"This strategic collaboration provides an excellent fit for our strategy of developing innovative IP solutions for leading telcos looking to expand into IP Centrex services and such multimedia services as video calls, MMS/EMS and other value added services," said LG-Nortel CEO Jae Ryung Lee. "In the future, we plan to make a wide range of WinCE-based products available to Microsoft channel partners around the world."

Microsoft announced Windows CE 6.0 earlier this month at the Mobile and Embedded Developers' Conference (MEDC), where attendees received CDs with a preview beta. According to Microsoft, the new release features a "redesigned kernel" that expands the number of simultaneous processes from 32 to 32,000, while enlarging the virtual memory that is addressable by each process from 64MB to 2GB.

Microsoft and LG-Nortel say they expect to conclude a definitive agreement within the next few months. At that time, new Windows CE 6-based IP phone designs and features will be announced.

Microsoft expects the final release of Windows CE 6.0 to occur in the "September timeframe," it said at MEDC.

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