Microsoft wins deal with U.S. Census Bureau

[Alexander Turcic]

Somehow we missed this from the other day, but David was so nice to remind us that last week Microsoft scored its largest contract to date with an order for 500,000 Windows Mobile handsets from the U.S. Census Bureau. The devices will be built by HTC, the same Taiwanese company who also manufactured the Palm Treo 700w. Unfortunately for Palm, the deal doesn't appear to involve any Treo smartphones. Instead David speculates:

It sounds like the government may be commissioning a custom handset just for their own use. For a device intended to serve a single purpose this probably makes more sense than ordering up a half-million Treos. The Treos try to be jack-of-all-trade devices that work really well as business phones, email/messaging devices, and PDAs, whereas few of these features would likely be the focus for the Census Bureau.

Engadget dug out some more details revealing that the U.S. Census Bureau order was part of a larger five-year, $600 million contract with Harris Corporation to build an automated data-collection system for census workers in the field (who'd use the handhelds rather than relying on notepads). My guess is that the new handhelds will have a limited feature set, probably made semirugged, and designed with a long battery life in mind.

Related: Census Bureau awards $600 million contract to support automation project