Microsoft Watch

Windows Phone 8 Details Revealed

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:25:28 -0500

Microsoft's renewed push for its Windows Phone platform centers on Mango, an update with hundreds of tweaks and features. Over the next few months, manufacturers such as Nokia will push an array of new smartphones boasting the software.

It should come as no surprise, of course, that Microsoft is already thinking ahead to subsequent Windows Phone versions. Given the rapid pace of smartphone OS development, they basically have no choice. Until now, though, the nature of those future versions remained totally unclear. But now, two new reports give us a better idea of what might be in store from Windows Phone late in 2012.

On Feb. 2, the blog Pocketnow.com offered a rather extensive rundown of Windows Phone 8's features, claiming it obtained them from a Microsoft-produced video meant for Nokia executives (and hosted by Windows Phone manager Joe Belfiore). Many of those details were subsequently confirmed by Paul Thurrott, in a posting that same day on his Supersite for Windows.

Pocketnow paraphrased Belfiore as saying that Windows Phone 8 will "use many of the same components of Windows 8" and that areas of heavy overlap include "kernel, networking stacks, security, and multimedia support." For developers, that apparently means the ability to reuse massive chunks of code when "porting an app from desktop to phone."

Thurrott seconded that finding in his own post, writing that Windows Phone 8 "will be based on the Windows 8 kernel and not on Windows CE as are current versions." In other words, apps developed for Windows Phone Mango will apparently continue to play well on the upgraded platform.

Both sources said Windows Phone 8 will include the same 128-bit, full-disk BitLocker encryption that currently runs on Windows. A "Data Smart" feature will give WiFi hotspots priority over using the smartphone's cellular connection, in turn reducing data usage. Thurott noted a Skype app, SkyDrive integration, secure payments via near-field communication (NFC), camera improvements, and Internet Explorer 10 Mobile as other additions.

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Leaked Windows Phone Road Map Traces Future Updates

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:50:18 -0500

Now here's something you don't see every day: a leaked road map for Windows Phone's evolution through the end of 2012.

That purported road map comes courtesy of WMPoweruser, which included a screen cap of it in a Dec. 27 posting. The blog also declined to mention its source for the information, which (at least in broad strokes) jibes with past data from other places.

Supposedly, the second quarter of 2012 will see the arrival of a "Tango" update, which according to the road map's handy bullet points will feature "products with the best prices." This likely means Windows Phones aimed at the midmarket, with a possible stripped-down user interface to match the lower cost.

In the fourth quarter of that year would come "Apollo," aimed at both the "superphone" (i.e., higher-end specifications) and "business" categories. A road map bullet point also suggests "increase overall volume," which could mean Microsoft anticipates more Windows Phone units in users' hands by the end of 2012, or else it is hoping that smartphones loaded with some sort of Apollo software update will kick off a higher volume of sales.

Despite the Microsoft brand name and phones from several manufacturers, Windows Phone failed to gain much traction with consumers in 2011. During his July 11 keynote speech at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, CEO Steve Ballmer described Windows Phone's market presence as "very small."

Tango and Apollo rumors have floated for some time. Back in August, Mary-Jo Foley posted on her All About Microsoft blog that she'd heard of "two Tango releases on tap," with the first aiming to expand "the Windows Phone footprint into new markets" while the second "will be targeted at low-cost devices and include fixes and new features."

Meanwhile, Apollo had already been tagged (by Slashgear and other sources) as Microsoft's next big code update. However, possible features remain unclear. In any case, if this road map is accurate, it shows that Microsoft has robust update plans to accompany a hard Windows Phone push by Nokia and some other manufacturers.

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Microsoft, CEA Take Different Views on CES Pullout

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:39:54 -0500

Microsoft sparked a tech-world furor Dec. 21 with the announcement that, starting in 2013, it will decline to provide a keynote speech or booth at the Consumer Electronics Show.

