inno­v­a­tive company.

Apple changed the pat­terns when employ­ees started say­ing: “I want my iPhone. Sup­port it.”  After that hap­pened there was no look­ing back.

Imag­ine if instead of Win­dows Phone 7 it was called Mete­ora or Voxbar or E-blips? Wouldn’t that com­pete bet­ter with iPhone or Droid?

Some smart nam­ing could have made the Win­dows Phone a contender.