Amid rumors and despite a Wall Street Journal article, Microsoft has flatly denied its supposed attempts in the direction of making its own branded mobile phone. The company has shrugged off the WSJ article that mentioned Microsoft and Verizon working on some kind of a device.

Microsoft, which only licenses its mobile OS to partners for building smartphones, remains a step behind its closest competitors - Apple and Research In Motion - who have complete control over almost all aspects of their smartphones as they manufacture the hardware too.

Rebuffing the rumors about Microsoft manufacturing a smartphone, the company spokesman John Starkweather said: "Microsoft is not going into the phone hardware business. We're deepening our relationships with our hardware partners in order to create even better performing phones that are competitively priced, have the features people want, that are easy to use and just downright lust-worthy."

According to Reliable Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley's February blog post, Microsoft is involved in the development of some "smartphone reference implementations" - which are demos and recommendations for device manufacturers regarding building Windows Mobile phones.

As such, the company is focusing on updates for its current mobile OS, whereby a revamped user interface would not only make the Windows Mobile more finger-friendly, it would also beef up the browser and enable the utilization of Adobe's Flash technology!