"We have decided that this coming January will be our last keynote presentation and booth at CES," Frank Shaw, Microsoft's corporate vice president of corporate communications, wrote in a posting that day on The Official Microsoft Blog. "We won't have a keynote or booth after this year because our product news milestones generally don't align with the show's January timing."

Microsoft will continue to participate in CES, he added, "as a great place to connect with partners and customers across the PC, phone and entertainment industries."

Indeed, CES doesn't always coincide with Microsoft's timing for its more high-profile releases. For example, at the 2011 edition of the show, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer used his keynote to hint at Microsoft's movement into tablets with Windows 8, but the company nonetheless chose to wait for several more months before providing a glimpse of the operating system at work.

However, executives at the Consumer Electronics Association, which runs CES, seem to dispute Microsoft's pullout as unilateral. Jason Oxman, the CEA's senior vice president of industry affairs, told The New York Times Dec. 21 that Microsoft's ending its show presence was more of a mutual decision. "From our standpoint, it was the right decision as well."

According to Oxman, the CEA wanted a new company for that opening keynote slot long held by Microsoft. The newspaper paraphrased him as saying the split with Microsoft "had not been acrimonious."

For its part, Microsoft could use Ballmer's 2012 CES keynote (if not its significant presence on the show floor) to show off some of the Windows 8 tablets in development. But after that, it seems, all such announcements and unveilings will come on Microsoft's terms. Whether that dampens the ability of CES to draw industry buzz remains to be seen.

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Microsoft, Nokia Considered RIM Takeover: Report

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:44:46 -0500

Microsoft and Nokia apparently toyed with partnering up for a Research In Motion takeover.

That bit of news comes from The Wall Street Journal, itself quoting the ever-popular "people familiar with the matter." Those sources described the status of the talks as "unclear."

Given its age and prominence in the mobile industry, RIM almost certainly has an immense library of patents, which could prove valuable to any Nokias and Microsofts in search of a little more intellectual-property protection in these litigious times. With RIM's stock performance of late, the Canadian mobile device maker is arguably even more of a bargain than it was six months or two years ago, when similar acquisition rumors also surfaced.

But Microsoft has scored a number of significant legal victories against Android of late, between its campaign of cornering Android manufacturers into licensing agreements, and its minor win against Motorola Mobility with the ITC this week.

Any RIM deal would have come with significant drawbacks for both Microsoft and Nokia. For starters, both the latter companies are firmly bonded to Windows Phone, and Microsoft is planning (along with its manufacturing partners) a series of tablets with the upcoming Windows 8. That sort of ecosystem doesn't exactly merge seamlessly with RIM's, which is in the middle of transitioning from BlackBerry 7 to QNX-based BlackBerry 10.

Nor could Microsoft and Nokia have made a play for RIM in order to secure the latter's hardware, considering a.) Microsoft and manufacturing partners, and Nokia, already have their own hardware portfolios and proprietary design language, thank you very much, and b.) the majority of RIM's portfolio is centered on devices with a physical QWERTY keyboard, which doesn't exactly fit with Windows Phone.

Would Microsoft and Nokia have bought RIM for its corporate business and cloud services? Again, Microsoft is already making its own great strides in the business cloud, and has a significant business audience.

At most, Microsoft and Nokia were just performing their due diligence by sniffing around a little. Buying RIM wouldn't be a good move.

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Windows 8 App Store Promises Apple App Store Battle

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:57:36 -0500

Microsoft has pushed back the curtain from the app store it plans on integrating into Windows 8, in the process kicking off what will surely be a vicious competition with Apple and its own app storefront for Mac OS X Lion.

Unlike Windows Phone, whose own app store is growing at a relatively slow rate (and whose total number of apps on offer lags well behind that of Apple's App Store for iOS), Windows comes with a sizable user base. Third-party developers will want to leverage those hundreds of millions of potential customers for profit, and will thus scramble to build "Metro"-style apps to fill the Windows 8 app store. At least, that's how Microsoft hopes the process will unfold.

In order to sweeten the deal for developers, Microsoft will give them 80 percent of every dollar generated off an app's sale, provided the app in question earns more than $25,000. Less than that, and Microsoft will pay out 70 percent, a ratio that has become something of an industry standard.

