Microsoft showcased the next version of its Windows Phone platform at the MIX11 conference in Las Vegas Wednesday. The upcoming iteration should bring several important improvements, including support for application multitasking.

 

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The new platform will become available to developers in May. Besides multitasking, key improvements should enable developers to take advantage of audio and file transfer, fast app switching, deeper OS integration and access to the camera and motion sensor library, which will enable augmented reality apps similar to those we’ve seen on other platforms such as iOS and Android.

To showcase the capabilities of the new platform, Microsoft gave visitors an early look into new concepts for several popular apps from Skype, Spotify, Layar, Qantas, Amazon Shopping and Kik Messenger.

Microsoft also announced the the new Microsoft Silverlight 5 beta, available now, providing support for hardware video decoding, a new XNA-based interface for delivering 3D visualizations within apps and something Microsoft calls Trickplay, a feature that provides variable-rate video playback with audio pitch correction. The new beta version is available for download at microsoft.com/silverlight.

Finally, Microsoft showcased some new features from the Kinect for Windows Beta SDK coming this spring. It includes Robust Skeletal Tracking, which tracks the skeleton image of one or two people moving within Kinect’s view; an XYZ depth camera that indicates the distance of the object from Kinect’s sensor; and advanced audio capabilities that include a four-element microphone array with sophisticated acoustic noise and echo cancellation as well as beam formation to identify the sound source.

Developers can sign up at research.microsoft.com/kinectsdk to be notified when the SDK is released.