Windows Mobile 7 getting Pre-like social contact management?

Microsoft’s job ads are always revealing, and this latest one for a software development engineer is no exception.

The Mobile Devices division is Microsoft’s fastest growing, most cutting edge, and most competitive business. Windows Mobile 7 is a huge, important bet for the company and the team has benefitted from a recent influx of senior talent from around the company. Our users buy Windows Mobile devices to manage all parts of their work and personal lives through the use of phone, email, IM, SMS, calendar, contacts, photo sharing, and access to social networks. “Communications” is the Windows Mobile 7 team that owns that experience end to end from phone to connectivity to Windows Live and Exchange services. Millions of Windows Mobile customers all around the world use what we build in this team every day.
The Communications Foundations team is the engine room that powers these social experiences – the team builds the connectors and Unified Storage models that power all the social & communications experiences for WM7. The team is at the center of the rich change in how communications is happening, driven by the rapid shifts in social networking – Live wave 4, Facebook, Twitter etc. The team is looking for an experienced developer to drive how we enable exciting, new market-changing scenarios based on top of the Unified Store. You will help architect, design and build capabilities to enable these new end-to-end scenarios, and drive a clear model/view separation in our architecture.

The talk of Unified Stores and Connectors are very suggestive of functionality like on the Pre, where a central contact store integrates with social sites like Facebook and My Space.

Further down in the job posting there is some evidence that one of the Social sites this software will interact with is the Zune Social:

Deliver core platform technology to internal and external partners. Effectively design, schedule, build and deliver on a v1 product and existing products. Collaborate with partners such as Outlook Mobile, Database, Zune, Shell, and OS. Deliver detailed specifications for the technical architecture of the system. Help mentor other members on the Dev team.

Its good to see Microsoft responding the the changing mobile environment so that when Windows Mobile 7 is finally delivered it will in fact be relevant and not built upon outdated concepts, but one do have to be concerned that all this catching up is exactly what is delaying the release of the OS, and maybe its just time to actually get the OS on the market and improve it from there.

Via the Istartedsomething blog.