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Off Topic: Microsoft will reveal two iPhone competitors in 2010

It isn’t really our area of expertise, but we’ve gotten word that Microsoft will unleash two new Smartphones, probably at CES in January 2010 MWC in February 2010.  Developed under the project “Pink” moniker, these two slider phones stem from the acquisition of Danger and will continue to use Sharp as the manufacturing partner (not HTC as previously rumored by the WSJ).  In fact, they’ll be co-branded as “Microsoft+Sharp” products. 

One device is “squircle” in shape like the past Zune’s buttons.  The slide out keyboard houses the mic at the bottom and it is meant to be open when being used as a phone.  This device is code-named “Turtle” and looks like a dressed up Motorola QA1.

The other device is more traditionally-shaped candybar slider and is code-named “Pure”.  The devices had previously been rumored to be carried on Verizon but we haven’t heard anything more in this area.

They will continue to use the App Store model that the Sidekick has employed with over-the-air applications appearing on your phone bill.  Danger’s phone App Store predated Apple’s by two years.

We’ve actually been sent pretty detailed product pictures and could possibly post them if there is any interest in this subject matter. (Or, perhaps to avoid litigation, maybe we’ll just Twitter them up later this week).

Oh, and we’ve recieved something much, much bigger and juicier from Redmond as well.  This is something more interesting to tablet fans, but is still in late prototype phases. 

Here’s a clue.

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