Once more, with feeling: Microsoft says isn’t making its own phone

Microsoft officials emphasized again this week that the company is not — contrary to evidence and opinion — making its own Microsoft-branded phone.

Financial analysts attending the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona this week asked Andy Lees, Senior Vice President for Mobile Communications, during a Q&A session on February 16 about Microsoft’s phone plans. (I listened to the Q&A with analysts via a Webcast.)

Lees acknowledged Microsoft has been beefing up its hardware-engineer headcount in its mobile business unit, as of late. (A good part of that new headcount is the result of Microsoft basically disbanded the Zune business, sending the software engineers to Media Center TV land and the hardware-focused folks to the Mobile business unit.)

But Lees insisted that Microsoft is adding to its hardware ranks inside the mobile unit not because it is building a phone itself, but because it is attempting to provide tighter hardware/software/services integration in the phone space.

Lees disagreed with one financial analyst who posited that the only way to create a runaway best-selling phone is for a vendor to provide both the hardware and the software, like Apple is doing with the iPhone. Lees said Microsoft’s intent is to provide users with  a choice of third-party phones at  variety of price points — and to work hand-in-hand with phone makers to ensure the software is tailor-made for their phones..

Read the entire article here:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2053