At the Mobile World Congress, Microsoft unveiled a new version of its Windows Phone smartphone software; and Outlook Social Connector ramps up e-mail collaboration tools.

Formerly known as Windows Mobile, the updated smartphone OS has been a long time coming, which means that Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do.

According to Microsoft evangelist Albert Shum, the company has completely re-engineered  the interface from-the-ground-up.

“What will our users see first?” says Shum. “I think hopefully they’ll see themselves in the phone. I think that’s a really key part of how we designed it. It’s really focused on making this phone your phone.”

The operating system has Zune-like interface.

“We took the idea of making it personal, so that when you look at the start experience, it’s about your content.”

The central point of the new start screen are various live tiles that function like widgets and can contain status updates, such as the number of new messages. These tiles can be the start point for an application, a hub for photos or music, a website, or a contact.

“My phone is going to be different than your phone,” says Shum. “I think that’s a really key part: that personalized way of navigating the thing that you care about, the things that you want to share, the things you want to listen to, and those are the key moments where we first present that it’s your phone.

The dizzying pace of change in the mobile phone industry has been hard on some big players. Google and Apple seem comfortable in the space, but HP, Intel, Nokia, and Microsoft, are all struggling to make the most of the data surge coming off of smartphones. At Barcelona Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, took the stage for a few minutes before his company’s mobile software demo.

“We debated a lot about how much we should position and talk about from whence we have come and what we will show you,” Mr. Ballmer said. “At the end of the day, we said, ‘Let’s get on with the show.’ ”

Windows Phone is going for a clean though somewhat austere look, with bright blue icons on a black background. This then has the live tile square icons for things like phone, people, e-mail and text functions. Underneath, a rectangular box pulls in calendar information and highlights Zune music and video software, as well as Microsoft’s Xbox Live gaming service.

“It’s about your people, it’s your pictures, it’s your music,” says Shum. “[These are] presented way up there.”

This interface is unlike anything else on the market, and reflects a multi-year effort on Microsoft’s part. A few years ago, in an attempt at revitalizing its mobile business, Microsoft began poaching executives away from other companies, many of them non-tech, such as Procter & Gamble and Nike. The idea was to get as close to a consumer model as possible.

“There is no question in our minds that we needed and wanted to do some things that were out of the box and clearly differentiated from our past and — hopefully you will agree — clearly differentiated from other things going on in the market,” Mr. Ballmer said on stage.

In effect, Microsoft is willing to abandon tradition if it means getting another shot at the fast-growing mobile device market and blunting the advance of companies like Apple and Google. To do this, Microsoft is trying to draw attention away from the application model.

Microsoft adds Facebook, MySpace to Outlook

Microsoft is releasing a test version of the Outlook Social Connector: add-on software for the main e-mail reading screen on Outlook. When a user clicks to read an e-mail message, a new pane fills up with the sender's most recent social-networking activities.

Those could include the addition of a professional contact on LinkedIn or a status update from Facebook. People using Office 2003, 2007 and beta versions of Office 2010 can now download the updated Outlook Social Connector beta.

LinkedIn is the first company to make its add-in software available. Microsoft has said that the Facebook and MySpace plug-ins will be ready for download by the time Office 2010 is released in June.

The new software is of interest because treats Outlook itself as a social network – as long as you have SharePoint – with e-mailers able to work collaboratively on document updates.