Business | Technology
Microsoft takes cue from success of Apple iPhone
Microsoft Corp plans to bring some of the features of rival Apple Inc's iPhone to a broader market through its Windows Mobile software, the company's mobile-phone chief, Andy Lees, said.
- By Dina Bass and Hugo Miller, Bloomberg
- Published: 23:01 April 3, 2009
San Francisco: Microsoft Corp plans to bring some of the features of rival Apple Inc's iPhone to a broader market through its Windows Mobile software, the company's mobile-phone chief, Andy Lees, said.
Microsoft will use its ties with handset-makers to encourage iPhone-like functions in a range of less costly devices, Lees, a senior vice-president, said in an interview ahead of the CTIA Wireless show.
In one example, the iPhone advanced the technology around so-called graphics acceleration, which allows the software design to be more fluid and movie like, he said.
"Apple took a bet on expensive hardware and designed the software around the hardware," Lees said. That allowed Apple to design a phone with superior graphics capabilities.
Microsoft, he said, wasn't set up to help match that in its software.
Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, said its Windows Mobile phones outsold the iPhone last year. Still, Apple's devices, which cost $199 or $299, are selling at a faster clip, leaving Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft and handset makers trying to capture attention in the consumer phone market with similar offerings.
Microsoft is "now working in a very different way with our hardware manufacturers to make those kinds of innovations more rapidly available as an industry," Lees said.
Lees compared this effort to Microsoft's work with personal computer and hardware makers on early PCs.
When Apple first released a Macintosh computer capable of producing sound, the competing PCs only beeped.
Microsoft joined with makers of sound cards and computers to bring the audio to more widely available and less-expensive PCs, Lees said.
The company could play the same role again, he said.
Still Lees said many parts of the iPhone aren't innovative because other handsets introduced touch features first and Microsoft had previously offered e-mail synchronisation in Windows Mobile.
Apple plans to release a software update to the iPhone operating system this summer that adds the ability to cut and copy between iPhone programmes and the ability to send multimedia messages.
Microsoft announced that fashion designers such as Isaac Mizrahi will create ways for users to customise the software on their mobile phones with colour palettes and wallpaper. News Corp's MySpace social networking site will also create an application for Windows Mobile phones.
The company was expected to announce the relationships at the CTIA show in Las Vegas.
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