Microsoft is also designing the store with businesses in mind.

"Enterprise developers have been asking about their path to market with Metro style apps," Ted Dworkin, partner program manager for the Windows Store, wrote in a Dec. 6 posting on the new Windows Store blog. "And, in turn, IT administrators have been asking about deployment and management scenarios, such as compliance and security."

Microsoft's way of fulfilling those enterprise needs, apparently, centers on giving businesses direct control over app deployment. "Enterprises can choose to limit access to the Windows Store catalog by their employees, or allow access but restrict certain apps," he wrote. "In addition, enterprises can choose to deploy Metro style apps directly to PCs, without going through the Store infrastructure."

Windows 8 beta will arrive in February 2012, with the final release later that year. Unlike previous versions of the operating system with their desktop-style interface, the upcoming operating system's start screen centers on a set of colorful, touchable tiles linked to applications--the better to port it onto tablets and other touch-centric form factors.

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Microsoft Preps Xbox Dashboard Revamp

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:33:28 -0500

At some point soon, Microsoft is going to deliver a radical revamp to the Xbox's Live Dashboard, one that positions the gaming console as more of a home-entertainment center.

It's just a question of when, apparently.

"We are still working to get the release out," Larry Hyrb, a member of Microsoft's Xbox team, wrote in a Dec. 6 Tweet, followed a few others later by another: "No new information to report yet. My earlier update is still the most current."

Those with the Kinect hands-free controller linked to their Xbox will have the ability to navigate through an array of programming via voice and gesture command. New options such as HBO will join old stalwarts like Netflix. Presumably, Microsoft is negotiating to bring additional shows to the platform, although I'm sure the associated rights issues are a veritable hornet's nest of conflicting interests.

Meanwhile, the revamped Xbox interface embraces the same tile-centric "Metro" theme already present in Windows Phone, and soon in Windows 8. Branding-wise, it's a smart move to integrate the same design cues into all your company's major products.

Thanks to millions of Xbox Live subscribers, a robust and content-heavy Xbox dashboard is a challenge to both Google TV and Apple TV, neither of which let you gun down a couple dozen zombies after concluding another episode of "Boardwalk Empire." Apple is heavily rumored to be entering the television-set business sometime in 2012, but actual details remain scarce; it is Cupertino, after all, which rivals the CIA for keeping its secrets locked down.

Microsoft has made no secret about its designs for control of the living room. Now it's about to take one giant step closer to accomplishing that goal. It'll be interesting to see how rivals like Google and Apple respond in the short term.

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Salesforce CEO Benioff Slams Microsoft

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 10:23:28 -0500

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff used a high-profile company event in New York City to engage in one of his favorite activities: swiping at competitors such as Microsoft.

"I think they've lost their relevancy," was how he described Microsoft during a Nov. 30 question-and-answer session, following his company's unveiling of its Social Marketing Cloud. "I just don't think they matter anymore." He was dismissive of the upcoming Windows 8, suggesting that that the "Windows Everywhere" paradigm was terminally outdated.

Microsoft and Salesforce have made a sport of lunging at each other's throats. On the product side, Salesforce.com's browser-based CRM competes with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. On the lawsuit side, the two companies have engaged in tit-for-tat patent battles, the latest of which ended in August 2010 with Salesforce agreeing to pay Microsoft an unspecified amount.

In the wake of that lawsuit, the companies' respective spokespeople took a somewhat conciliatory tone, with Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft (not to mention the bête noire of Google Android), describing the endpoint agreement as "an example of how companies can compete vigorously in the marketplace while respecting each other's intellectual property rights."

