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May 24th, 2013MarketWindows Phone is currently the third-leading mobile phone platform in the world, more than tripling its market share year-over-year and more than doubling unit sales while pushing past a slumping BlackBerry.
And Windows Phone could jump into second place very soon.
“Windows Phone claiming the third spot is a first and helps validate the direction taken by Microsoft and key partner Nokia,” the IDC’s Kevin Restivo said in a statement. “Given the relatively low volume generated, the Windows Phone camp will need to show further gains to solidify its status as an alterative to Android or iOS.”
Those further gains are possible over the next year or two as Microsoft’s primary phone parter, Nokia, transitions to an all-smartphone lineup.
Global smartphone market share, Q1 2013But the real opportunity for both Microsoft and Nokia will come as Nokia continues its transition from feature phone sales over to Windows Phone. The company still sold something like 55 million feature phones in the first quarter of 2013, and while those cheap phones are going largely to developing nations, they will transition at some point to Windows Phone.
Those feature phones sales are decreasing, and the transition from cheap feature phone to somewhat more expensive Windows-based smartphones will decrease them still more, but they will be higher-value sales.And, they might just be high enough, depending on what Apple does in the region of a cheaper iPhone, to catapult Microsoft to number two.
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April 2nd, 2012Apps
As you probably heard, Windows 8 beta is out. With this version there are also certain number of developed apps and games, but not many sites. We searched around and we found only one!
Windows8Games.Info is the first website dedicated to Windows 8 games on the Internet. Nice clean look, games organized in categories with all info you need to know about the game, give you a real feel of Windows 8.
There is about 20 games on the site at this moment, but those are all games developed for Windows 8 so far. We hope that developers will roll out more cool games for this new platform.
According to Microsoft and some big Tech blogs, Windows 8 should be “next big thing”, so Windows 8 Games should be the same. Let’s wait and see.
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March 31st, 2012Updates
Windows Phone has been picking up steam lately,launching the platform in China just yesterday and making headway as one of Nokia’s primary partners.
But when it comes to buying Windows Phone, the big hesitation for just about everyone is apps. Both the Android Market and the App Store have surpassed half a million apps each, but today Microsoft has an exciting (albeit smaller) bit of good news to share.
The Windows Phone Marketplace has topped 70,000 apps. That’s up from 50,000 in December and 60,000 in January.
Microsoft knows that variety and quality of apps will be a huge competition point for the platform, and has acted accordingly. The company’s BizSpark program courts developers from all over the world, and the Mobile Acceleration Week specifically ensures that quality apps being built for Windows Phone 7 get as much publicity and attention as they should.
It also doesn’t hurt that Windows Phone is generally being seen as a more legitimate platform as great device makers like Nokia and HTC put their efforts behind it. Plus, Microsoft has said before that the company is more focused on quality than quantity when it comes to apps.
*story by Jordan Crook at Techcrunch
Tags: marketplace -
March 30th, 2012Updates
Long-time Microsoft watchers like me are marveling at the company’s transformation. Slowly but surely, the siloed behemoth that once couldn’t get its desktop and mobile operating system teams to talk to each other is now starting to glide forward as one vast entity. The most visible refection of this sea change: design.
It’s no secret that, across Microsoft’s products, especially in software, there is now a single design language defined by reductionism, typography and unadorned shapes and colors. The look is called Metro, but if you think it only explains the look and feel of Windows 8, Windows Phone, Zune Marketplace and Xbox Live, you’d be wrong. As Microsoft designers explained during a recent and rather intimate panel discussion in Soho, Metro is a design philosophy with five core tenants that they say help drive product design and delivery throughout the Redmond, Washington company.
This is not the Microsoft I know and I asked the group to explain the moment when Microsoft woke up and realized it was heading down the wrong path. Naturally, they all said there was no moment. Panelists variously described the changes as a “grass roots movement” among designers across different divisions and as a gradual realization that they “wanted to be better.”
Little Epiphanies
There were little epiphanies, though, that may have led to the big changes we see at work today in Microsoft. Rochelle Benavides, Sr. Experience Development Lead for Zune and Xbox, for instance, said that in the Zune design they realized “Typography is the new iconography.” The design impulse has now carried through to virtually all of Microsoft’s latest consumer interfaces.
Sam Moreau, Principal Director of User Experience for Windows, also pointed out a couple of key influences, which included subway sign symbols and the Swiss wayfinder symbols.
Stuart Ashmun, General Manager, Interactive Entertainment Business, who joined Microsoft back in 1984 as an industrial designer, told us that changes within Microsoft are a reflection of changes in the way consumers interact with technology. “We’re moving away from the need for us to learn a device and to the device needing to learn us.”
Microsoft’s Metro design philosophy is, the designers said, in evidence in hardware like the new Windows Phone. It reflects what Moreau called “affordance,” which is design speak for the innate qualities of an object allowing you to perform the implied action. You might also describe it as “form follows function.”
Not About Apple
The designers insisted that their big conversion was not influenced by Apple, a company that has had consistent ecosystem design language for more than a decade. On the other hand, they all made a number of veiled, somewhat negative, references to Apple’s design style. Jeff Fong, who has been with Microsoft for 15 years and works on the Windows Phone design team explained one of the Metro design principles: Authentically Digital. It might seem an odd one since everything Microsoft does is more or less digital.
“It’s all about honesty,” Fong told panel moderator and Next at Microsoft editor Steve Clayton. Fong said that with Windows Phone the goal was to get people to tasks quickly and to present content as plainly as possible. So they steered away from what he sees as a growing trend: “Taking your icons and taking things you have on screen and giving them glassy reflections, drop shadows, transparency… I think we can do a better job…in a more direct way.”
