Microsoft and Nokia Launch Sites for Mobile Phones Apps

To face fierce competition, software giant Microsoft and Nokia, the market leader for mobile phones, wants to launch a series of new programs and services for mobile phone and an online store to purchase software, says the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Microsoft offers will include an online store that sells software for mobile phones equipped with Windows Mobile.

Such services have become an important supplement for advanced mobile phones, especially when Apple introduced the iPhone App Store.

Also, in the next few weeks, the company will launch a new version of the operating system Windows Mobile 6.5, which provides a more sophisticated interface and could reduce the payment made by iPhone, have stated the sources cited by the Wall Street Journal.

And Google will build an application store, called Android Market, for mobile phones that use the operating system Android, the first of which is G1 offered by Deutsche Telekom. From this week Google will allow developers to collect money for software sold through the Android Market, said people close the situation.

Another rumor, which came a week before the conference annual Mobile World Congress Show in Barcelona, Nokia says that preparing an application to store its mobile phones and is almost ready to be finalized.

According to analysts, Microsoft's strategy should energize mobile phones as access to advanced Internet functions associated with computers, gain a growing share of the entire segment of mobile telephony.

Also, Microsoft was among the first players in the IT industry have approached the business smart-phones, the company is recognized for his contribution to the technology of soft iPhone and Android.

Even Palm, smart-phone pioneer, after he fell heavily in recent years, attracted attention with a new application software, Pre, to be launched this year.

Microsoft market share of smart-phones grew to 13.3% last year, compared to 11%, as recorded in 2007, while Apple and a slice of the market tripled, moving from 9% to 3%, according research company IDC.

One factor that supports Microsoft is very much business functions, such as access to email systems of companies, although smart-phone can be seen off many users as simple devices work. Executivii company said the plan to put more emphasis on multimedia and other features of interest to consumers, such as photos and music.

A new service that the company has already spoken, called My Phone, coordinate data stored in wireless phones with Windows Mobile, which includes contacts, calendar of meetings, pictures and text messages to the site. The service is designed to make it more easy recovery of information in case phones are lost or stolen. My Phone will compete with similar service from Apple called MobileMe, though it lacks the feature which coordinates MobileMe user data with applications that run on its computers.

However, Microsoft will offer free My Phone, while Apple sells the service to $ 99 per year.

Windows Mobile is already a target for other developers who have generated thousands of applications for the operating system. But these applications were stored in a single market online is easily accessible to iPhone App Store, which had a major impact on consumers.