But that doesn't stop Benioff from doing his best to rip into Microsoft seemingly at every opportunity. There's a method to his madness: Salesforce products like the new Social Marketing Cloud (a suite of cloud-based analytics and engagement tools built atop Radian6 software) fully embrace the idea of browser-based software as an increasingly important business platform, one whose flexibility and scalability eclipses traditional on-premises software (and associated hardware). Meanwhile, Microsoft is powering toward the cloud as fast as it can, with products like Office 365, but its revenues are still largely tethered to traditional software such as Office and Windows, which it continues to heavily promote. Benioff needs to cast his company as the way of the future, and Microsoft as struggling to catch up.

The flip side is that Microsoft has billions of dollars and thousands of very smart people at its disposal. That means the company can do things like burn through hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter on developing online services. It can also afford to play a much longer game, strategy-wise, than many of its competitors. In other words, it's a dangerous opponent.

So Benioff slams them as outdated, and Microsoft's people fire back, and the game continues.

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Microsoft Bing's Most-Searched Terms Include Bieber, Xbox

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 16:54:03 -0500

Microsoft has unveiled Bing's top-searched terms for 2011, a list that harbors absolutely no surprises.

Topping the list of most-searched people is Justin Bieber, which suggests a lot of tweens are using Microsoft's search engine for their teen-idol needs. No. 1 in the category of consumer electronics was Xbox/Kinect, followed by the Kindle, then PlayStation.

Top news stories searched out on Bing include the Casey Anthony trial, Osama bin Laden's death, and Hurricane Irene. Top finance queries included real estate agents, "cheap" and "coupons." Vegas ended up the most-searched world destination, and the upcoming "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" the most-hunted movie.

The complete list is available here, for anyone with a burning desire to find out, say, which reality star or morning show topped Bing's search list.

Microsoft accounted for 14.8 percent of the U.S. search engine market in October, according to research firm comScore, compared with Google at 65.6 percent. Although Yahoo racked up 15.2 percent of that market, its back-end search is powered by Bing, which for all purposes folds its share into that of Microsoft.

In essence, Microsoft holds a third of the domestic search market. From its inception, the company has tried to differentiate itself from Google in a number of ways, most notably its subdivision of search into a series of subject-specific verticals, including "Shopping" and "Travel." In contrast to the Google search page's famous blank background, Bing also refreshes daily with a new image.

In addition, Microsoft's partnership with Facebook has allowed Bing to take things a step deeper, layering search with social data such as the ability to see which friends "Liked" a particular Website.

Despite the steady stream of new features, though, Microsoft's gains against Google have come in a decidedly gradual game, and the company's online division costs it millions of dollars per quarter in losses. Nonetheless, as Microsoft moves increasingly toward the cloud and mobility, Bing plays an ever-greater role as both a collector of aggregate user data and as a branding tool.

That's more than enough reason (aside from giving Bieber-ites their all-important fix) for the company to continue pouring money into the effort.

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Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL Partner on Advertising

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 12:10:54 -0500

In a bid to counter some of the Internet's larger ad giants--most notably Google and Facebook--Microsoft has joined in an advertising partnership with AOL and Yahoo.

However, Microsoft isn't framing the agreement as a response to its competitors in that arena. "Other players in the industry are welcome to join us," Rik van der Kooi, corporate vice president of Microsoft Advertising Business Group, told Reuters Nov. 8. "This is not in response to anybody in particular."

Under the terms of the agreement, each of the three companies can sell premium display ads belonging to the other two. That will allow the trifecta to more efficiently unload premium advertising inventory, although their competition over advertiser spending and other segments will continue apace.

Facebook and Google continue to battle for their own significant shares of the online advertising pie. Although Microsoft's product portfolio gives it diverse streams of revenue (in contrast to Google, for example, which depends on advertising for an overwhelming percentage of its bottom line), its recent emphasis on Web and cloud services makes advertising a more prominent concern. Greater ad revenues would also allow Microsoft to absorb some of the massive losses its online division accrues on a quarterly basis.

Microsoft is already in partnership with Facebook. A number of the latter's features, including the "Like" button, feed social data into Bing, Microsoft's search engine. That wouldn't stop Microsoft from making a more aggressive play for the same advertising-dollar pool that feeds Facebook, of course, and nor would that stop AOL or Yahoo, which presumably view Facebook as more of an existential threat.

