Microsoft launches Windows Phone 8

After their Windows Surface tablet announcement earlier this week we hadn’t expected Redmond to release much more, but low and behold it appears June is time for Microsoft to take a hold of another headline with the announcement of its Windows Phone 8 software.

Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 have been fantastic successes. Sure they may not rival the iPhone in terms of sales, but as far as reputation goes Windows is right back up there.

Nokia’s first run of Lumia smartphones helped push global Windows Phone sales up to 3.3 million units in the first quarter this year still taking only 2.2% of the smartphone market though.

“The future of Windows Phone is about a shared Windows core,”

Said Joe Belfiore.

Windows Phone 8 will launch in Autumn with the same Windows kernel that is currently in use by more than 1.3 billion people globally. The kernal will be used in Tablets (surface), Desktops and the new range of Windows phone, showing a foresight and unity that not even Apple have touched on yet (although as soon as they do, you know they would have invented it right?).

A downside here is that current Windows Phone handsets will not be upgradable to Windows Phone 8.

Windows Phone 8 will support multi-core chipsets and testing has been performed up to 64 cores!

“We’re going to see some freaking killer games this year,”

Said Belfiore while on stage during the Windows Phone Summit keynote.

Games can easily be ported due to the devices sharing the same core.

NFC, Windows Wallet and any Windows Phone 7.5 apps will run on the new devices so worry not.

What do you make of this news? To us it sounds like MS is using some initiative and building a platform across different media, which should make for a very interesting and productive office environment.

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