| Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 series, expected late this year, won't run current apps |
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06/03/2010 14:16 (708 Day 11:36 minutes ago) | |||||
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The FINANCIAL -- Microsoft Corp. announced this week that its new line of smart phones, expected this year, won't run any apps made for older versions of its phone software.
"For us, the cost of going from good to great is a clean break from the past," Charlie Kindel, a Microsoft executive who works on the mobile platform, wrote in a blog post on March 4, Los Angeles Times reports.
According to Mobiledia, the Redmond, Wash.-based company said its new platform will be a "clean break" from previous versions of the software, a necessary step to make it as user-friendly for touch screens -- instead of styluses -- as possible, but now leaves tens of thousands of apps behind that go back more than a decade.
Microsoft announcement is perhaps most disappointing to companies that have created their own software to run on Windows phones issued to their employees, AP informs. The news also leaves software developers with a dilemma: they can write applications for Windows Mobile 6.5, which will soon be a dead end, or they can write for Windows Phone 7, which isn't coming out until later this year.
Los Angeles Times reports that Apple Inc.'s iPhone, iPod Touch and upcoming iPad tablet computer all run applications from the company's online App Store, which is home to nearly 150,000 programs designed by developers around the world. Google Inc.'s phones run apps from the Android Market, which holds nearly 20,000 programs. For its new series of phones Microsoft has emphasized its distinct approach to design, perhaps to set it apart from its popular competitors, according to the same source.
The new operating system has a completely new "dynamic screen" that features six "hubs" -- displays that combine similar services, Mobiledia reports. So for example, users will be able to view a "people" hub for emails, text messages and updates from social networks, or launch a "games" hub to connect to an Xbox Live account and play online.
According to the same source, Microsoft said the first smartphones to run Windows Mobile 7 will be in stores by Christmas. Its partners include carrier AT&T and handset makers HTC, LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
AP reports that Palm Inc. made a similar "clean break" last year, abandoning an operating system that was more than a decade old in favor of a completely new one. However, the new system is able to run applications written for the old one.
The same source wrote that Kindel said Microsoft still will support Windows Mobile 6.5 "for years to come," and expects some new devices with that software will come out.
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