The guy in the photo quit to go to work for Vodaphone

Following in the footsteps of US mobile provider T-Mobile and Google’s own Android smartphone platform, Microsoft is now plotting its own effort to create an online store for mobile software in the model of Apple’s iPhone App Store.

The project, tentatively called “Skymarket,” was revealed in a job listing Microsoft posted at computerjobs.com for a Senior Product Manager to oversee a marketplace service for Windows Mobile.

According to the job listing, Microsoft doesn’t plan to commercially launch Skymarket until the release of Windows Mobile 7, slated for late 2009. However, the company does hope to find someone who can handle “driving the cross group collaboration for the initial launch of the marketplace offering to the developer community this fall.”

The posting also indicates Microsoft hasn’t made much progress so far about its conceptual goals for the store. It calls for an applicant who can assume responsibilities for “definition of the product offering, pricing, business model and policies that will make the Windows Mobile marketplace ‘the place to be’ for developers wishing to distribute and monetize their Windows Mobile applications.”

Whoop-de-doo! The App Store concept finally has proven itself. Microsoft is going to copy it.