Windows 7

Last week, Microsoft produced a set of charts detailing the Windows Phone 7 upgrade roadmap in both the United States and around the world.

If some early adopters didn’t take those charts well, it could perhaps be excused: according to the one for the United States, three Windows Phone 7 devices are currently in the “Testing” phase for both the March “NoDo” and February updates.

Another two phones are in the “Scheduling” phase, with no firm date of arrival. While the February update was feature-free, and designed to pave the way for future updates, the “NoDo” update is supposed to add cut-and-paste functionality in addition to a range of other tweaks and improvements.

In theory, scheduling should take 10 days or less, to be followed by a “Delivery” stage that could take several weeks before arriving on an actual smartphone. The situation’s a little better on the global chart, where at least some devices have begun “delivering” the update.

That was all before Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s corporate vice president and director of Windows Phone program management, appeared on the company’s Channel 9 Website to talk about the upcoming MIX11 conference. During the conversation, he suggested the whole Windows Phone 7 process was well under way, which didn’t seem to win him many friends among the site’s commenters.

That anger compelled Belfiore to modify his commentary.

“People were officially getting it, the success rate of its deployment on real-world phones was looking good, and we were happy that the process had started well,” he wrote in a March 27 posting on the Channel 9 comments section. “Still–these are not the same as all of you getting it and I’m sorry that I came across as insensitive to that fact.”

It perhaps bears repeating that, according to Microsoft’s own chart, nobody in the United States is currently receiving “NoDo,” and likely won’t for at least the next couple of weeks. Or longer.

Belfiore’s comment then added something I’ve been rolling around in my head for the past day or so: “We know the table would benefit greatly from more detail, and we are hoping to add more to it by working with the operators who own the ‘testing’ phase to get more clarity,” he wrote. “If your phone is shown in ‘scheduling,’ it’ll be worth checking the table next week.”

During this January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, I talked with some Microsoft reps about Windows Phone 7. During that conversation, they suggested that, while the carriers could technically deny an update from arriving on Windows Phone 7 devices, Microsoft didn’t foresee that becoming an issue. I walked away with the impression that Microsoft had ceded a certain level of control over its software platform and updates to the carriers… and that the company was keeping its fingers crossed that the collaboration wouldn’t spiral out of control.

Welcome to the spiral.

From the very beginning, Microsoft executives have suggested that Windows Phone 7 will avoid the fragmentation that plagued Windows Mobile. Unified software upgrades across all devices and carriers, they added, was something that would prevent their new software platform from falling into the same trap as Android, which is present in multiple different versions on a broad constellation of smartphones.

But what these charts suggest to me (reinforced by Belfiore’s comment that “operators own the ‘testing’ phase”) is that Windows Phone 7 is at risk of splintering like a cheap piece of wood. Unlike Apple, which took charge of pushing out software updates from Day One, Microsoft decided to cede a significant part of the upgrade process to carriers who, quite frankly, have a conflict of interest. If AT&T is already selling the iPhone and a broad array of Google Android devices, are they going to trip over themselves rushing to update Windows Phone 7? The answer’s no.

And yet, instead of taking control of the situation, even Microsoft doesn’t seem to know when NoDo is arriving on this HTC HD7 on my desk. The HTC Arrive (the first Windows Phone 7 device on a CDMA network) sidesteps these issues by arriving with the software updates pre-installed, but early adopters who purchased the GSM-based smartphones are very unhappy.

I have to say, for the first time, I’m starting to think Windows Phone 7 is in trouble.