The pressure on the forthcoming Windows 7 Phone to offer a breakthrough for Microsoft mobile mounted, the company showed a decline in sales of its current operating system smartphone, Windows Mobile. Sales of its Zune media players also missed its third fiscal quarter, justifying the decision to extend the Zune platform for devices that are not specific, especially the new phones Kin.

Under the announcement of the third quarter, Microsoft reported revenues of its mobile entertainment division – with the exception of the platform Xbox – has been reduced by $ 80 million. Windows Mobile has lost more than 20% of their market share of smartphones in the past four months, according to estimates from comScore, the predator with Android. United States – The best market for both operating systems due to weak market leader Symbian – WinMo study says only 15.1%, while Android has doubled its share of one year, at 9 %, and is sure to touch double digit very soon.

Microsoft Entertainment and Devices Division is minor in society as a whole, with only the online services is smaller. Its sales were $ 1.67bn for the quarter ended March 31, 11.5% of the total group of 14.5 billion dollars. In profit terms, it has been an even smaller contributor, though this quarter did see the unit reversing last year’s $67m loss and making a profit of $138m, with Xbox the biggest driver. Microsoft’s total profit for the period was $4.01bn. A year ago it made $2.97bn on sales of $13.65bn.

Director James Gunn may have seen the next-generation Zune, based on an account of a visit to a Microsoft Experience event. In addition to seeing pre-release hardware like Project Natal and the HP slate, he also claimed to have seen the “new Zune.”  He did not specify the details other than saying he did not think he could change because of iTunes and the applications that you use for the iPhone.

It is possible that Gunn may refer to existing Zune HD, but in about seven months old media player is not considered new, even in his capacity as 64GB. It was also more or less in the spring of last year was the first murmurs of the company for which was finally confirmed that the Zune HD.

A new version of the touch screen device has been rumored and now focus primarily on software, the distribution of the Zune HD custom firmware version of Windows 7 Phone. The transition would be to reduce support for the Zune as a HD platform, but allow the application of a much larger base that can work on more than one mobile device and application to lay hands on behavior of iPhone App Store. More capacity double heart and NVIDIA Tegra are also strong contenders updates season.

Neither Gunn nor Microsoft has elaborate on what was at the gathering.

Just days have elapsed since the HD OpenZDK Zune was announced, but we begin to see the fruits of the work all that happened in the creation of a development kit available to the public.

Without doubt, one of the world’s favorite video game, Doom has been ported to the Zune HD courtesy of Glenn Anderson. The first-person shooter known shows the power of NVIDIA Tegra processor or integrated graphics processor. Unfortunately, we are not interested in an FPS based on touch screen controls, but that is besides the point …

We’ve been following the development quite closely, and we reckon that there are some exciting “developments” in the pipeline. Already there are attempts to port a flavor of Linux on the media player.

Video of Doom on the Zune HD after the jump…

Zune HD can not keep the MP3 player market in the fire, exactly, but it is a piece of quality equipment with an intelligent user interface and attractive. It is also a platform that developers can write games for. Unfortunately, third-party games on the Zune are limited in what they can do, but must be developed using Microsoft. NET based on XNA Framework. Normally this would not be a problem, as XNA usually offers high performance graphics Direct3D. However, the HD Zune, XNA only supports simple 2D graphics and 3D hardware acceleration. The result is a lackluster graphics, despite the Zune NVIDIA Tegra HD feed is very capable. The restricted environment also prevented third-party applications to access the Internet via a wireless connection device.

Enter OpenZDK. By exploiting a flaw in the firmware of the Zune, you can run native applications on the Zune. This exposes the power of the Zune hardware for developers: the most important programs can use the extensive API OpenGL ES 2.0 (the same as the iPhone compatible 3D API) to use the full capabilities of the Tegra chip. This allows third party applications to achieve the same quality as the games Microsoft Zune and Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition.

As those Microsoft-published games demonstrated, the Zune HD hardware is more than capable of providing a first-rate gaming experience. PGR, in particular, is both fun and extremely good-looking. Until now, however, the restrictions on third-party developers have left that power largely untapped.

It should be fairly easy for developers to get up to speed on native development with the ZDK. The Zune HD operating system is based on Windows CE 6 (as will be the forthcoming Windows Phone 7 platform), so development and deployment is quite easy: this is a widely supported and well understood OS. OpenGL likewise is something familiar to a lot of game developers.

However, the fun could not last long. Because Apple has to escape exploits the iPhone, Microsoft could also choose to fix the exploit (or exploits) that are used to allow the natural development of Zune. In many respects, it would be a shame. Zune HD clearly has great potential: it is a shame that requires cuts for the game.

The culmination of a new Zune 64 GB HD, and HD v4.5 firmware indicates that the Zune has received much attention recently, but we can announce a new SDK for developers – an SDK of different types.

It’s true, ZuneBoards is reporting that Microsoft’s flagship media player has been hacked by a group of indie developers. Available for all versions of the Zune, the hack, titled OpenZDK, gives developers “access to everything XNA withheld before”.  Essentially, this will mean that sky is the limit (games and apps galore).

Even the developers of crack and develop something to show for, consumers will be kept in limbo. The question beckons: How long before you see the Microsoft patch fails with a new firmware? Takers?