Mobile World Congress: Microsoft, Nokia Want to Trump Apple

And Microsoft’s announcements seem geared to grab a piece of the zeitgeist as well. The company announced that the Windows Marketplace for Mobile will allow developers to serve Windows phones based on Windows Mobile 6.5, which are expected to appear in the market in the second half of the year. The operating system is expected to be more user-friendly and Web-oriented, allowing for a greater range of content to be pushed to handsets based on it. It might also help stave off the onslaught it’s feeling from the rising popularity of netbooks.

Before, Microsoft’s strategy has been to build in its own software functionality as part and parcel of the device sale. The new Marketplace approach will allow users to customize their Windows Mobile experience with third-party applications in a loosening of the almost monopolistic control Microsoft has tried to maintain over its device ecosystem. Beyond this, few details are as yet on offer as to how the Marketplace will work, but the company admitted the market concept is taking its business in a profoundly new direction.

Microsoft also showcased a new cloud service for mobile-to-Web data back-up and synching, called My Phone, an Apple MobileMe competitor which was launched in beta this month and is one of three cloud services expected to be announced by Microsoft at MWC.

“Windows phones bring together the best of the Web, the PC and the phone so you can connect instantly to the experiences you care about, no matter where you are," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during his keynote at MWC. “We're working with partners across the industry to deliver a new generation of Windows phones that break down the barriers between people, information and applications, and provide great end-to-end experiences that span your entire life, at work and at home."

Others are getting into the mobile applications market game as well, though few details were available. China Mobile said it planned to launch its own mobile market applications store in two phases within the year. Korean phone maker LG Electronics and France Telecom's Orange said they also planned similar stores. An offering from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. is also expected soon.

We should remember that this all somewhat of an experiment; ironically, Nokia recently was responsible for demonstrating some of the dangers of shifting to an Internet services model. The Finnish manufacturer suffered an outage of its Contacts for Ovi service last week, losing all customer updates for three weeks.

“Words can’t explain how incredibly sorry we are for the inconvenience,” wrote Kristian Luoma, contact manager for Contacts on Ovi, on the company’s blog. “We’re sorry for the lost contacts in your phonebooks. We’re sorry that the profile pictures you love, and we love too are gone. Nothing can make this right, we know, but we’re hoping that you can forgive us and give another chance to give you good service.”