Microsoft Gives Phone Vendors Two Finger Salute

Windows mobile partners such as Samsung, LG, HTC and Motorola now have a strong reason to dump the Microsoft Windows Mobile OS Operating system after news leaked that Microsoft are planning their own phone that will compete head on with their long time partners.

Microsoft is expected to announce their direct entry into the Smartphone market at 3GSM in Barcelona in February 2009 according to the UK Inquirer web site.

The new Microsoft branded phone will be built around NVIDIA’s new system-on-a-chip (SoC) for small form factor mobile devices. It will take on the Blackberry, iPhone and a host of other Windows Mobile-based smartphones.

The move could accelerate adoption of the new Google Android mobile operating system say analysts.

Already Taiwanese handset manufacturer HTC who are the biggest manufacturer of Windows Mobile based phones have doubled shipments of their new Google Android phone, which is currently being sold in the USA and is set to be launched in Australia soon.

HTC say that they expect to have shipped 1 million units of the G1 by the end of the year.

Also working on a new Google Android phone is Motorola. Their offering will have an iPhone-like touch screen, a slide-out qwerty keyboard, and a host of social-network-friendly features say Company officials.

Motorola has been showing spec sheets and images of the phone to carriers around the world in the past two months with Optus, Vodafone and Telstra being shown the new design this month.

The phone is expected the second quarter of 2009, according to people familiar with Motorola’s plans.

A key offering in the new Microsoft phone is the use of a new NIVIDIA, Tegra processor in particular the Tegra APX 2500 which will include a 600 MHz MPCore Processor which supports for a 12 megapixel camera, GeForce ULV support for OpenGL ES 2.0, up to 720p H.264 decoding, and NVIDIA nPower technology that could enable over 10 hours of HD video playback and up to 100 hours of audio.
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