3GSM 2006 — Motorola yesterday announced that it signed a licensing agreement with Microsoft to use Windows Media technology in upcoming phones. This won’t affect Motorola’s relationship with Apple, but may be a sign that Motorola is really starting to look elsewhere.

One advantage of going with Microsoft’s technology is that the handsets will be able to support over-the-air download services, something that carriers are very keen on.

In a related story, Motorola along with Yahoo announced podcasting support. The demo ran on a V3x and allowed users to, “Drag and drop podcasts directly from the PC straight to their mobile phone through the Yahoo! Music Engine.”