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Microsoft will recapture lost generation with Phone 7

Microsoft has acknowledge that its delay in joining the race to capture the mobile phone market has cost it a whole generation's worth of customers.

Chief executive officer, Steve Ballmer, said they had an awful lot of catching up to do when it came to smartphones, when he addressed Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference this week.

"On the phone side we missed a generation with Windows Mobile," he conceded.

"We really did miss almost a release cycle, but Windows Phone 7 which we had a chance to debut at the Mobile World Congress earlier this year has received really quite remarkable reviews."

Ballmer said the potential contained in the eagerly-anticipated Windows Phone 7 device would easily mark them out as a force to be reckoned with in the smartphone market.

"I think we will give you a set of Windows-branded devices that people will be proud to carry at home and will really fit and support the scenarios that enterprise," he declared.

He added that Microsoft will push into Windows Phone 7 and slates with "energy and vigor", to make up on the ground lost to Apple, with the hugely successful launches of the iPhones and iPad. It is expected that the first distribution of Windows Phone 7 handsets will take place in the UK sometime during September.