Is Microsoft cool enough to have its own mobile phone?

It’s Mobile World Congress this week and the perfect time for new players to enter the market. But can tech giant Microsoft pull it off?

Do you remember the days when software and technology companies would only really offer one product, but that product would actually be really good? Everyone would have it and it just became the norm. Microsoft loved those days, the days before it had so many competitors, days when it didn’t have to ‘cool’, it was just geeky.

Now, brand is more important than ever, and even more important for companies is that they now need to be seen with their fingers in many pies – that they’re down with the kids.

Microsoft will this week unveil the Microsoft Windows 7 for Mobile operating system, but what’s even more interesting is it will also be unveiling Windows 7 Mobile handsets.

Microsoft has been pretty busy these past couple of years – busy competing that is.

You have to remember that Microsoft could once do no wrong. It’s products weren’t very sexy but they certainly made our lives easier. But the company perhaps become a little complacent, it took its eyes off the ball and started building Xbox.

Then it had to play catch-up, that’s what Zune was all about. Bing is more about looking for other revenue streams while it watches Apple steal away customers (although Microsoft still has a ninety-something share of the OS market, people are switching because Apple is cooler).

So now it is building a mobile phone. This is perhaps Microsoft’s last chance to really hit the market place big time and offer something unique that will finally set it aside from it’s competitors such as Google and Apple.

The phone, which looks similar to a Blackberry, will have to be a ‘must have’ item. But will it be hot and sexy enough to attract consumers to camp out at mobile phone retailers to be first to have one?

Microsoft’s decision to enter the mobile phone market reflects a broader push inside the company to bring a bigger element of ‘cool’ to its brand – which is usually known as ‘functional’ (I am here reminded of those Window 7 ads…there was no one cool in those, just people functioning, often stupidly).

But it’ll have to go some way to convince consumers.

Microsoft’s early lead in smartphone software was built on its strong practical appeal to corporate IT departments, which wanted to move applications they had developed for other Windows operating systems on to mobile handsets.

It’s popular with the geeks – but even they are losing interest. The company’s share of the smartphone business has withered as consumers have turned to cooler handsets and often kept these for work as well.

According to comScore, Microsoft’s share of smartphone software had slipped to 18% in the US in the final quarter of last year, while Apple’s iPhone claimed 25% of the market.

There certainly is a lot of ground to catch up on for Microsoft. The handset won’t just have to ‘wow’ consumers, it’ll have to shock them. And the ad campaign will have to be a hell of a lot better than those Windows 7 ads.