Mirrorlink for Windows phones may still be on its way, but should have been here years ago

Mirrorlink is a cross-platform standard for connecting your phone to your in-car entertainment system to allow the safe use of phone apps such as GPS Navigation, the Phone app or entertainment apps.

Microsoft has been a member of the Connected Car Consortium for some years now, but so far has no certified Mirrorlink devices.

There is however plenty of evidence that Microsoft has had a working implementation of Mirrorlink for Windows Phone since the Windows Phone 7 days, with entries such as these below on Linkedin:

(links omitted so as not to embarrass anyone)

We have even seen Microsoft demonstrate Mirrorlink at Build 2014 last year.

Unfortunately this year Microsoft has not made any announcement regarding the technology, and it has not been clear that all the work done in Windows Phone 7 and 8 will make the jump to Windows 10 Mobile.

Today we can however report that Microsoft has recently submitted and had certified a client to Mirrorlink, indicating the work is still ongoing.

Unfortunately it is the server software in the phone which we are really interested in, and so far no devices have shown up.

We asked a member of Microsoft for a comment on the issue, and a member working on the technology at Microsoft simply said they had “nothing new to announce.”

With Microsoft not having the force of numbers enough to force car OEMs to support their proprietary solution ( see Android Auto and Apple Car Play) Microsoft needs to be moving faster with support for these cross-platform solutions before they also die off and leave Microsoft and its users locked out of their own cars.