In a month’s time, a gaggle of journalists and bloggers from around the world will descend on Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. I won’t be attending. The biggest news will likely come from Microsoft’s camp and I have a meeting scheduled with them prior to MWC. Said news will revolve around Project Pink and Windows Mobile 7.
I’ve known for some time that Windows Mobile 7 would look and feel like the Zune HD UX, but little else. MobileCrunch appears to have been tipped off with some viable WinMo 7 news. According to MC, the worst part is that WM7 is not backwards compatible meaning anything coded to 6.x (or any iteration of Windows Mobile) will not be supported because 7 is built on Silverlight and .Net.
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MC’s tipster says the OS works best on OLED devices and that it will be set for one specific screen size. Manufacturers will comply with specifics laid out by Microsoft or run the risk of never being able to produce a WinMo device. Other hardware specifics include a “regimented screen and RAM size as well as a minimum processor speed.” Fair enough.
What’s most surprising to me is the nullification of background apps or multi-tasking. “There is no system resource access and no threaded processes. In fact, there is no customization at all.” Why MS is taking a page out of Apple’s playbook is rather shocking.
Things get a little murky the further down you go, though. MC mentions that WM7 won’t be a “business device.” Aren’t we talking about the OS? Maybe it’s the Zune Phone that a Jefferies analyst mentioned earlier today.
“Our recent industry checks indicate Microsoft will be debuting its own phone sometime in the next two months,” Egbert writes. “We expect the new phone to debut soon, at either the Feb 15-18 Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona Spain, or possibly at CTIA in Las Vegas one month later.”
Anyway, Microsoft will purportedly have its own App Store and Xbox Live functionality will be woven into the OS with games and messaging.
Let’s hope most of this is true because Windows Mobile’s market share is tanking and – let’s face it – they need something big.
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