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Bing for Mobile Embraces HTML5 for Android, iOS

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 16:11:10 -0500

Microsoft has updated its Bing for Mobile app for iPhone and Android, adding some new features and bringing the experience more in line with the experience offered on Windows Phone.

"Today's update uses HTML5 to blend the mobile browse experience with the app experience so you get a consistent and fast mobile search experience," read a Nov. 2 posting on the Bing Community blog, "whether you're using m.bing.com from your browser or the Bing app."

Microsoft's Windows Phone tightly bakes Bing's search engine into the interface, blurring the line between traditional browser-based search and the platform's "Metro" interface. Evidently, Microsoft seems interested in extending aspects of that experience to other smartphone platforms.

"Rather than tightly binding functions into a mobile client, we want to embrace the drive towards exposing our functions via an HTML5 experience," the blog post added. "Using HTML5, our goal is to build a mobile experience that leverages the unique capabilities" of platforms such as camera support and voice search, while "making the functions the apps can provide consistent across the platforms."

In addition, this app update also includes Deals, which the blog describes as "one-stop deal shopping and convenient mobile phone access for local deals from more than 100 deal providers across the United States." It makes Bing's video domain, launched in October on m.bing, available on the iPhone. The Android version of the app offers a combination of real-time transit routing and news. And the Maps/List Split View allows users to synchronize a list, such as directions, into a single view alongside a map.

Microsoft is apparently aiming to release the same experience for Research In Motion's BlackBerry devices at some unnamed point in the future. For the moment, the Android and iOS apps are available on their respective app stores.

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Windows 8, Bill Gates Killed Courier Tablet: Report

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:56:37 -0500

Microsoft's innovative "Courier" tablet prototype--which, if produced, would have offered two touch-screens bonded together in a book-style format--now has a cause of death: crushed with extreme prejudice by Windows 8.

According to CNET's Jay Greene, who interviewed a number of unnamed executives with knowledge of the company's tablet deliberations, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had a choice to make: either support Courier, which executive J Allard (famous for helping conceive and push the Xbox) touted as a complementary device to PCs and smartphones, or wait until Windows and Windows Live division President Steven Sinofsky could build a version of Windows capable of running on tablets. The latter would take substantial time.

Ballmer went to former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, who in turn focused his laser intellect on the dilemma. And Gates had one big issue with Courier: namely, it wasn't intended to run Exchange or Outlook, instead pulling down email via the browser. "The device wasn't intended to be a computer replacement," Greene wrote. "The key to Courier, Allard's team argued, was its focus on content creation."

Gates, according to an unnamed Courier worker quoted in the article, had an "allergic reaction" to the concept. After all, Microsoft has grown on the concept of supplying an integrated ecosystem of software products, portable across a wide variety of form factors. Something that operates outside that matrix, well, is an outlier.

Within weeks, according to Greene's sources, "Courier was cancelled because the product didn't clearly align with the company's Windows and Office franchises."

Microsoft has now placed all its tablet chips on Windows 8. The operating system, due for arrival sometime in 2012, offers a Start screen loaded with colorful tiles linked to applications, and meant to operate equally well with traditional PCs and touch-centric devices. It also allows users to switch to a "regular" desktop interface.

Tablet interoperability will place Windows 8 in a head-on vector with Apple's iPad, which currently dominates the tablet space. Other touch-screen competitors, including a variety of Google Android tablets and Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad, have crashed and burned in their attempts to seize their own portion of the tablet market. That's either a portent or an opening for Microsoft, depending on how you look at it; certainly, the company intends Windows 8 to offer a robust "no compromises" experience on tablets, which could boost its appeal with the same business users who already constitute a significant portion of Microsoft's core audience.

All that being said, I can't help but feel a little twinge of sadness over Courier's premature death. It was a cool concept, even if it never saw the light of day.

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Nokia's Windows Phones: The Games Begin

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 16:52:27 -0500

Last week Nokia unveiled a pair of Windows Phone devices, the Lumia 710 and 800. They'll arrive in the United States sometime in early 2012, according to the Finnish manufacturer.

