MWC 2008: Microsoft aims for mobile middle ground

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Microsoft is targeting its mobile devices between the business-oriented Blackberry and the consumer-focused iPhone, representatives of the firm said at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week.

While business smartphones are clearly capable of handling consumer features, and vice versa, Microsoft believes there's a market for handhelds which are designed to bridge that gap.

The move is reflected in Microsoft's tie-up with Danger, which produced the software behind the more consumer-focused, yet application-heavy, Sidekick.

Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft, said that acquisition "completes the picture for us in terms of making the transition from being on the business side of things to being on the consumer side of things."

Bach said Microsoft intends to extend the Windows Mobile platform, "so one device can carry you from start to finish." The idea is that such smartphones - including the new Microsoft-based Sony Ericsson Xperia - would have business applications as well as consumer-friendly features.

John Starkweather, product manager in the Mobile & Embedded Devices, said such mid-ground phones have "a nice mixture of business applications but are sexy enough to take out on the weekend".

It's potentially a lucrative market, and one Microsoft has already claimed some success in. The senior vice president of Microsoft's mobile and embedded division, Pieter Knook, said that by the end of last year, 14.3 million handhelds featuring the Windows Mobile platform were sold - well ahead of RIM's BlackBerry and Apple's iPhone, he claimed.

But Bach stressed: "We're not moving away from business."

Indeed, he said: "Now, people don't think of them as business devices... these are devices which span your life."

Such news may distress IT managers trying to lock down such portable devices for security and management reasons. But Bach said that people are going to use such handhelds in their personal lives - to take pictures of their kids, for example - regardless of an IT department's security concerns. "None of that should detract from the fact that all these people [using] managed devices... are going to have kids's pictures and take personal calls - they're going to do both," Bach said.

For more of Starkweather's thoughts on what benefits such phones offer, watch the below video.

For more congress coverage, visit here.

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