Top 10 worst mobile technologies

2. Windows CE
Shaun Nichols: For all the attention being paid to mobile phones, from Android to WebOS to iPhone to Symbian, there would be a much smaller market if Microsoft had done a better job with Windows Mobile and its core component, Windows CE.

Built for embedded systems, Windows CE is the heart of the company's mobile platform and has more than a few limitations, among them stability issues and gripes over capacity and performance.

These days, however, there is plenty of hope. Microsoft may be working on a major, if not complete overhaul of CE, and if the OS can't be brought up to snuff there are more than a few competitors looking to take over.

Iain Thomson: We didn't call it 'Wince' for nothing when Microsoft first got into the mobile market space.

Windows CE was initially Microsoft's answer to Palm, and the performance of the early versions left many wondering what the question was. The software was power-hungry, not terribly effective and was the guts behind a lot of also-rans in the handheld computing and mobile market.

Windows CE also made it so high on the list because it spawned Windows Mobile, which remains a dog of an operating system. Windows Mobile was basically Windows CE with some improvements but it has hardly been inspirational in performance.

Microsoft is a declining force in the mobile operating systems market and looks set to fall further.

1. CDMA
Iain Thomson: Last year we praised GSM for taking a sensible, co-operative approach to mobile operating standards. It seemed fitting that we look at the competition.

Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) stemmed from research carried out by actress turned inventor Hedy Lamarr. It was picked up by the US military and eventually patented by Qualcomm, and remains a proprietary standard. It's only used in the US, japan and South Korea these days and it's a fly in the ointment for many mobile users on the move.

Over a billion people use GSM phones worldwide and the standard has many advantages. Less than a quarter of that number use CDMA, albeit a wealthy and valuable part of the market.

Qualcomm is going to milk CDMA for as long as it can, so US users are still going to have to use two phones if they travel, although the shockingly low numbers of Americans with a passport may explain CDMA's continued popularity.

Shaun Nichols: Betamax versus VHS, HD-DVD versus Blu ray, CDMA versus GSM. Every time you have two competing standards on the market at once you are going to see a sizeable number of users get shafted. In this case, it's customers of CDMA phone carriers.

Granted, the roaming costs associated with using your phone abroad keeps most people from using their phones and risking a monster monthly bill. But carriers are increasingly working on plans which allow users to keep their handsets on and staying in touch while out of the country.

When that becomes commonplace, being stuck on CDMA networks could become especially painful, and the system could see its demise accelerate.

Here's hoping that the companies working on the next-generation wireless broadband standards learn their lesson and can either settle on one system or at least make the formats compatible.