"Lumia is the first real Windows Phone," Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told the audience during a London keynote Oct. 26. "We are signaling our intent right now to be today's leaders in smartphone design and craftsmanship, no question about it."

Let the games begin.

The Lumia 800 represents the high end of Nokia's smartphone plans, and features a 1.4GHz processor, hardware acceleration and graphics processor, and an 8-megapixel camera that uses Carl Zeiss optics. Design-wise, there's a 3.7-inch active-matrix organic LED (AMOLED) ClearBlack curved display integrated into a body rendered from a single piece of polycarbonate. I played with it during a Nokia presentation last week in New York City; it's pretty.

In a play toward the midmarket, Nokia is also offering the cheaper Lumia 710, also with a 1.4GHz processor, and a 5-megapixel camera. It's pretty, too.

To say that Nokia needs both these devices to succeed is something of an understatement, considering how it's abandoned its other operating systems in favor of Windows Phone. In order to sweeten the deal for consumers, Nokia has installed some exclusive apps with its phones, including Nokia Drive (with turn-by-turn navigation and voice-activated control) and Nokia Maps, which offers up points of interest around the user's location.

As I mentioned in an earlier posting, Microsoft wants to push Windows Phone more toward the midmarket, and the Lumia 710 seems a big step in that direction. "We are dramatically broadening the set of price points in Mango-related phones that we can reach," Andy Lees, president of Microsoft's Windows Phone division, told the audience during the Asia D conference Oct. 19. "That's particularly important because going lower down in price point opens up more addressable market."

But it'll still be some months until we know whether Nokia's succeeding in its all-or-nothing effort.

Steve Jobs Biography Criticizes Microsoft, Ballmer

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:14:43 -0500

A good chunk of Walter Isaacson's new biography of Steve Jobs focuses on Microsoft and Bill Gates.

In the book, he characterizes former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates as "a business person" but not someone who necessarily made great products: "He ended up the wealthiest guy around, and if that was his goal, then he achieved it. But it's never been my goal, and I wonder, in the end, if it was his goal."

In the same passage, he also discussed Microsoft as a company. "They've clearly fallen from their dominance," he said. "They've become mostly irrelevant. And yet I appreciate what they did and how hard it was. They were very good at the business side of things. They were never as ambitious product-wise as they should have been."

Microsoft, of course, would strenuously disagree with those assertions. The latest edition of Windows has sold more than 450 million licenses, and the company continues to maintain a dominant position in business software. While the jury's still out with regard to its cloud efforts as revenue generators, platforms such as Office 365 are making inroads against Google and other companies in that area.

But Apple has framed itself as primarily a mobility company, with products such as the tablet and smartphone, and that area has also proven troublesome for Microsoft. Windows Phone has attracted critical praise but not enough sales to dent either the Apple iPhone or the growing family of Google Android devices; and Microsoft remains largely absent from the tablet game until the launch of Windows 8 sometime in 2012.

Jobs also had some things to say about current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don't matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off," he said. "It happened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft." As a consequence, "I don't think anything will change at Microsoft as long as Ballmer is running it."

Microsoft's efforts with Windows 8 (particularly when it comes to tablets) and its revamped Windows Phone strategy (which involves a host of new manufacturing partners, including Nokia, in conjunction with the wide-ranging "Mango" software update) will determine whether Jobs' prophecy plays out. If those efforts succeed in a big way, then Microsoft could have a turnaround story in mobility to rival Apple's own. If they fail, then Redmond has some very serious problems.

Windows Phone Will Target Smartphone Midmarket

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 16:31:00 -0500

Next up for Windows Phone: attacking the middle range of the market.

"We are dramatically broadening the set of price points in Mango-related phones that we can reach," Andy Lees, president of Microsoft's Windows Phone division, told the audience during the Asia D conference Oct. 19. "That's particularly important because going lower down in price point opens up more addressable market."

