MySpace And Microsoft In Mobile Deal

Tuesday, Mar 31, 2009

MySpace has announced two deals with Microsoft: The first is a MySpace application for Windows Mobile handsets, starting on WinMo 6.1 and then broadening its scope—it will be preloaded on Windows Mobile handsets manufactured by LG (SEO: 066570). The second deal involves support for Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, a competitor to Flash reports CNET.

There’s a fair bit of commentary about the fact that Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has $240 million invested in Facebook and that MySpace search is powered by Google, as if that would be a reason for the companies not to sign a deal. However, social networking lives and dies by how many people access it, so MySpace is going to want its service on every mobile phone possible—and it’s already got mobile services for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Sidekick, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) handsets. Likewise, Microsoft isn’t going to say no and give people a reason not to by WinMo devices—if it works with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) it will work with MySpace.