Motorola debuted a smart phone running Windows Mobile on Tuesday, a day after Microsoft and Palm unveiled a Windows Mobile-powered Treo.

The Motorola i930 will combine smart phone features such as access to contacts, calendar entries, and email from Microsoft Outlook, along with a camera, camcorder, and walkie-talkie features from Sprint’s recently acquired partner Nextel.

Users can also view Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, along with portable document format (PDF) files and images. The device also includes a secure digital (SD) slot for adding extra storage and features.

Windows Mobile seems to be displacing the Palm operating system as a platform for PDA phones, with even Palm giving in and announcing on Monday a smart phone built around Microsoft’s system (see Palm, Microsoft Team on Treo). Only the Symbian operating system and RIM’s software still offer competition.

“The Motorola i930 is packed with advanced features that make it easy for users to stay connected worldwide,” said Rey Moré, general manager of Motorola’s iDEN mobile devices.

Shares of Motorola were down $0.17 to $22.48 in recent trading, while shares of Sprint Nextel fell $0.08 to $24.03.

However, the i930 is also an expensive device, with a suggested retail price of nearly $500 before discounts and promotions. It is likely to appeal mostly to power users and business people who need an advanced device on the go for accessing their office email and documents.

Phones for Every Budget

As if to compensate, Motorola also said on Tuesday at the 3GSM Asia 2005 conference in Singapore that it was introducing four budget phones aimed to appeal to emerging markets around the world.

The Schaumburg, Illinois, phone maker said the phones would be inexpensive but would still include “compelling features, designs, and technologies.”

The C118 provides talk times of up to 450 minutes along with selectable ring tones, games, short message service, and an alarm. The C139 includes a 65,000-color display, 700 minutes of talk time, a calendar, and alarm.

The C168 comes in a slim format and includes polyphonic ring tones and space for 600 phonebook entries. The C257/261 is even slimmer, like Motorola’s high-end RAZR phone, and includes a VGA camera.

The new budget phones from Motorola in some ways sound like the high-end phones of not too long ago. Like other cell phone makers, Motorola is seeing opportunities in developing countries, which represent relatively untapped markets for their phones, as they push basic and some not-so-basic models on consumers who are willing and able to spend some money to communicate.