As had been widely expected, Microsoft formally announced the latest version of its mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 Series.
“Today, I’m proud to introduce Windows Phone 7 Series, the next generation of Windows Phones,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft. “In a crowded market filled with phones that look the same and do the same things, I challenged the team to deliver a different kind of mobile experience. Windows Phone 7 Series marks a turning point toward phones that truly reflect the speed of people’s lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences.”
As promised, much is new in Windows Phone 7 Series:
- The Start screen features “live tiles” that show real-time content.
- Windows Phone hubs that bring together related content from the Web, applications and services into a single view to simplify common tasks. These include:
- People: This hub brings together relevant content based on the person, including his or her live feeds from social networks and photos. It also provides a central place from which to post updates to Facebook and Windows Live in one step.
- Pictures: This hub makes it easy to share pictures and video to a social network in one step.
- Games: This hub offers Xbox LIVE functionality, including Xbox LIVE games, Spotlight feed and the ability to see a gamer’s avatar, Achievements and gamer profile.
- Music + Video: This hub ties together media content, including Zune integration and a built-in FM radio.
- Marketplace: This hub provides access to the Microsoft Marketplace to purchase applications and games.
- Office: This hub provides access to Office, OneNote and SharePoint Workspace all in one place, giving users the ability to read, edit and share documents. It also includes Outlook Mobile.
- Every Windows Phone 7 phone will have a dedicated hardware button for the Bing search engine.
Device manufacturers and carriers are expected to have the first Windows Phone 7 phones available in time for the 2010 holiday shopping season. The manufacturers include Dell, Garmin-Asus, HTC Corp., HP, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Qualcomm Inc. Carriers include AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Sprint and Verizon Wireless in North America (I see a distinct lack of Canadian participation) as well as Deutsche Telekom AG, Orange, SFR, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, and Vodafone in the rest of the world.