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Microsoft looks set to become the latest company to launch a mobile applications store.
Following the enormous success of the iPhone's App Store and last week's announcement of Google's Android Market, Microsoft is preparing to make its move.
An advert placed on the Seattle-based Computerjobs.com is seeking a senior product manager for 'Sky market'.
The role is described as 'a unique opportunity and time of rapid change in the mobile industry for a senior product manager in the Mobile Communications Services team to drive the launch of a v1 market place service for Windows Mobile.'
Microsoft isn't wasting any time, claiming one of the key roles of the job will be 'preparation and driving the cross-group collaboration for the initial launch of the marketplace offering to the developer community this fall.'

A decision to dismiss appeals against the controversial fast-track approval of Microsoft Office Open XMLⁱ format has provoked six members of the global standards-setting body ISOⁱ to question its relevance.
Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela - countries with fast-growing IT markets - had appealed against ISO's stamp of approval OOXML, an endorsement likely to help the software giant win more public-sector contracts.
A significant minority of national standards bodies had voted against approving the Microsoft format, which is an alternative to the open-source Open Document Format that has been a published ISO standard since 2006.
But ISO, together with the International Electrotechnical Commission, decided earlier this month that those appeals were not worth pursuing - meaning OOXML will soon become an ISO standard, provided no new appeals are lodged.

AMD and Intel have slashed the prices of their quad-core processors, as the long stagnant processor war begins to bubble up nicely again.
AMD's new pricing scheme knocks its most powerful processor, the Phenom X4 9950 BE 140W, down from $235 to $186, with the triple core X3 and dual-core Athlon X2s all subject to heavy discounting.
Among the most significant reductions are the Phenom X4 9750 and Phenom X4 9650, both of which have had $40 wiped from their price, taking them to $156 and $134 respectively.
The Phenom X4 range was initially dogged with architectural problems and manufacturing delays, which allowed Intel to increase its sizable market lead with its competing quad-core processors.
Since then, however, the product range has been overhauled and won praise from PC Pro for presenting a 'realistic competitor to Intel's high-end desktop CPUs.'

Google has launched its own web browser, dubbed Chrome, as it looks to displace Firefox and Internetⁱ Explorer.
The web giant announced the browser on its blog page, explaining in grand fashion that the launch would help 'drive innovation on the web.'
'We realised that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser,' the blog post says. 'What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build.'
Among these innovations, Google is touting better memory utilisation, with each tab in Chrome representing a completely independent browser environment, meaning that if one crashes it can be shut down without bringing the whole browser grinding to a halt. It's a feature already being used to sell Internet Explorer 8.
Google is also promising 'improved speed and responsiveness across the board.'