Many were disappointed that Microsoft Corp’s revelation of Windows Phone 7 passed by without any information being revealed about “Project Pink”. While the wait has been long, Microsoft will now finally announce details on the project next week, on April 12th, at an event in San Francisco. The Project Pink phones, codenamed Pure and Turtle, will reportedly go on sale in the month following the launch, with an unconfirmed launch date of late April.
What is known as of now is that the Project Pink phones will be launched with Verizon Wireless, and will be targeted at the emerging market of young smartphone users, in direct competition with the iPhone, as well as at regular users of social networks. The phones, apart from offering native Facebook and Twitter applications among other things, will also offer the Zune music service, and feature an interface similar to Windows Phone 7. The name of phones will also not be Pure or Turtle, and will only be announced when they are officially launched.
If photos leaked last month have anything to do with it, the new devices will be similar in design to the Microsoft Sidekick phone, and will be made by the same manufacturer, Sharp Corp.
The devices are a part of, but will not be the main thrust of Microsoft’s attempt to reconcile its losses in the smartphone market, which dropped 4% to 15.1% between November 2009 and February 2010, according to comScore. Rather, Microsoft hopes to enlarge its market share with the new Windows Phone 7 devices due late this year.
Microsoft’s April 12th event is suspiciously close to the April 8th “sneak peek” event of the new iPhone OS, and those intending to buy either device should wait for the latest information to come in. The images above show the Turtle vertical slider device in two avatars, and it is not known what the final form will be.
Image courtesy: Gizmodo.com