Microsoft sums up the Windows Phone news from MWC

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Over on the official blog for Windows Phone, Terry Myerson (Corporate Vice President of the Windows Phone division) talks about the announcements going on at Mobile World Congress today, and their impact on the ecosystem.

Probably the one with the most immediate impact is the release of a beta of Skype (which we've covered here). It's got some rough edges, and while I think Microsoft might have wanted a bit more time to polish some features before revealing it in public, MWC is too big a platform to have questions about Skype being addressed - besides, they'll get far more press this way.

It's all about the handsets though, with the Nokia Lumia 610 and ZTE Orbit highlighted.

ZTE Orbit

Of course the real news is still being danced around - the optimisation of Windows Phone for lower specced phones. Running on 256MB of RAM, and using the Qualcomm 7x27a system on a chip (which is slightly cheaper than other options. There will be some compromises, as Myerson sets out on the blog:

People who have opted for other low-cost or “free” smartphones have found out the hard way that some of those smartphones won’t run all their apps or do everything they want. On Android, it’s not a given that your lower-cost phone can do what the phone in the commercial can. With Windows Phone, we’ve done the engineering so that nearly all of the current apps will just work on these new phones. Those apps that do need more power are flagged in the Marketplace so if you have one of these new phones with less memory you won’t unknowingly download an app that won’t run well.

Expect a lot of people to start looking or examples of very popular applications that won't run on this build to get some headlines. Anything else? Oh yes, they're bringing #SmokedByWindowsPhone to Barcelona.

How do you think Microsoft's MWC is going so far?

Source / Credit: Windows Phone Blog