Microsoft May Unveil Windows Phone Apollo (WP8) On Wednesday

Microsoft may be getting ready to announce the next-generation Windows Phone mobile operating, system, popularly named Windows Phone Apollo, on June 20. That’s Wednesday next week and the information comes via an invitation from the Redmond, Washington-based software giant.

In this invitation – which you can see below – sent to the press, Microsoft is teasing a Windows Phone Summit on June 20, 2012. Apparently, those who will attend will get “A sneak peek of the future of Windows Phone.” The media has been invited to register as Space is limited and admittance will be on a first come, first served basis.

The event will be held in San Francisco, Engadget says, where Microsoft is expected to unveil Windows Phone 8.

Windows Phone 8 or Windows Phone Apollo is expected to be a tighter melding of Windows the PC operating system and Windows Phone. From previous news on the topic, an official job posting from Microsoft has hinted that part of the Kernel of Windows will go into Windows Phone.

It’s rumored to bring seamless data sharing between WP8 devices and PCs with SkyDrive and is expected to have a better-integrated Skype feature. This means Skype will run smoother and will no longer be that much of a battery glutton. Microsoft has bought Skype, for those who don’t know.

Windows Phone 8 will also be backwards compatible with all Windows Phone 7 apps. This means that the current base of Windows Phone apps already on the Microsoft apps marketplace will be carried on to Apollo. It has recently been reported that the WP marketplace already has more than 100,000 apps.

Windows Phone Apollo is also rumored to support multi-core chips, NFC and other ARM chips aside from those produced by Qualcomm. The new mobile operating system is expected to be released this coming October, maybe alongside Windows 8.

Tell us what you think of Windows Phone 8 on the comments below.

Image 2 from John.Karakatsanis on Flickr (CC)

Source: Engadget