Ahead of its MIX10 developer conference in Las Vegas next week, Microsoft executive Charlie Kindel has revealed that the company’s forthcoming new mobile operating system (OS) – Windows Phone 7 Series – will not support any existing applications written for older versions of Microsoft’s phone software. “For us, the cost of going from good to great is a clean break from the past,” Kindel wrote in a blog last week. “To enable the fantastic user experiences you’ve seen in the Windows Phone 7 Series demos so far we’ve had to break from the past. To deliver what developers expect in the developer platform we’ve had to change how phone apps were written. One result of this is previous Windows mobile applications will not run on Windows Phone 7 Series.” Kindel claimed that jettisoning support for older applications was necessary to make the new operating system as powerful and user-friendly as possible. “To be clear, we will continue to work with our partners to deliver new devices based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will support those products for many years to come, so it’s not as though one line ends as soon as the other begins,” he added. Launched last October, Microsoft’s mobile app store – Windows Marketplace for Mobile – offers around 1,000 applications, far fewer than the 100,000+ on offer from Apple’s rival store.

IT software behemoth Microsoft unveiled its much-anticipated Windows Phone 7 Series OS at Mobile World Congress last month in a move regarded by many as its last attempt to remain a major player in the mobile software space. The first devices (most likely from LG) supporting the new OS are expected by the end of the year. Last week it was also reported that current devices running Windows Mobile 6.X won’t be upgradable to Windows Phone 7 when it’s released. In separate news, the company has showcased its cross-platform gaming technology by playing the same Indiana Jones game first on a Windows 7 PC, then on a Windows 7 Mobile based smartphone and then on the Xbox 360 gaming console. Microsoft aims to change the way people play games on their Windows-based devices, allowing them to play the same game across three platforms, without much extra effort from developers.