Microsoft still committed to smartphones

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has said the smartphone market is still a “terribly important” area for the company, even though it has just pulled a line of phones due to disappointing sales.

Ballmer told the Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington DC that the company will continue pushing ahead with innovations in the smartphone industry.

“It’s certainly an area where, how do I say it, we feel all of the energy and vigour and push that we have ever felt to innovate, to drive hard, to compete,” Ballmer said.

The company is well behind rival groups Research in Motion and Apple, and its Windows 7 Mobile software is still several months away. But Ballmer says the company has a few more tricks to unveil.

“We will give you a set of Windows-based devices that people will be proud to carry at home, and which will also support the kind of scenarios that enterprise IT is trying to make happen in the phone form factor,” Ballmer said.