At the 3GSM World Congress 2007 in Barcelona, Microsoft today announced PlayReady technology, a new DRM mechanism made to increase interoperability between mobile devices.

PlayReady has been optimized to meet the increasing demands of mobile device manufacturers. The new DRM supports multiple content types, including music, videogames, and movies. The new DRM also supports a broad range of business models such as subscription, rental, pay-per-view, preview and super-distribution. Currently, Microsoft’s PlayReady supports Windows Media Audio (WMA), AAC/AAC+/HE-AAC, Windows Media Video (WMV), and H.264.

Amir Majidimehr, corporate vice president of the Consumer Media Technology group at Microsoft said, “Our wireless partners worldwide asked for a single system to power a growing array of business models and consumer scenarios — the result is Microsoft PlayReady. With consumer demand for digital goods of all types growing exponentially, this technology delivers a foundation for the future and accelerates the transparent delivery of rich content to consumers.”

PlayReady has been designed to be fully backwards compatible with Windows Media DRM 10, also known as PlaysForSure. As such, devices that support Microsoft PlayReady can also access content using Windows Media DRM.

Currently, the limitations of PlayReady are not very clear. For example, with Apple’s FairPlay content can be shared on a limitless number of iPods, however, it limits sharing content between PCs/Macs to only 5 times.

Microsoft claims that its new technology will give consumers a new level of freedom by making it easier to move content between mobile devices. The most important feature of PlayReady is that it can be used on a number of different platforms, including low-end devices. It is in no way a “closed system.” The technology will be available with what Microsoft’s claims a “well documented” porting kit for easy implementation on multiple platforms. Microsoft currently plans for the technology to be available in the first half of 2007 for handset and device implementation.