Microsoft wins over LG

Barcelona, Feb 12: Microsoft said on Monday that South Korean mobile phone maker LG Electronics and Japanese mobile carrier Softbank had become customers for its Windows Mobile software.

''LG will be joining us for the first time in the Windows Mobile phone space. A new partner is also Softbank, which will introduce multiple devices for us,'' said Scott Horn, director of marketing for Microsoft's mobile and embedded-devices group.

Softbank will distribute to its subscribers Windows Mobile models manufactured by electronics producers.

Toshiba said in a separate statement it would also start producing Windows Mobile devices for the first time.

Microsoft sold software for 3 million mobile phones in the October to December quarter, compared with 6 million in the entire fiscal year to end-June 2006.

It has around 20 percent of the global smartphone market, which is a high-value segment of the 1 billion units a year total mobile phone market.

Despite its modest global market share, well behind software from Symbian and Nokia, Microsoft's Windows Mobile was selected by Vodafone in November as one of only three mobile operating software systems it would support in the long run. The other two were Symbian/Nokia Series 60 and Linux.

The software giant has said sales of mobile phones running on Windows Mobile would double this fiscal year to mid-2007 and are set to double again in the year beyond.

''We now have almost all Symbian members working on our platform,'' said Horn. Top five mobile phone vendors like Motorola, Samsung and LG produce both Symbian-based phones as well as Windows models.

Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a new version of its Windows operating system for mobile devices, making it look more like Windows Vista and adding features previously only available on personal computers.

A week earlier Microsoft introduced Vista, the new version of its personal computer operating system.

Reuters