SEATTLE / PARIS - Microsoft on Tuesday offered a new platform for mobile phones bearing the name "Windows Phone" in partnership with handset manufacturers, hoping to better compete this grinding the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry .
The platform consists of an operating system referred to as Windows Mobile, shop online application called Windows Marketplace and a service called MyPhone, to synchronize, backup and share data from phone to web.
According to the industry's leading software, the new Windows Mobile 6.5 has received the support of manufacturers like Samsung Electronics, Acer, HTC, Sony Ericsson and operators such as AT & T and Vodafone Group, SFR or Orange.
It should equip more than three new handsets in over twenty countries by the end of the year, some equipped with a touchscreen.
The new devices running Windows Mobile will be able to play music, open Word and Excel documents, send and receive email in real time to users of Hotmail.
They also offer the opportunity to buy wireless additional programs, some 246 applications are available.
But some analysts believe that the new software does not go far enough to compete with competing systems.
In exchange, the announcement nevertheless caught the attention of investors with a rise of as Microsoft's 1.5% to 25.01 dollars in late session on Wall Street.
NO MICROSOFT PHONE
In Paris, which held a conference organized by Microsoft, group chief executive, Steve Ballmer, has dampened hopes entry sector, hoping that the Redmond company would launch its own handset.
"We are not here today to announce that we will make phones," said Steve Ballmer.
The phone market is expected to triple or quadruple in the coming years, claimed the head of Microsoft to justify its approach focusing solely on software that will power handsets from different manufacturers.
According to Steve Ballmer, the market share of Windows Mobile already equivalent to that of iPhone OS, present only on the Apple handset.
"Apple and we are elbow to elbow and we are both in pursuit of other actors," Ballmer said, referring to Nokia, the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones and smartphones (multimedia handsets), and Research in Motion, the inventor of the Blackberry, which has popularized the use of e-mail on mobile.
Microsoft has also said he does not plan to offer free license for Windows Mobile phone manufacturers like Google with its operating system for mobile Android.
"Free is not our business model," he said. "We are a commercial enterprise that seeks to generate revenues and profits of our business. You should ask our competitors if they can make money with free things.
