Microsoft reiterates what we knew: no first-party handset, no Zunephone

While avoiding the juicier questions surrounding the mystery of Project Pink and its potential ties to Verizon for maximizing Pink's launch, a Microsoft spokesperson has issued new comments that reiterate the stance Redmond has held from time immemorial: there's no Zunephone, and furthermore, there won't be any Microsoft-branded phones.

Of course, the devil could lie in the precise wording, and the exact quote was as follows: "Microsoft is not going into the phone hardware business. Microsoft is not building a Zune-specific phone." Just because there's not a "Zune-specific phone" doesn't mean you can't steal some Zune tech for the phone business, and we have every reason to believe that Microsoft would want to be building Zune-esque features into Windows Mobile -- you can start to see tiny slivers of that in 6.5 with the home screen design, for example -- so we're still pretty confident that Pink (or another project) will ultimately marry portions of the technology and branding. In other words: Zunephone, no; Zune on Windows Mobile, though? Yeah, sure, why not?

http://www.engadget.com/2009/04/29/m...handset-no-zu/