At last! Microsoft shows off Windows Phone 7. But no new phones till 'holiday 2010'

Paul Nesbitt

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, used his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona to show off Windows Phone 7, the long-awaited upgrade to Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone OS. The name change is to underline the message that the upgrade is a major one.

Microsoft said it spent 18 months developing Windows Phone 7 , which is a complete from the bottom rewrite of Windows Mobile, which has languished in the face of competitors like the iPhone and Android.

'There's no question that a year and a half ago we had to rethink everything,' admitted Ballmer.

'We think there is a really big opportunity for a fresh start,' added Microsoft VP Todd Peters. 'Consumers have an amazing capacity for retrying things.'

However, there will not be any Windows Phone 7 smartphones available until 'holiday 2010' [Christmas] in the US, and no firm dates for releases elsewhere.

Windows Phone 7 is targeted at touch screen smartphones, and its user interface is based around graphic 'tiles' which offer users flexible and context sensitive ways to view and access their information. Windows Phone 7 also presents integrated views of – and access to – information that is stored on the phone like email, pictures and contract numbers with data from social networking sites, music streaming services and messaging services.

'There is no question in our minds that we needed and wanted to do some things that were out of the box and clearly differentiated from our past and clearly differentiated from other things going on in the market,' said Ballmer.

Microsoft senior VP, Andy Lees ruled out Microsoft following Apple, Google and RIM and selling its own branded phones. Microsoft has been rumoured to be working on a so-called 'Zune phone' modelled on its Zune music player.

'We considered a lot of different things over the past year and a half to two years. We even considered building our own phone,' he said. However Microsoft has decided to carry on licensing its phone software to hardware partners including LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, although it will impose more design consistency to ensure Windows Phone devices function more similarly.

'Windows Phone 7 is a massive bet by Microsoft to try and get themselves back in the game. You're going to see a lot of noise now with it being announced and they're going to throw a lot of money at it to reassert themselves in this sector,' said analyst Ben Wood at CCS Insight.