It’s official, at last! Microsoft Windows Phone Mango was unveiled in Tokyo on Wednesday. The Mango version of Windows Phone 7 operating system has completed the development stage and has reached the release to the manufacturing phase.
Mango is the latest version of the Windows Phone operating system, due to be featured in a series of handsets Microsoft intends to release over the next few months, starting with the first recently announced one.
The public release will probably be scheduled for August or September and that’s when Microsoft hopes to make his come-back on the smartphone market as a serious competitor. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the company puts its hopes into a new device to propel Microsoft higher on the smartphone market, as it wished more or less the same in the case of Windows Phone 7. A wish that didn’t come true.
Windows Phone 7 Mango is a Significant improvement
Windows Phone 7 received positive reviews and feature thousands of applications but somehow it wasn’t enough for the new platform to reach the level of Android-based devices or that of Apple’s iPhones. And instead of boosting its market share through the new operating system, Microsoft faced a loss in share, from 7.1 percent in Q1 of 2010, with 3.9 million shipped units, to 2.7 percent the same quarter of 2011, with only 2.8 million phones.
Announcing the disappointing figures, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said earlier this month “We’ve gone from very small to….very small”.
Mango apparently is a substantial upgrade over the Windows Phone 7, offering plenty of features for both users and developers. It is said to have over 500 new features and tweaks. Twitter and LinkedIn integration, Facebook chat, Internet Explorer 9 for improved Web browsing, Bing integration, and a “conversation view” to make e-mail discussions more efficient.
The first smartphone based on the new Mango edition is built by Fujitsu Mobile Communications and will only be available in Japan. Apart from Fujitsu, Microsoft has been working with other Asian developers on Mango handsets, such as Acer and ZTE. However, the most interesting Mango-based smartphone will probably be the one from Finnish company Nokia. Both companies are going through a financially difficult period, with drops in sales and profit, but earlier this year they have announced a future collaboration on handsets and technologies.
The Fujitsu Mango Phone will have a 3.7-inch screen and a 13.2-megapixel camera, an 11 days battery life on standby, 32GB of Internal Memory and is waterproof with an IPX5 rating.
