Microsoft showcased the next version of its Windows Phone platform at the MIX11 conference in Las Vegas on April 13. The upcoming iteration should bring several important improvements, including support for application multitasking. The new platform will become available to developers in May. Besides multitasking, key improvements should enable developers to take advantage of audio and file transfer, fast app switching, deeper OS integration and access to the camera and motion sensor library, which will enable augmented reality apps similar to those on other platforms such as iOS and Android

To showcase the capabilities of the new platform, Microsoft gave visitors an early look into new concepts for several popular apps from Skype, Spotify, Layar, Qantas, Amazon Shopping and Kik Messenger.

Microsoft also announced the new Microsoft Silverlight 5 beta, available now, providing support for hardware video decoding, a new XNA-based interface for delivering 3D visualizations within apps and something Microsoft calls Trickplay, a feature that provides variable-rate video playback with audio pitch correction.

Finally, Microsoft showcased some new features from the Kinect for Windows Beta SDK coming this spring, according to Mashable.