Microsoft Partnering Up With China Mobile

ChinatechNews is reporting that the largest mobile phone operator in China, China Mobile (CHL), has reached an agreement with Microsoft (MSFT) to pre-install Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Internet Explorer 6 browser in the Samsung Omnia handsets sold by China Mobile.

According to Microsoft’s Windows Mobile Director Scott Rockfeld, the reason the software giant selected China Mobile as the first operator to get mobile IE 6 is because of vast growth in the number of new mobile users base and sustainable growth.

Rockfeld told the local media that Microsoft’s target is not to convert existing users of the competing phones like Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone or Google’s (GOOG) Android. The goal he said is to grow faster than the market and have users in emerging markets surf the Internet via Windows Mobile devices. Rockfeld also said that Microsoft has tweaked the phone to allow users access to the carrier’s services such as e-mail from the device’s home screen.

On Nov. 11, Microsoft made available for download its emulator images for IE 6 for Windows Mobile, touting its browser “as a full-featured browser for Windows Mobile devices that brings the same high-quality browsing experience to the user as desktop browsers and capable of rendering richer content”.

M’soft’s IE 6 for the desktop was released in 2001, and the current release is version 8 beta 2.

By October 31, 2008, China Mobile had nearly 444 million users and the number is still growing.

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