Windows Phone 7 Gets Launch Date

Does the smart-phone market have room for another major player? Microsoft intends to find out on October 11, when it will debut the Windows Phone 7 operating system and hope to regain a share of the market that it’s quickly losing to Apple and Google. Describing the operating system’s design, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer tells The Wall Street Journal, “The market's still pretty nascent, but at the end of the day, I think the wall-of-icons [on iPhones and Android devices] is getting pretty complicated for people. That doesn't mean people don't want applications, though I'm not sure that's really the way the average person really wants to work. Putting the activities that are most important in people's lives and the people that are most important in people's lives front-and-center through these hubs, I think we're going to capture hopefully the imagination of quite a good number of people."