At 1am AEDT (Australian Eastern Daylight Savings Time) Microsoft will take the stage at Mobile World Congress for their keynote. Amidst a number of other companies keynoting Microsoft’s is highly anticipated, set to announce Windows Mobile 7.
After being heavily criticised for an incomplete, unpolished 6.5 release, the Windows Mobile team need to have an impressive release for Windows Mobile to be seen as a serious competitor in today’s smart phone market. Also the conditions and pricing of the developer deal needs to change to incentivise developers back to the Windows Mobile platform.
It’s expected Microsoft will integrate Zune in Windows Phones to compete with the iTunes on the iPhone. There’s also rumours online that we’ll see the introduction of My Phone 2. There’s been a lot of stories around today that WinMo7 won’t support Flash out of the box, but may ad it in the months to come. This seems to come from a single source, so we’ll have to wait till tomorrow’s keynote for official confirmation. I hope they at least have some kind of flash support, even if it’s Flash Lite.
I’m also seriously hoping for some new, innovative user experiences from Microsoft. Copying the competition isn’t enough to gain the attention of the smart phone market, they need to leapfrog the competition. The HTC HD2 is currently the best Windows Mobile device.. will we see a new introduction tomorrow that’ll take that crown ?
Microsoft do a great job (Apple, take note) of streaming their events live online, so head over to http://microsoft.com if your stupid like me and are getting up at 1am to watch live. Microsoft’s mobile site will also have all the details post-event – http://microsoft.com/windowsmobile
The event will also be live blogged by one of Australia’s best Microsoft bloggers – Long Zheng from iStartedSomething.com in collaboration with Tom Warren from Neowin.net.
