Following reports yesterday that Microsoft was to launch a challenger to the smartphone market currently dominated by Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Andriod and RIM’s Blackberry, the tech giant has unveiled the details of its closely kept mobile secret.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft showed off Windows Phone 7 for the first time. The handset will pull together content from social networking sites and other web services on a scale unseen on competing platforms and will most likely pose a serious threat to its competitors RIM, Apple and Google.

Why?

 It’s flashy and new and has been designed with the user in mind, making all those things we use our mobile for more accessible, easier to use and to navigate.

Previous Windows Mobile versions were scrapped to make way for a completely new design that integrates Microsoft’s Zune music player and the Xbox Live gaming service.

The tech giant is ready to hit the smartphone market big time and has already secured partners including Samsung, HTC, HP, Sony Ericsson, Dell, LG and Toshiba.

At the Windows Phone 7 unveiling, Joe Belfiore, VP for Microsoft’s Windows Phone division, said the explosion of applications and web services available on mobile phones meant devices had become far too complex claiming that that phones had started to resemble PCs but “a phone’s just not a PC – it’s a smaller, more intimate device”.

Microsoft wanted a smart design that would separate applications and bring together some of the key things that are most important to people.

It’s five key hubs, that feature on a completely new interface with a ‘start’ page based around live ‘tiles’ representing the most common tasks include people, pictures, office, music + video and games.

The ‘people’ tile is all of a users contacts from Outlook, social networking sites and web mail services  – pulled together with thumbnail images into one interface. People the user has recently communicated with rise to the top and for each contact the phone can display their recent activity on various social networking sites.

Under the ‘pictures’ tile is all of the users photos taken with the phone, synced from a PC or uploaded to social networking sites. Photos uploaded by friends to their social media profiles can also be accessed.

The Office’ tile is pretty self-explanatory, it allows users to view and edit documents or make voice, text and picture notes.

Every Windows Phone 7 will essentially be a Zune music player, with users able to sync music and videos using PC software similar to iTunes under the ‘music + video’ tile. Third-party music and video applications such as Pandora are also integrated.

Lastly, finally finding a way to take Xbox to the next level, under the ‘games’ tile users will be able to play games against other Xbox Live users.  

Microsoft has said a key priority with the new operating system was maintaining consistency in design. Each Windows Phone 7 device will have three buttons on the front – Start, Search and Back. The tile menu interface will also be virtually the same on all handsets.

The built-in calendar pulls together appointments from both web-based personal calendars and from Microsoft Exchange, while addresses and phone numbers are automatically hyperlinked. Clicking on an address brings it up on Bing Maps.

The maps feature is interesting, and will be a major competitor to Google Maps. By simply typing “sushi” into the search function – which is of course powered by Bing – the user is shown all of the sushi restaurants in the immediate area plotted on a map. From that screen the user can get directions, ring a restaurant or read reviews.

The web browser is based around the same code as the desktop Internet Explorer, and there is full support for multi-touch gestures such as pinching to zoom. But just like the iPhone, Adobe Flash support won’t be present at launch.

So that’s it. It all looks pretty simple to use, and smart too. But one burning question remains: what about apps?

With the actual launch to consumers still so far away, Microsoft said it would reveal more details about the applications that will be available on the platform at its Remix conference later this year.