One of the most appealing parts of the iPhone is its Web browser. Mobile Safari is powered by the WebKit engine, and this same engine also powers the desktop browser. The result is a Web experience that, while not identical to the desktop experience, is not far off. Windows Mobile, on the other hand, has a browser that's roughly derived from Internet Explorer 6. The result? A decidedly second-rate Web experience. Windows Phone 7 Series will improve things somewhat—to approximate parity with Internet Explorer 7—but it remains behind its desktop counterpart.

Microsoft emphasized the desirability of using "the same markup" when demonstrating Internet Explorer 9. But this objective is thoroughly undermined by having a mobile Web browser that's so incapable of using "the same markup."

A similar situation exists with Silverlight. Third-party 7 Series development will use Silverlight and XNA, underpinned by an updated, extended, .NET Compact Framework. The Silverlight version will be a hybrid of sorts; it contains more than Silverlight 3, but less than Silverlight 4.

This is something that Microsoft plans to address. Unlike the current situation, where the mobile platform has to a great extent been divorced from developments on the desktop, with Windows Phone Microsoft wants to aggressively unify the platforms. This obviously won't happen overnight, and features wll be prioritized to reflect the needs of the platform (printing support, for example, is a rather lower priority on the phone than the desktop) but the company understands the desirability of getting the two in sync.

With the lack of native code development, it's unlikely that we'll ever see Opera or Firefox on Windows Phone 7 Series. This makes it even more important for Microsoft to bring its mobile browser up to par. The excellent Opera Mobile provides succour to frustrated Windows Mobile Web users, but that's not going to be an option for 7 Series.

So for now, the Web experience on 7 Series still falls some way short of that on the desktop. "The same markup" might be the goal, but it's certainly a ways off.