Although Microsoft Corp. claims that the Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango" platform is the pinnacle of modern smartphone technology, it will take Microsoft another year to integrate support of already existing technologies into the operating system. Next year the company plans to introduce at least two major updates for WP code-named Tango and Apollo.

At Consumer Electronics Show 2012 (in January) the world's biggest designer of software plans to release Tango 1 update to the Windows Phone 7.5 and at the Mix 2012 (in April) it plans to issue Tango 2 update, according to a roadmap of Microsoft published by MS nerd blog. It is expected that Tango will bring support for 4G/LTE networks as well as 480*320 screen resolution, which means that it will be possible to make create QWERTY phones based on Windows Phone operating system. In addition, Tango will bring-in support for 1280*720 resolution.

Later next year Microsoft plans to unleash Windows Phone 8 operating system code-named Apollo. The company will announce the new OS at Mix 2012 in April, release Apollo SDK at E3 in June and launch its next-gen mobile operating system in August, 2012. It is expected that the Windows Phone 8 "Apollo" will finally take advantage of multi-core system-on-chips (such as Nvidia Tegra 2 or 3) and therefore WP-powered smartphones will be able to match modern handsets like Apple iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S II in terms of hardware features.

Microsoft plans to release "Apollo+1" iteration of Windows Phone 8 sometimes in 2013. It looks like in 2014 the company does not plan to introduce new Windows Phone platforms, but intends to show off something called "WPN" [Windows Phone Next] as well as launch something dubbed "Win9M" [Windows 9 Mobile]. Theoretically, Windows 9 Mobile may be a successor of Windows Phone operating system and represent a platform that will bridge Microsoft's PC and smartphone OSs.

Microsoft did not comment on the news-story.

Tags: Windows Phone, Windows, Microsoft, Windows 9