Wired.com-Windows and Facebook Join Forces To Create Smartphone

Windows Phone 7: Wired.com

(Story reported by Tim Carmody for Wired Magazine)

When Microsoft and Facebook announced that they were partnering to integrate Facebook and Bing for social network–powered search, it confirmed something I thought Monday: Windows Phone 7 is the real Facebook phone.

I don’t know whether Facebook has a secret team working on a phone where they control the OS. But the company don’t need one. It’s already deeply integrated into Android and iOS. Now with the Microsoft partnership, it’s tied to the most socially optimized smartphone ever brought to the market.

“This is, I think, one of the most exciting partnerships we’ve done on the platform so far,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the Bing announcement Wednesday. “Our view is that over the next five years we expect that almost every industry is going to be disrupted by someone building a great product that’s deep in whatever area that industry is, plus is extremely socially integrated.”

The first Windows Phone 7 handsets are due in stores November. The OS is Microsoft’s complete do-over on mobile, after its predecessor Windows Mobile tanked in popularity and market share in the wake of more consumer-savvy handsets such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-powered smartphones.

(Click here to read the full story on the Wired Magazine website.)