The Microsoft Touch telephone

Yesterday I saw on the Dutch second hand website Marktplaats a new listing for a Microsoft Touch. It’s a touch-tone telephone made by Ascom Zelcom AG as the OEM. It came with 3 floppies and I really wonder what those were used for, because it does not look like to have any connection to a computer.

It still had the original box and I really wanted to have it for my telephone collection, but unfortunately it was already sold. Here are the pictures from the original listing:

The phone appears to be a Microsoft branded version of the Ascom Auro, which won the IF Design Award in 1993. If there are any other features that were added for Microsoft is unknown to me since I been unable to find any reference to this device in older computer magazines or the Wayback Machine. If anyone knows a pointer to this, please let me know! I looked through Usenet archives and it appears that Ascom Zelcom AG never had a website before the brand went defunct, but I also found no info on the Ascom website archive.

Pictures are copyrighted by the original owner and Microsoft for the package design. I put them here anyway for archival purposes :)