Microsoft Responds to Verizon 'Pink' Rumors

28.04.2009
Microsoft may be wielding a new weapon in the war against Apple. The company's rumored to be working on a top-secret smartphone with Verizon. The mission: take out the iPhone. The code-name: "Pink."

Microsoft + Verizon = Pink?

Word of the supposed Microsoft-Verizon marriage comes from and is attributed to those seemingly omnipresent "people familiar with matters." The unnamed insiders suggest "Pink" will be a souped-up Windows Mobile multimedia phone made specifically to compete with Apple's iPhone. A third-party company will handle the actual hardware, the sources say, while Microsoft will focus on creating "new software capabilities" and built-in access to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile (aka Microsoft's answer to the App Store).

So in a market saturated with vaguely cited information, can this latest tidbit really be trusted? Verizon is staying mum -- a representative declined to comment for this story. Microsoft, though, did have something to say. Sort of.

"Microsoft's strategy has not changed," a spokesperson tells me. "It is and has always been to provide a software platform for the industry. We work closely with many mobile operators and device makers around the world because customers want different experiences on a variety [of] phones."

Hmm. So basically, what they're saying is that Microsoft could be working with Verizon on "Pink." Or it could just as easily be working with MIC Tanzania on "Burnt Sienna." Your guess.