Friday, April 7, 2006

Microsoft mobile OS deal

Microsoft has won its biggest contract to date for the use of its Windows Mobile operating system, in a deal with the U.S. Census Bureau. The agency has signed up for 500,000 smart phones made by handset manufacturer HTC. They will run Windows Mobile 5.0 and be used to take the 2010 census. It is a high-tech move for the agency. The bureau had previously used paper and pen to take U.S. citizens’ details, which were then digitized by data entry staff. The Microsoft contract forms part of a wider $600 million, five-year deal with Harris, a Florida company running the data collection project, that involves the automation of field data collection. The move is aimed at cutting the time, labor costs and errors involved in manual data collection and input.

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