Augmented Reality Coming To Windows Phone 7Augmented Reality Coming To Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 7 users could get access to augmented reality programs and other sophisticated new applications thanks to enhanced developer tools that are coming to the platform in May, Microsoft officials said Wednesday.

"The next release of Windows Phone represents the evolution of our strategy for ensuring that developers are at the forefront of 'what's next' by investing in even richer customer experiences, a powerful application platform, and a thriving ecosystem," said Joe Belfiore, VP for Microsoft's Windows Phone group, at the company's MIX 11 developer conference in Las Vegas.

Belfiore said the new tools will allow developers to build apps that take better advantage of Windows Phone 7 hardware features such as cameras, motion sensors, and GPS systems. That should pave the way for so-called augmented reality applications that feed location data and background information to users on objects they point their phones at.

The U.S. Open, for instance, last year provided attendees with an iPhone app built by IBM that identified which players were playing on a particular tennis court and displayed live scores. Numerous augmented reality apps are also available for Google's Android mobile OS. Microsoft officials are clearly hoping that support for such capabilities will help their platform steal market share from its rivals. Many of the more than 13,000 apps currently available for Windows Phone 7 lack such advanced functions.

"We will soon deliver a new set of Windows Phone developer tools that will enable developers to create a new generation of apps that are even faster, more capable and better integrated with Windows Phone," said Belfiore.

Belfiore said other new tools will help developers create apps that support multitasking, better audio and video file transfer, and faster application switching. Such applications will be designed to work on the Windows Phone 7 "Mango" Update that Microsoft plans to release later this year.

Companies planning to publish enhanced apps for the new platform including Skype, Spotify, Qantas, Amazon, and Kik Messenger, which offers free texting over the Web. Kik is already testing the new developer tools for Windows Phone. "In only two weeks, we had an amazing new app that looks and feels like an extension of the phone itself," said KiK CEO Ted Livingston, at MIX.

Microsoft's MIX 11 conference wraps up Thursday.