At the Showstoppers event just before the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona it was hard to miss the Ford car emblazoned with SYNC Ford Microsoft.

So what is this all about? Apparently, the European launch of in-car computers that hook up to Ford’s cloud services. Cue all the jokes about “if your car ran Windows.”

You have to provide the connectivity, for example by docking your smartphone. You can then stream music with voice control, make calls again with voice control, or if you hear a funny noise, send a diagnostic report on your car to Ford or perhaps your dealer.

Why bother with an in-car computer running Windows embedded, when you could just dock a smartphone and let that do all the work? That was my question too, though there are integration benefits. Some details are being held back for an announcement tomorrow.

By the the way if you think the picture is rubbish, blames the Samsung Slate 7, which was used to create this entire post.