Windows Phone Apollo launching mid 2012 according to Nokia's VP

With Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.5 (or Mango) update still in the process of being completely rolled out, there are talks about its successor, Apollo. Not much is known about the Apollo update yet, but if we were to take Nokia's Executive VP for Location and Commerce, Michael Halbherr's word for it, we could be seeing the Apollo update launch in the middle of 2012. He has claimed that the update will be a "very different game" to Mango, reconfirming that the Apollo update could very well be Windows Phone 8.

The features are not known at this point in time, but it looks like Halbherr is pushing Microsoft to integrate NFC into the operating system, as well as making the Windows Phone platform more friendly with Nokia's Navteq mapping platform. We're not sure if Nokia will be receiving any special treatment from Microsoft with regards to Windows Phone, but given that Nokia has pretty much put all of their eggs into the proverbial basket, we're not surprised to see Nokia so excited and gunning for Windows Phone.