Microsoft has unveiled an upgrade to its mobile operating system as the US software giant seeks to regain lost ground in the competitive handset market.
Chief executive Steve Ballmer presented the Windows Phone 7 Series at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, ending months of speculation about what Microsoft had in store for the industry's biggest trade show.
Mr Ballmer said devices fitted with the new software would be available in time for the winter holiday shopping season. Microsoft has been up against strong competition from internet giant Google's Android.
Google has made a splash in the mobile phone industry with its Android operating system, launched in 2007, and phone makers have announced that they would release several more smartphones with this platform this year.
Smartphones fitted with Microsoft's operating system had 7.9% market share in the third quarter of last year, a drop from 11.1% in the same period in 2008, according to research group Gartner. In the meantime its rivals grew: BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion saw its market share increase to 20.8% and Apple's iPhone rose to 17.1%. Android phones took 3.5% of the market in just a few months of existence.
Microsoft-powered phones will be rolled out later this year in partnership with several device makers including Qualcomm, Samsung and LG, as well as operators from AT&T to T-Mobile and Vodafone, Microsoft said. Nicolas Petit, director of Microsoft's mobile division in France, said the software titan had no intention of following its rivals and creating its own phone.
Mobile operating systems are the lifeblood of the increasingly popular smartphones, which allows users to surf the Internet, check and send e-mails, play music and videos, and take pictures.
Intel and Nokia plan merged system
Earlier in Barcelona, US chip maker Intel and Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia announced a joint software platform to power a wide range of devices from smartphones to pocket computers.
The two groups will merge their systems, Nokia's Maemo and Intel's Moblin, to form MeeGo, an open software platform that will be available to all manufacturers and developers.
The Linux-based platform is scheduled to be launched in the second quarter of this year and the first devices later this year. The market for mobile operating systems was shaken by the emergence of Internet giant Google's Android platform, which is open and thus can be used for free by all manufacturers.
Nokia already owns an operating system, Symbian, which leads the market but has lost ground to Android and Apple's iPhone. The Finnish company said earlier this month it would make Symbian an open platform.
