During its developer conference this week in Las Vegas, Microsoft said multiple carriers will launch Windows Phone Series 7 devices during the upcoming holiday selling season. The company also said it will work with the various, unnamed operators to market the handsets to consumers.
According to a Dow Jones Newswires report, Microsoft Director of Mobile Communications Aaron Woodman declined to say how many phones will be launched later this year, but he did say the company will have a "sizable" presence during the holiday season. He added that the company realizes it has a long battle ahead with many strong competitors.
Last month at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft debuted its Windows Phone 7 Series OS, which will replace its existing Windows Mobile OS. "There is no question in our minds that we needed and wanted to do some things that were out of the box and clearly differentiated from our past and--hopefully you will agree--clearly differentiated from other things going on in the market," Ballmer said at a media event confirming Windows Phone 7's arrival.
At its developer event this week, Microsoft showcased its Windows Phone 7 Series developer framework as well as its accompanying Windows Phone Marketplace application storefront, which will allow shoppers to trial apps before purchasing them. According to Microsoft, Windows Phone 7 extends technologies like Silverlight and XNA to mobile application and game creation. Windows Phone 7 also supplies a Microsoft Location Service to provide developers with a single point of reference to acquire location data as well as a Microsoft Notification Service for pushing information to the device, regardless of whether a given application is running.
Other noteworthy items from Microsoft's event, according to the blog Engadget, is that consumer apps will only be available for download via Microsoft's digital storefront (much like apps for Apple's iPhone), and online movie rental firm Netflix showed off a video streaming service for the platform.
For more:
- see these two Engadget articles
- see this Dow Jones Newswires article (sub. req.)
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