Microsoft Flexes Muscle At Mobile World Congress

One of the busiest booths at the ongoing GSMA Mobile World Congress event, organized from 16th to 19th February 2009 at Barcelona, must be that of Microsoft.

The Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft was represented in full strength, led from the front by its Chief Executive Mr. Steve Ballmer. Besides delivering a keynote address, the team unveiled a set of new mobile phones from partners that run on the company’s flagship operating system, Windows.

The next generation of Windows phones is expected to run on the latest version of the operating system, version 6.5. Two new services that Microsoft held up in the public were a technique to sync diverse content between the mobile and the web, called “My Phone”, and a virtual marketplace platform that will host applications accessible from both the internet and the mobile phone, called “Marketplace for Mobile”.

The home screen for Windows Mobile 6.5 will have a dashboard with icons for new emails, texts, missed calls and calendar appointments. The “My Phone” service is expected to make data loss due to malfunctioning / lost mobile phones a thing of the past by backing up / synching all data onto the web.

My Phone service in action

The company has also announced a new voice-search technology called “Recite”, which will bypass the need to navigate menus or type text, and enable users to capture, search and retrieve spoken notes and reminders using just their voice.

Read more about the latest show of brawn and brain by Microsoft, here.