Microsoft Details Forthcoming Windows Phone Improvements

Microsoft have outlined the changes that they'll be bringing to their new Windows Phone smartphone platform in 2011.  The announcement was made on the Microsoft website in a press release earlier today and were timed to coincide with the first day of the World Mobile Congress exhibition in Barcelona.

The new features include...

• Twitter Integration in the People Hub.
• Support for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents that are stored on Microsoft;s cloud services.  Currently Windows Phone 7 only suports OneNote in this regard.
• IE9 Mobile with HTML5 support for the phone browser
• Multi-tasking for third-party applications

These features are all slated for later in the year but the first update has now been confirmed for release in early March and will include CDMA support.

What's not been mentioned is better Exchange integration and support.  Ironically for a Microsoft product this is somewhat lacking in the operating system so far and is the reason why Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets are still selling.  Microsoft have said nothing about this but they badly need to provide a better experience for corporate and business users if they are to gain market share.

Also in the press release Microsoft said they had sold 2 million phone OS licences in the first two months, though how many of those licences are currently in use by the public remains to be seen.  They also said that Windows Phone is being used by 60 mobile operators in 30 countries, which, let's be honest is worth shouting about.

They also said that their app marketplace now has 8,000 apps and 28,000 registered developers.

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