“Is Microsoft about to launch its own smart phone?” Eric Savitz asks for Barron’s.
“In a bold call Monday night, Jefferies analyst Katherine Egbert asserts in a research note that ‘recent industry checks’ indicate Microsoft will do just that within the next two months – fulfilling years of speculation about a secretive effort known as Project Pink to develop a Microsoft branded handset,” Savitz reports. “Egbert thinks the phone will debut either at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona February 15-18, or at the CTIA show in Las Vegas a month later.”
Savitz reports, “Egbert says the company is ‘partnering with a few OEM manufacturers’ to create a Zune-like phone… [and that] the OEM deals will be similar to HTC’s arrangement to build the Nexus One phone for Google.”
Full article here.
Somebody has to use Mobile 6.5…………..
By the way? Which one of you is Pink?
Microsoft: Putting the (red) “ink” back into Pink….
Much like the Zune was quite a decent device (on the specs, as well as with the UI), this new phone will likely be a good phone. Obviously, Microsoft stands little chance, since it’s the ‘whole widget’ concept that puts up barriers to everyone to even begin to compete with Apple.
I’m sure many will be quite interested to see how this phone will look, not to mention what it will do to their “Win Mobile” partners (I guess they kinda forgot about the whole “Play for Sure” scenario back there…).
good luck with that- – we’ve seen what OS-only companies accomplish when they make forays into the phone hardware side. Witnesseth the unravelling of poor Nexus One already.
Model after Google’s HTC Nexus One Phone… so the NEW Zune Phone will actually be a rebadge phone running Win7… How is this groundbreaking?
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”tongue wink” style=”border:0;” />
I hear they’ve really shrunk the vacuum tubes in this one.
Steve Jobs was right. 5 years ahead of the competition.
And they just told Google how bad a move it was to compete with your partners.
@TowerTone – That was funny.
I believe Robbie Bach said last week how bad Google was for alienating the phone manufacturers by releasing their own phone. Also winmo 7 will not be ready until 2011. Makes no sense to release a 6.5 phone. Unless project pink was all about a new phone OS, but I doubt M$ could pull it off.
No BlackBerry, iPhone, Pre, Droid, N1 etc comes in brown!
I’ve seen it, and I have two words: “dumb phone”.
@Ian
Do as I say, not as I do.
Can’t wait for this iPhone ‘killer’. Will it have that backwards upside down crash prone user interface 90% of the world loves so much?
This is like looking at a car accident before it actually happens.
Can’t wait for ZT’s spin on this one 😀
Time to open up another billion dollar spigot.
“As long as it takes!”
F u ms
Have a cigar, Ferguson.
Well Microshaft is so much more likely to stab it’s partners in back by coming out with a phone that uses a WinMo that will never be released to OEMs. Goople just cherry picks and gives itself first dibs on using Android in any phone Goople. Microsoft will do it’s own phone with a different OS and then will keep the Microshaft Phone OS proprietary for the MS Phone while the old aging Windows Mobile will lack foe updates and MS will push out update dates then eventually kill OEM Windows Mobile leaving all the software partners in the cold and feeling a bit cold.
Andriod to save the OEM Phone makers?
Not so fast. Google wants to control selling all Android phones in it’s store now. So, there is no telling how tight Google is going to make Andriod OEM and no telling how far the OEMs are going have to bend over for Google.
In Business the Term “Googling” refers to a metaphor meaning “To Anally Raping of a Company!”
In Business the Term “Zune” refers to a metaphor meaning “To force an unwanted, ill-conceived, poorly designed, useless product or service on to a company at full price before you’ll sell them the product or service that they do need”. Microsoft sells refers to this practice as hitting a “Home Run”. Steve Ballmer
calls it the difference between earning your money and taking a free ride on Microsoft’s dime. Free riders didn’t last long.
Are they talking about this ZunePhone?! Awesome!
(yawn) BORING!
No surprise, MS can’t afford to sit by and watch yet another market take off without them on board. Watch Ballmer try to catch the train using an array of 3rd-party hardware (some good, and some dirt cheap to undercut market prices) and an app store imitating every feature of Apple’s. Classic MS strategy — get someone else to give away the hardware at bargain basement prices, then extract painful costs through software hooks. MS is probably beating up cell providers now to work out the software rental terms.
But while MS obsesses with gorilla tactics, Apple advances the user experience. The iPhone 3.x experience is perhaps twice as advanced as WinMo 6.x. iPhone 4.0 could only expand the lead.
Next One please.
The picture is fake!!! The zune fone will be brown.
Oh sh…
Love the image MDN. LOL