Microsoft Buying Danger, Teaming With SonyEricsson

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, 2/11/2008 5:58:00 AM

Barcelona – Microsoft came to the Mobile World Congress here with several announcements, including its agreement to acquire Danger, which designs T-Mobile’s Sidekick-branded smart phone and offers mobile services for them.

Sidekicks are designed with QWERTY keyboards for easy messaging and web browsing.

Microsoft also announced that SonyEricsson adopted its Windows Mobile platform for the first time in the touchscreen-equipped Xperia X1, which also sports QWERTY keyboard and WiFi and will be available in North America in the second half. One version of the phone will be available as a quad-band GSM/EDGE phone, and another will be available with W-CDMA HSDPA/HSUPA high-speed data technology.

Also in Spain, Microsoft previewed a Windows Mobile phone version of MSN Direct, which delivers content serves as a gateway for retrieving deeper information through a mobile web browser.