The chief financial officer of Microsoft’s mobile-communication business, said that Microsoft will no longer develop a new smartphone device, instead it will focus on software business.

Tivanka Ellawala said to investors at a conference in San Francisco: “We are in the software business and that is where our business will be focused.”

The statement came as a response to speculations that Microsoft was working on a new phone, at its Redmond headquarters.

As the company did not have the expected success in mobile business, it decided to stick to software for a while, and its soon-to-come Windows Phone 7 should allow it to stay competitive on the market.

The new phone software should be on phones before the beginning of the holiday shopping season, and Ellawala said that phones running on Windows Phone 7 will drive demand for data services, so telecommunications operators should be happy too.

Ellawala admitted that the tight integration of software and devices was rather important, because Microsoft included specifications for the phone chassis, when designing the Windows Phone 7 software.

“So there is more predictability in what it takes to make the hardware work with the software,” Ellawala explained, quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

No names of the manufacturers that will be developing phones with new operation system were given, but Ellawala said that there are “some major signed up to do the devices.”

The Windows Phone 7 applications will be very entertaining, will have social and gaming features and most of them will be created by outside developers, according to Ellawala.

“We will make it fun and user friendly,” he said.

“We will also be pretty strong on the gaming side, as this is an important part of Microsoft’s business.”

Yesterday, Microsoft launched a software development kit for companies that wish to build mobile advertising apps for the upcoming software.

Source: No More Smartphones for Microsoft - Softpedia

Posted By: Crispy
17 Sep 2010