Pocket-PC-World

At a Conference for developers last week, Microsoft began to disclose the details of a major update to Windows Phone 7 codename for Mango, which is expected this year. This week we'll look at some of these details, as well as the news that Skype is coming to Windows phone.

Microsoft's market share declined last fall

The verdict is still out whether Microsoft will be a player in the mobile arena. Motley Fool posted an article saying that the rollout of Windows phone 7 last year was largely a nonevent.

The number of people who use Microsoft based phones (Windows Mobile and Windows Phone) is reduced by last fall as the new Windows phone 7 is now available. Digits: 5.9 million in October, 5.5 million in November and $ 5.3 million in December.

Mango update coming this year — 7 great features

Microsoft still has deep pockets, and nothing to lose. And last week's event for developers showed that Microsoft is intent on providing a great user experience on mobile devices.

While the event was focused on the introduction of new technologies that developers can include in their applications, it also gave consumers a taste of some of the exciting things to come when the software was released this year (or maybe even at the beginning of the next annoper some).

Engadet has published a video explaining the new features who are coming. PocketNow has a post titled seven major new features of Mango for Windows Phone 7 pointing to the videos and conveniently summarizes the main points. (Also, be sure to check out the discussion extended to PocketNow.)

Features include animated Live tiles, custom ring tones, performance improvements, improvements that include background browser streaming and ramped-up performance, market research results improved considerably and more.

Ben. geek and PocketNow have posts that talk about additional functionality, including multitasking software features that will allow augmented reality, XNA/Silverlight integration and more.

Augmented reality is pretty cool: it displays a live image on the screen through the camera, and that the image overlap information relevant to the context.

Internet Explorer 9 coming in Mango

One of the most anticipated features of Mango will Internet Explorer 9, which will be more robust, with new features and much more. A demo IE9 at last week's event shows that access to the Internet via Windows phone with Mango will be much faster than iPhone and Android devices.

Demo of new features

Also last week, Microsoft exec Joe Belfiore demoed some of the new features of Windows Phone that can be expected. Some of the features he shows in the video include multitasking, live agents, a cool demo of Layar app that offers augmented reality, and more.

Speaking of multitasking WMPoweruser , explains how Microsoft is to avoid the performance problems that plagued Windows Mobile forcing the ways in which developers can implement it in Mango. This will increase the stability, speed and battery life.

Missing features in Mango

Despite the excitement over Mango, PocketNow lists some features that are missing, however, recognizing that Microsoft may still announce them.

Skype coming to Windows phone

In addition to the excitement surrounding Mango last week, Engadget posted the welcome news that Microsoft and Skype are working on a version of the software for Windows phone. It's a good sign that Skype has reversed their position after earlier saying it had no plans to bring to this platform.

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