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Windows Phone 7 Series targeted at 38 year-old 'life maximizers'

Here's a fun tidbit we just learned from Microsoft's Joe Belfiore: in order to focus Windows Phone 7 Series on the idea of best serving end users, the team actually created two fictional targets consumers named "Miles" and "Anna," a pair of married 38-year old "life maximizers" who demand the most from their devices. Yes, it's a little strange and hilariously specific on the surface -- Anna just scaled back her PR job to part-time so she can take care of the kids! Miles like to take pictures and use Facebook to share them with his parents in Europe! -- but it makes a certain amount of sense: Microsoft says it's trying to create a device that appeals to someone with both a work Exchange account and personal Gmail account, someone who needs to get work done but also wants to play 3D games, and it thinks that if Miles and Anna are happy, chances are a lot of other customer segments will satisfied as well. Of course, this is almost exactly the same message we've heard from Palm about the Pre, but at least Microsoft's ideal users aren't a creepy alien lady or a mom from the 50s -- and they have a much better reason to Bing their way through the WP7S UI.