Windows Phone announcement this afternoon.

Our press site says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will host a press conference at Mobile World Congress 2010. Watch the live Webcast Recording here on Feb. 15 starting at 6 a.m. PST/3 p.m. CET. That’s 2PM UK time, and thanks to other commitments I’m going to have to watch the recording which should show up in the same place.

Commercial sensitivity means the detail of what Steve will say has not been shared widely within Microsoft (though having him make an announcement suggests it is important, and MWC is the place to announce phone-related things : that much is obvious) . We have had a small amount of information about the topics areas which will be left for another day*, and the correct and incorrect way to write product names when the time comes. This came from Charlie Kindle, who has a new blog which may be worth keeping an eye on. Charlie is also on twitter. 

* Update. Charlie now has a post on-line which says

There’s a whole bunch of stuff we did not announce today. Specifically we did not announce anything about building applications & games for the new Windows Phone 7 Series operating system. We did this because

(a) The new phone user experience we are talking about is so hugely cool we want people to be able to absorb it for a while, and…

(b) We are working on being able to tell the full story in March at the MIX10 conference in Las Vegas . We have at least 12 sessions lined up and attendees will be the first to get access to the bits.

Which is what were told. That and “Windows Phone” – capital P – for devices in general - and Windows Phone 7 Series for the new release is the proper naming.