In the latest blog entry on the Windows Mobile Team Blog, Mike Calligaro explains why Microsoft revamped the names of its different versions of Windows Mobile. With Windows Mobile 6, Microsoft decided to get away from the names PocketPC and Smartphone. Microsoft is also moving towards a single unified platform that will be different only in that some devices will have a touch screen and others won’t. The new names had to reflect both of these requirements. Enter the names Classic, Standard and Professional.
As confusing as the “Standard” and “Professional” names are now, they’ll make sense when we get to that world. And it would probably be worse to change from SP/PPC to something that makes sense now, only to change again to Standard and Professional in the future. So the real choice was between suffering through the “Smartphone” confusion for longer or suffering through the “Standard” confusion now, with the understanding that it would eventually make sense to people.
In the end, it’s still going to take time to get used to!