MWC 09: Microsoft launches Windows Marketplace

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Alongside its announcements about the new Windows 6.5 for mobiles operating system, Microsoft has also released information on its upcoming My Phone Web and Windows Marketplace services.

My Phone Web allows users to synchronise the contents of their phone with the service's online storage. The demonstration sister title Know Your Mobile was shown featured a 200MB maximum capacity, but we were assured that this would be expandable. That said, there are no details currently available concerning any premium pricing for this service.

From within Windows 6.5, users can select exactly which sorts of media types they want to synchronise, whether video, SMS messages, music or photos. The phone will then automatically keep the My Phone Web online archive up-to-date in the background, although we expect there will also be an option to synchronise manually too.

Once the files are uploaded, they can be viewed using the My Phone Web online interface, which is not unlike that of Hotmail. Each media type is stored in its own folder for easy navigation.

The Windows Marketplace, on the other hand, promises to be Windows 6.5's answer to the Apple App Store, and will come as a pre-installed feature on handsets using the operating system.

Thanks to backwards compatibility with applications made for previous Windows Mobile versions, there will be over 20,000 available at launch, browseable using both PC and handset. Unfortunately, users of older versions of the OS won't be able to get their applications from the Marketplace.

We weren't able to glean further details about the Marketplace's price points, but since one of Microsoft's presentation documents hinted that one of them would be $1.99, we expect they'll be comparable to those of the App Store.

Click here for more news from Mobile World Congress 2009.

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