If CTIA is anything like Mobile World Congress, application stores will be all the rage yet again. Microsoft today unveiled more details around Windows Marketplace for Mobile, its application store response to Apple and Android, as well as its Windows Mobile 6.5 platform. The company is focusing on personalizing the mobile handset as a fashion accessory, playing up its social networking features and gaining the support of the developer community.
In his keynote Thursday morning, entertainment and devices president Robbie Bach will introduce an alliance with the Design Museum London and Council of Fashion Designers of America through which designers, the first being Isaac Mizrahi, will offer exclusive color palettes and wallpapers to let consumers turn their handset into a fashion accessory. Also furthering the personalization theme, through a Theme Generator, Windows phone operators can select pictures from their PC to set as background images, as well as colors to personalize their navigation bar, scroll bar and highlighted text. The resulting ‘personal theme’ can then be sent to their handset.
To capitalize on the popular mobile social networking trend, Microsoft has also partnered with Facebook, MySpace and Windows Live, the company’s mobile suite of Internet services, including Hotmail, Messenger, Live Contacts, photo uploads and Spaces and live search. Microsoft has created its own Facebook app to make it easy for consumers to capture video on their handset and upload it to Facebook.
Read more about Microsoft and CTIA app store expectations here.
