Next month is going be brutal for technology reporters. Apple is holding their annual Worldwide Developers Conference on June 11th, Google is holding their annual I/O event on June 27th, and now Microsoft has just announced the Windows Phone Developer Summit, due to kick off on June 20th. It’ll take place in San Francisco, and seeing as how no agenda was provided, we have absolutely no clue what will be talked about. They’ll be developer oriented workshops, that’s a given, but will we be heaing about Windows Phone 8? Codenamed Apollo, the next version of Windows Phone is expected to take things to the next level. Rumor has it that it’s built on the same kernel that Windows 8 uses, so developers writing applications for your next laptop or tablet can take that code and reuse it for a smartphone application. Considering that we’re likely going to hear about iOS 6 at WWDC, and likely the next version of Android at I/O, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that June 20th is when Apollo will finally be shown off in public.
The bigger question is what will next month’s announcements do to sales of today’s Windows Phones? Right now Nokia has four smartphones on the market running Microsoft’s mobile OS. They’ve got the Lumia 610, 710, 800, and 900. None of them are expected to be upgraded to Apollo according to multiple sources, which would make them obsolete and frankly a huge waste of money. It’s something we’ve been saying for quite a few weeks now, it’s best to just shut your wallet and wait for Nokia’s flagship Apollo device later this year. Hell, even Huawei said they’re not interested in Windows Phone until Apollo comes out, and that’s a company that’ll make practically anything if they can eke out a single digit margin.
So are you excited about June? We are, even it means upgrading our coffee machine.