Steve Ballmer just concluded his presentation at Mobile World Congress and the future certainly looks bright for Windows Phone 7 users. Ballmer pointed out that the Marketplace now has over 8,000 applications and the software development kit has been downloaded over 1 million times. Developers are developing for Windows Phone. This all in roughly four months of being on the market. Ballmer did not mention the number of devices sold to date. On the software update front, Ballmer indicated that NoDo would be available in early March. The update brings some much needed improvements including copy and paste.
One of the major announcements was the introduction of multi-tasking on Windows Phone 7, but no date was provided (We’re guessing late 2011). Microsoft’s take on multi-tasking is similar to other platforms in that it uses a card metaphor. When you switch from an app, that app is “suspended”.
For those of you who enjoy Twitter, we’ll see a Twitter hub in Windows Phone, providing full integration similar to what we enjoy today with Facebook.
Finally, one of the major announcements confirmed earlier reports of Internet Explorer 9 coming to Windows Phone. This will be coupled with hardware and software acceleration throughout the OS.
Concluding the presentation was Stephen Elop, to discuss Nokia’s plans to manufacture phones powered by Windows Phone.
All in all, there is plenty of good news on the horizon. NoDo will bring support for CDMA phones, though we haven’t received any word on Windows Phone 7 phones from either Sprint or Verizon.
We certainly need more competition ih the mobile world, and Nokia & MS should be a decent foe.
Hopefully WebOS gets a huge push from HP.
Options are always great!