Microsoft unveils My Phone cloud storage service

Microsoft has taken the wrappers off one of its Mobile World Congress announcements early.

The company has officially unveiled its My Phone cloud storage service, after bloggers discovered that the official website had gone live earlier than expected.

The service is comparable to Apple's MobileMe, in that it will give users of Windows Mobile 6.0 handsets 200MB of space on Microsoft's servers to upload their contacts, calendar events, tasks, text messages, photos and videos.

“Today, Microsoft's My Phone Web site went live prior to its scheduled debut,” said a statement from the company.

“However, we are excited about the new Microsoft My Phone service, which will be available as a limited, invite-only beta. This is a significant milestone for Microsoft as it connects the phone to the PC and Web, making mobility a key pillar for the company's software+services strategy.”

Games don't appear to be included, at least at launch. It stands to reason that they will be, since they're just another form of mobile content that users may wish to backup.

There's a lot of buzz around these kinds of cloud storage service at the moment though.

Besides MobileMe - which had well-documented teething problems last year - Google is expected to launch its own GDrive service this year, which may tie in with Android and other handsets.