Until this point, Microsoft had positioned Windows Phone as more of a competitor to high-end devices such as Apple's iPhone and the Motorola Droid. But Microsoft's traditional aim with any of its products has been to capture as big an audience as possible, so a thrust toward the smartphone midmarket is perhaps inevitable.

For a couple of months, rumors have circulated about a stripped-down Windows Phone OS code-named Tango, aimed at lower-cost hardware and developing markets such as India and China. Back in August, Mary Jo Foley wrote on her All About Microsoft blog about two new Tango releases that could expand Windows Phone into new markets and load onto those cheaper devices.

At the moment, Microsoft is mostly concerned with pushing Mango, a wide-ranging update with some 500 tweaks and features, onto Windows Phone. That's happening in conjunction with a host of new manufacturers, including Nokia and Samsung, prepping a host of new Windows Phone devices. Although outside research firms generally place Windows Phone's share of the smartphone market far behind that of the iPhone and Android, Microsoft hopes that the combination of boosted software and new manufacturing partners can give the platform the momentum it needs to seize a bigger portion for itself.

One of those partners, Nokia, reportedly plans to show off its first Windows Phone devices at Nokia World in London, due to start Oct. 26.

That information also came from Lees, who told the Asia D conference Oct. 19: "Next week it's going to be Nokia World, where they're going to announce their phones and how they're going to make the most out of the Windows Phone opportunity."

It'll be interesting to see what rolls out. By tossing out homegrown mobile operating systems such as Symbian in favor of Windows Phone, Nokia is betting its existence on Microsoft software allowing it to push back against Android and other competitors. I'll bet anything that Nokia's push will eventually involve Windows Phone devices targeted at that midrange. The only question is when Nokia CEO Stephen Elop will try to make that happen.

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Microsoft's Ballmer Swipes at Google

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:02:59 -0500

We can learn at least one thing from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's talk at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco: When it comes to smartphone competition, Microsoft sees Android as a bigger threat than Apple.

I'm basing that solely on the vitriol that Ballmer leveled at Android (and Google in general) while leaving Apple relatively unscathed. Indeed, he offered faint praise for the iPhone, grouping it along with Windows Phone as a device that feels "good in your hand." His most damning criticism was that the iPhone offers "seas of icons," versus Windows Phone's goal of placing "information front and center."

But he launched an attack on Android. First he said, "You don't need to be a computer scientist to use a Windows Phone," as if you somehow need a Ph.D to use an Android-based device. Then he added, "It is very hard to be excited, for me, about the Android phones," which, well, is exactly what you'd expect the CEO of Microsoft to say under such circumstances.

It makes sense that Ballmer would reserve the bulk of his fire for Android, considering that both Microsoft and Google are following roughly the same strategy in smartphones: Persuade hardware manufacturers to load your software onto as many devices as possible, in a bid to saturate the market. But Android's a dominating platform while Windows Phone, roughly a year after its release, is still struggling for adoption.

At the same time, though, maybe Ballmer should curb some of that ire: The more Android devices sold, the more Microsoft gets paid, thanks to a series of patent-licensing agreements with Android manufacturers.

That Android strategy (Microsoft's alternative for Android manufacturers who refuse to enter into a licensing agreement: an intellectual property lawsuit) is just one piece of Microsoft's larger competitive thrust against Google. During his talk, Ballmer also insisted that, with the release of Office 365 and other cloud-productivity platforms, Microsoft was making more progress against Google in the cloud. "Our ramp rate of sold seats, it's got a nice trajectory," he said, "We've got a highly functional product that's highly available."

He also painted Microsoft as gaining search-engine traction with users despite Google's dominance of the search space. Bing's progress was good "not just for share but for having enough data to continue to improve the product," he said, according to a video of the talk posted on YouTube, "to make search more than just 10 blue links." He sidestepped a moderator question about whether Microsoft would create its own social platform along the lines of Google Plus, suggesting instead that "we're adding what we would call connectivity to our products."

In other words, don't expect this battle to end any time soon.

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