Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off, during his keynote at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a couple of features coming to the Windows Phone 7 platform.
First, Ballmer said that 93% of Windows Phone 7 users are “delighted” with the device and that nine out of 10 users will recommend it to their family, friends and coworkers. “Last year has been very fast paced, and if last Friday’s announcement with Nokia is any indication, it’s fair to say that 2011 will at least be as fast paced as last year,” said Ballmer.
Microsoft thinks that one of the reasons for that will be multitasking support, which is coming to Windows Phone 7 devices later this year. Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, who took the stage after Ballmer, showed off how it works in real life. Music keeps playing in a third-party music app even if you move onto other apps, and switching between a game and other apps works almost instantly.
Microsoft also added a couple of nifty features to the concept of mobile multitasking; for example, you can browse through recently used apps and fire them up almost instantly as well.
Another thing that’s coming to Windows Phone 7 is Internet Explorer 9 with hardware graphics acceleration support. We were shown a demo of IE9 trumping the competition (Firefox and Safari), while running a graphics-rich demo that benefits from hardware acceleration.
Microsoft wrapped things up with a pre-recorded demo (which showed live code, we were told) of a Windows Phone 7 and Kinect working in unison. The actual implementation displayed an interactive, two-player game that enabled one player to throw balls, using a phone, onto another player, who needed to avoid them using the Kinect.
Some of the features shown should be available in March, and some are coming later this year.
Toward the end of the keynote, Stephen Elop joined Ballmer on stage, giving a short pep talk on Nokia’s recent partnership with Microsoft. Elop emphasized Nokia’s great relationship with mobile operators. With Nokia’s help, “Windows Phone 7 will be the most operator-friendly ecosystem today,” said Elop.
Update: check out the video showing the Kinect-Windows Phone 7 interaction below.
