Mango Ripens, Gets Sent to Manufacturers

Microsoft on Tuesday announced it had shipped Mango, the codename for the next version of Windows Phone 7, to manufacturers to begin optimizing it for their specific phone and network. Translation: it’s done. Cooked. Finished.

Until the next rev, of course.

Windows Phone Spokesman Terry Myerson announced the news on Microsoft’s official Windows Phone 7 blog on Tuesday that the Windows Phone development team had officially signed off on the release to manufacturing (RTM) build of Mango.

“Here on the Windows Phone team, we now turn to preparing for the update process. The Mango update for current Windows Phone handsets will be ready this fall, and of course will come pre-installed on new Windows Phones,” he wrote.

Mango has had a fairly rapid gestation process. Windows Phone 7 shipped in November of last year and by May of this year, Microsoft was already showing off Mango, which is no small update. More than 500 new features have been added.

Myerson cited his favorite new features in the software like Conversation View, which groups e-mails by discussion thread, keeping chats on text, IM, and Facebook chat all in one conversation, multitasking and Internet Explorer 9.

I saw Mango on demonstration at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) earlier this month and was quite impressed. Now I hope they can line up some hefty carrier support and begin an ad blitz for it. So long as they don’t do something insane like use “Angry Birds” to sell a phone like Sprint is doing.

So this fall, we will have a royal rumble of iOS 5, Mango, BlackBerry OS 7, and probably a few more Android versions to further fragment that market. Looks like this will be one heck of a fall for wireless competition.