“Microsoft Corp. is in discussions with Verizon Wireless to launch a touch-screen multimedia cellphone on the carrier’s network early next year, in a bid to compete with Apple Inc.’s iPhone, people familiar with the matter say,” Amol Sharma and Nick Wingfield report for The Wall Street Journal.
“Microsoft’s project, which is code-named ‘Pink,’ is aiming to produce a phone that extends the tech giant’s Windows Mobile cellphone operating system, adding new software capabilities. It would also likely include Microsoft’s new Windows Marketplace for Mobile, a mobile application store along the lines of Apple’s, these people say,” Sharma and Wingfield report.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: After much raucous laughter rang through cavernous halls of the palatial MDN headquarters, the point was made that now Microsoft can’t even come up with their own code-names without copying Apple. At least the copied well for once: Microsoft’s “Pink” will achieve about as much success as Apple’s.
Competition is only good when the competition is any good.*
*Otherwise, it’s a pointless, wasteful exercise (see: Zune).
UPDATE: 6:52pm EDT: Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune, “In a note posted after the report, Morgan Keegan’s Tavis McCourt pointed out that Verizon already sells 14 different touch screen phones, six of them running Windows Mobile. ‘There appears to be nothing new here from a product perspective,’ he writes. ‘If we assume Microsoft was the source of the leak, this speaks volumes as to how threatened it is by iPhone.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “iSteve” and “Ronald L.” for the heads up.]
