Microsoft,partners, step up "smart phone" war with Blackberry

Microsoft teamed up with mobile computer maker Palm and telecom giant Verizon on a new "smart phone" aiming to grab market share from the popular Blackberry device.

The world's biggest software group and the two partners will combine their marketing clout to take on established "smart phone" devices using the Blackberry platform developed by Canada's Research in Motion.

"Most people carrying a Blackberry today still have a mobile phone," Allen Bush of Palm told AFP. "That idea is just ludicrous to us; that in this day and age, you can't combine that elegantly."

A new "Windows Mobile" telephone that doubles as a hand-held computer with features including being synchronized with popular Microsoft Outlook messaging and scheduling software should be in US stores by early 2006, said Palm's chief executive officer Ed Collie.