Earlier this week, details emerged on Microsoft"s plans to change some of the branding for its mobile devices. The Nokia brand is being phased out and will no longer be used on future handsets, but in a change that will affect Microsoft"s hardware partners as well, the Windows Phone brand is also being dropped.
The changes come as Microsoft shifts its focus to a single Windows brand - one Windows platform for all devices and form factors. Microsoft has not publicly announced - or even acknowledged - that these plans are in the works but we have confirmed them with well-placed sources.
Earlier today, we reported on yet another new company that is working on its first Windows Phone - British brand My Go. The handset is displayed on an unlinked microsite on the company"s website, which is marked with a "CONFIDENTIAL - Internal Use Only" banner at the top, indicating that it is not yet ready for public consumption, but the information contained there is both complete and well-presented, and appears to be more or less ready for launch.
Hosted on that microsite is a cluster of high-resolution images for retailers that will eventually offer the device when it launches, and among those images is one very interesting picture of the rear of the handset. The image shows the device bearing the "Windows" logo - which appears to be the first time that an official product shot from a Microsoft partner has shown a handset with this logo, rather than that of Windows Phone.
The header animation at the top of the page also shows the Windows logo (although a rather horribly hacked-together Windows Phone 8.1 logo is also shown at one point). Although Windows Phone 8.1 is referenced as the OS on the new handset, the clear focus throughout the microsite is on the GoFone GF47W being a Windows device, with references such as "your Windows GoFone", "time to go Windows" and "Windows GoFone with Xbox".
It is not clear when the device itself will be released, so this doesn"t give us any clear indication of when the transition from Windows Phone to Windows branding on handsets will begin to come into effect, but it seems very clear that this change is happening, and in the not-too-distant future.
Images via My Go