Netcom has finally released their smartphone sales charts for April 2012. Netcom is Norway’s second biggest carrier, and last month revealed Windows Phone has 7% market share in March 2012.

This month the Nokia Lumia 800 slipped to the 5th spot, after the arrival of the HTC One X in the 4th position.  Windows Phone dropped from 7 to 6%, but we suspect the arrival of two new handsets, mostly unfortunately in June, should reverse this trend.

Read more at Digo.no

Via AgileMobile.net

Read more at Microsoft News

We have enjoyed having the Nokia Lumia 900 top the Amazon best seller for a few weeks, but unfortunately with the arrival of new high-spec Android handsets this did not last.

It seems however the only thing needed to rejigger the charts was a price drop for the Nokia Lumia 900.

The handset is now only $39.99 on contract, versus $119 for the HTC One X, the nearest competitor.

Of course it’s not all about the price – there were plenty of cheaper Windows Phones around, but having one the general public is actually happy buying is a great new development, even if the low asking price is part of the attraction.

See the list here.

Thanks jarnail for the tip.

Today, Microsoft won a German patent injunction against Google subsidiary Motorola. The court ruled that Android OS infringe patent no. EP1304891 on “communicating multi-part messages between cellular devices using a standardized interface”. Motorola is the only major Android OEM that has not licensed the essential patents from Microsoft yet. As a result of it, Microsoft sued them in USA, Germany and other places and even won an import ban against Android based Motorola devices in USA. I’m sure Motorola with its new owner Google will come down to license patents from Microsoft soon by paying royalties. Read more about the case in details at the source link below.

Source: FOSS Patents

Microsoft has released an update to Facebook for Windows Phone app. The new v2.5 brings the following features as announced by them last month,

- Threaded messaging
Full Facebook threaded messaging including group messaging, all in a beautiful Metro style design.

- Tagging
Now you can tag friends and locations in your posts in the ‘with’ and ‘at’ format.

- Delete posts and comments
Use the tap and hold context menu to delete posts and comments from your wall.

- Active links in posts
Tap on links in posts to go directly to the content.

- Updates to the photo comments and likes page
The photo comments and likes page has been updated to match the posts comments and likes page. You can see a hint of the image at the top of the page, pull down and you can see the whole thing.

- And finally, by popular demand…
…you can now ‘like’ comments!

Download it here from the marketplace.

Posted from WordPress for Windows Phone

According the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker released today, combined Windows Mobile and Windows Phone shipments increased from 2.6 million in Q1 2011 to 3.3 million Q1 2012. Absolute market share dropped slightly from 2.6% a year ago to 2.2% now, but is up sequentially from 2.1% in Q4 2011 to 2.2% in Q4 2012, with shipments remaining flat from 3.3 million in Q4 2011.

IDC commented about Windows Phone platform in their report as follows,

Windows Mobile/Windows Phone has yet to make significant inroads in the worldwide smartphone market, but 2012 should be considered a ramp-up year for Nokia and Microsoft to boost volumes. Until Nokia speeds the cadence of its smartphone releases or more vendors launch their own Windows Phone-powered smartphones, IDC anticipates slow growth for the operating system.

It is of note that besides Android, which actually increased shipments by 2 million, Windows Phone was the only mobile OS to maintain shipments sequentially, while the other mobile operating systems, including iOS, Symbian and Blackberry all saw sequential reductions in shipments after the holiday season.

Hopefully going into Q2 2012 we will see this translate into an upward trend in actual sales and further market share gains in the rest of the year.

Source: IDC

He however confirmed that  plenty more high-spec digital imaging products in the pipeline, which would be good news for the company’s reputation, given that recent Nokia Lumia cameras have not lived up to expectations.

While Julita would not confirm these cameras will show up on Lumia handsets, this seems almost confirmed by the rapid sunsetting of the Symbian OS.

Read more at Engagdet here.

Ubisoft’s Babel Rising game is coming to Xbox LIVE Arcade on June-13th. Along with this announcement, Ubisoft has also confirmed that the same game will be released on Windows Phone platform under the title Babel Rising 3D. The game is expected to have similar game play and graphics. You can watch the game trailer after the break.

Source: TrueAchievements

As we near the announcement of Windows Phone 8 (expected in June 20th) we expect more and more information to leak out.

A candidate for being the latest morsel is this screen shot from the WP Bench Windows Phone benchmarking app, which shows the latest device to be added being the Nokia Phi, running Windows Phone OS 8.0.9698.0. The number is in fact slight ahead of the list of build numbers we posted here suggesting it may be the latest version of the OS, finally on a real device that will eventually hit the market (vs the earlier Nokia Fluid leaks for example).

Now of course it is possible to spoof WP Bench device names, but we do not believe this extends to OS versions, suggesting at least this entry is real.

What do our readers think of the Nokia Phi name? Let us know below.

WP Bench is $0.99 with a free version and can be found in Marketplace here.

Thanks Matthew for the tip.

Every person as an artist inside of them that needs to be inspired. Too often, our artistic side is ignored and life begins to get boring. ARTistic Windows Phone App was created to entertain, empower and inspire that artist hiding inside of all of us. Established and emerging artists are able to exhibit, promote and share their work using a phone application. This Windows based phone application was developed to embrace the community of artists and people who are devoted to art.

Art plays an important part in society. Art helps make people well rounded with a deeper understanding of themselves and the world. It helps people think beyond their limits of pervious boundaries. The ARTistic Windows phone application helps bring art and graphic design to literally everyone’s fingertips. The enjoyment and pleasure that are brings is immeasurable. Beauty is brought to the world in a way that everyone can understand no matter where they are globally or what language they speak.

ARTistic features:

• Create a free profile as an artist
• Upload photos, art, craft or anything artistic on your part
• Detail analytics for each of your ART
• Add favorites to your ART list
• Review and Comment other fellow ARTists uploads
• Ability to download ARTist uploads
• Live ART Tile and Pin specific ART to your home screen
• Pinch, Zoom and Rotate ART when viewing on full screen

Art is all around us and now it is even available on Windows Phone. It is important that everyone has access to the art world because it’s pure nature helps open minds with this FREE application.

Download ARTistic for Windows Phone