Microsoft Mobile Communications Business is now the Windows Phone Division
Microsoft's Mobile Communications Business (MCB) is no more. The group itself still exists, but is known officially, as of this week, as the "Windows Phone Division."
I noticed the change on the bio page for the division President Andy Lees. (Until yesterday, Lees was listed as President of MCB. He's now President of the Windows Phone Division.)
A Microsoft spokesperson said that only the name of the unit has changed and that there's no change in the unit's responsibilities or charter.
As Microsoft continues to phase out its Windows Mobile 6.x product line and is using "Windows Phone" to refer to its current line of smart phones, the new name makes sense.
In other Windows Phone-related news, Microsoft is gearing up to provide some of its "serious" Windows Phone developers with phones running the "Mango" release of the Windows Phone operating system, as of next week. That means, one would assume, that the Mango update -- the one with an HTML5 browser, Twitter integration, new Bing search functionality, better SkyDrive integration and more -- is done or close to done.
Microsoft has said that new phones will get the Mango update later this fall. There's no telling how long it may take carriers and handset makers to finish testing Mango so that Microsoft can push it out to existing Windows Phone users.
Speaking of delays in getting Windows Phone updates into users' hands and phones, Microsoft provided its usual, weekly update regarding its Windows Phone "NoDo" update rollout this week. HTC Surround phones on AT&T are now in the "scheduling" phase -- meaning it could begin to start pushing out the update for those users any time in the next 10 days. (And then the actual delivery can take weeks once it begins.)
Things aren't as rosy for some Samsung WP7 users. From a new blog post on the Windows Phone Blog:
"We’ve worked through the last of the technical hurdles with AT&T and Samsung, and are now actively scheduling the final set of tests and the subsequent roll out of updates to Focus handsets with the alternate memory. I don’t have hard dates yet.
"Finally, we’re still working with Orange to resume update deliveries to Omnia 7 phones. I know some of you are frustrated—and I’m sorry about the delay. The team truly thought they were close last week—and are working to close on a schedule."
Update: One more Windows Phone tidbit (that also points to Mango being nearly done). Microsoft is launching an IE Mobile test drive site, similar to its IE Test Drive site for checking IE performance on Windows Phones.