Windows Phone Roadmap, Hiring, Offer Hints

A leaked roadmap and a job posting show Microsoft isn't about to abandon Windows Phone any time soon.

Microsoft's history has shown the company is nothing if not tenacious, and that habit is on display in the Windows Phone family. Despite single-digit market share, Microsoft is pushing ahead with at least two more versions of the software some time in the next year and expanded features.

A leaked roadmap obtained by the blog WMPoweruser indicates there will be two new versions of the smartphone software in the next year; Tango in Q2 and Apollo in Q4. This pretty much jives with rumors that have floated around for months. It's no secret that Tango is set for the first half of 2012 and this is not the first time the codename "Apollo" has come up.

One rumor from Engadget said it would be split into two versions, for high-end and low-end phones. Another site claims Tango will be introduced at CES next month, possibly in conjunction with new Nokia phones. Tango is believed to be a minor upgrade to Mango. It's Apollo that will be the bigger change.

The slide obtained by WMPoweruser says "superphone" and "business" under Apollo, which doesn't tell us much, but we can do a little educated guessing. Nvidia has introduced its new quad-core Tegra 3, and Qualcomm has quad-core Snapdragon chips in the pipeline for next year. So that could be the "superphone."

Windows Phone already has some nice features that aren't getting a lot of notice, such as connectivity to SharePoint and Dynamics CRM. So there could be an increased connectivity to Microsoft apps and services (Azure, anyone?) in future phones.

Another hint as to Microsoft's plans is a recent job posting for system engineers to help create the new backup system. The listing, also spotted by the folks at WMPoweruser, was for someone to join the backup engineering team for Windows Phone.

Come join the Windows Phone Backup, Migrate, and Restore team. Our goal is to ensure that no matter if someone loses their phone, drops their phone in a lake, buys a new windows phone, or just has their toddler wipe their phone by entering the wrong PIN over and over, a user can quickly and seamlessly get their phone back to a good state. The features we are producing will be new for the next version of Windows Phone and will help ensure Microsoft stays ahead of the competition when it comes to disaster recovery.

Windows Phone has a backup feature, but it's pretty pitiful, especially compared to the Backup in the BlackBerry. If Tango is on track, then this person (the job is listed as filled on the Microsoft careers site) will likely be working on Apollo.

So, they are pushing forward with Windows Phone. Hopefully it will start to gain traction with users.

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