Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 have long been the also-rans of the mobile world. As Android, Symbian & iOS based phones and tablets have raced ahead, Microsoft seems to have dropped the ball on this one, as their meager market share has continued to slide, dropping to a rock-bottom 1.6 percent in August 2011- even lower than Bada, Samsung’s proprietary operating system. (Ever seen a device running Bada? Yeah, neither have we.)

But is Microsoft done just yet?

The company, famous for it’s ability to fly into “overdrive” and reinvent itself, has repeatedly iterated their determination to develop cloud applications for both enterprise and personal use (see Michael Wang’s comments at iTV-Asia and China Net Cloud’s “Cloud Computing” seminar, hosted here: http://www.itv-asia.com/conference/conference-interviews/cloud-computing-i). Given the company’s continued dominance of the desktop computing and business software markets, it seems that there are tremendous synergies that the company should be able to exploit to grab market share in the mobile and tablet markets, despite Google and Apple’s early leads. Just as Windows NT and Windows 95/98/2000 created a natural ecosystem in the late 90’s, the integration of desktop and mobile, through cloud services, should do the same for Microsoft today. What does Windows 8 promise in this area?

All your data in one place

One of the biggest complaints about previous iterations of Microsoft’s mobile operating system was it’s lack of synchronization features with the company’s other applications- especially Outlook, which seems like one of the most important features that a Microsoft-based mobile OS should offer. Windows 8’s Windows Live feature, however, promises to change this. With Outlook now being “folded into” Windows and integrated with the basic features of both OS, accessing and updating your e-mail from anywhere is no longer a problem. With Exchange ActiveSync now built in, slide between your work and home desktop systems and your mobile Windows system with newfound ease.

E-mail syncing is only part of what’s on offer. Anticipating the release of Windows 8, the company has overhauled it’s SkyDrive file sharing system and added numerous new features utilizing HTML5, including hardware acceleration, support for HTML5 videos, and increased file limits intended to make the service more competitive with Apple and Google’s cloud offerings.

Office 365 Cloud Suite

In June this year, Microsoft launched Office 365, their initial cloud-based alternative to the company’s traditional Office suite. Designed to compete with the GoogleDocs system, but integrate Microsoft’s advantages (being the recognized industry standard), Office 365 offers a convenient way to gather all of one’s applications and files in the same place, and provide access for tablet, mobile and desktop systems. In addition to browser-based versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the suite also includes Exchange Online, which integrates the e-mail and file sharing systems mentioned above; SharePoint Online, which enables document sharing and group modification; Lync Online, which provides a next generation webconferencing and messaging solution; and Office Professional Plus- a downloadable client that integrates all of the above features into one local package.

Is it enough?

While Microsoft’s cloud offerings look formidable, and with Windows 8 potentially being the first operating system designed to operate on mobile devices and desktop systems utilizing the same underlying software, it seems that the system may put Microsoft back in the mobile game, especially as competitors like BlackBerry and Symbian look to be on the wane. But with an official release not expected until near the end of 2012 (an infinity in mobile market time), Microsoft might end up missing the mobile boat again. Despite that, it seems likely that Microsoft’s cloud solutions will become an enterprise standard and capture the business of many corporate clients. Likewise, with a mobile standard already integrated into the OS platform, server and IT outsourcing under Windows 8 should be easier than ever.