That authenticity also means Microsoft won’t use faux material, like wood grain. Microsoft is not about to start building products out of only titanium or gold, though. As Young Kim, Senior User Experience Designer, Microsoft Hardware Group, explained it, good design can come out of any material, “Using plastic and making it the most beautiful plastic possible.”
Collaboration
All of the designers talked about how intense collaboration, not just with other designers, but with engineers and developers, is leading to a new pride in craftsmanship. “What’s different now,” said Benavides, who apparently obsessed over the speed with which the Xbox dashboard moved when you waved your hand at the Kinect interface, is that “these aren’t the details that fall off and reach the customers. We care about it so much.”
While none of the designers could tell me the moment Microsoft changed, they did admit that it was not an entirely bottom-up conversion. Moreau told me they did have buy-in from management.
As for where the original design for Metro on the Windows Phone came from — likely the design that started all this — Fong came closest to taking credit “Yes, I was there to help kind of guide the direction for how the UI was gonna get implemented… but those things that guide and direct came from lots of other people and designers.” The designers all laughed when I insisted that there’s a whiteboard somewhere with the original Metro design.
If you want to know all of Microsoft’s new Metro Design Principals, check out the slideshow and then let us know what you think about Metro design and the philosophy in the comments.
*story by Lance Ulanoff from Mashable
Tags: metro style, windows 8 -
September 28th, 2011Updates
Yesterday morning, at roughly 10 a.m. Pacific time, Microsoft began rolling out the Mango update to phones around the world. This news makes Windows Phone users pretty excited. Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) is the largest and most feature-packed software refresh to date.
Also have in mind that that today is just the start. Their plan is to ramp up delivery gradually—but make the update available to most existing customers within 4 weeks.
Here’s their plan on the update process.
Who’s first?
Today Windows Phone 7.5 is starting to roll out to more than 98 percent of existing Windows Phone customers. This is a simultaneous, coordinated, global update that cuts across carriers, phone models, and countries. This time, almost everybody is going first.
Check Where’s My Phone Update? for the latest global status info.
When will I get it?
While today’s rollout includes most of our carriers and handsets, Microsoft is not making Mango available to everyone at once. So it could be a few weeks before an update message for Windows Phone 7.5 appears on your phone.
Why don’t they just blast it out?
It’s a fair question. Delivering Windows Phone 7.5 simultaneously to so many phone models and carriers requires the right engineering balance. Speed is a priority—but so is quality. Microsoft say that they’re not just delivering new operating system but also new software supplied by individual handset makers. This “firmware” is necessary so your phone—and apps—work with all the features of Windows Phone 7.5. But it essentially means that they’re supplying not just one update, but many different ones, given the variety of Windows Phones and carriers out there to choose from.
If a problem comes to light, it’s critical that Microsoft can isolate and fix it quickly. So we’re deliberately starting out slow. This week, they’ll be making the update available to 10 percent of customers. If everything looks good, they’ll open up the spigot a bit more—to around 25 percent. Microsoft will hold there for one or two weeks, then quickly ramp up to 100 percent—monitoring quality the entire way. That’s how they ensure Mango arrives both quickly and in tip-top shape.
If they Microsoft unexpected snags, they might have to temporarily slow or halt the update rollout.
How do I install it?
One day a message pops up on your phone saying an update is available. Great! But now what?
Depending on what kind of computer you have, you’ll need to install either the latest version of the Zune Software for PC or Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac. Then visit Update Central, our one-stop how-to resource for Windows Phone updates.
Once you’re done, you might want to poke around the Windows Phone website, which was refreshed today with new how-to articles, videos, and tips for getting the most from Windows Phone 7.5 (including a big list of new feature highlights). Finally, don’t forget to check out new online Marketplace for apps and games!
source: windowsteamblog.com
Tags: 7.5, Mango, update -
February 18th, 2011Events
WPcentral recorded these videos of Microsoft’s developer day at MWC 2011, showing the latest HTML5 features of the updated IE Mobile browser.
Tags: HTML5
They note that the WP7 team still have the ability to push out out of cycle updates just for the browser, but we suspect that is rather unlikely.
See a longer 7 minute video with more detail for developers after the break. -
February 18th, 2011Manufacturers
As Microsoft did few months back, Nokia is planning to give away Windows Phone 7 devices for their Launchpad developers later this year during the launch. That’s right!For now, Nokia is also giving away its flagship product, Nokia E7 for the developers to develop applications for their soon to be shelved Symbian platform.
This is a welcome move from Nokia to woo their waning developer interest.
Here is the letter sent to lauchpad developers:
“18 February 2011
Tags: Developers, Nokia
Dear Launchpad member,
In light of the strategy announcement made by Nokia and Microsoft last week, we are writing to you today to assure you that our commitment to you and your work to develop innovative apps for Nokia devices remains as strong as ever.
We understand that you have a lot of questions, and want to reassure you that we understand and we are here to listen to your feedback and provide you with information. We encourage you to visit Nokia Conversations where you can find a great deal of information regarding the news http://conversations.nokia.com and which can help to answer some initial questions.
We are very energized by recent developments, and believe the opportunities to develop for Nokia devices are as exciting and lucrative today as they have ever been. In addition to the opportunities coming soon with Nokia and WP7, we have several new benefits to share with you today, intended to help accelerate your app business to reach the 225 million app-hungry Nokia smartphone owners worldwide today.
Today, Qt developers can target more than 100 million Nokia devices for their apps and we have announced that we plan to sell an additional 150 million Symbian devices. Nokia will continue to provide free Qt trainings to help you learn how to make the most of this sophisticated cross-development platform. We’re enthusiastically meeting the demand, so please let us know whether you’d like a training set up in your area.
We are also excited to offer you one free admission to the next Nokia World/Nokia Developer Summit later this year. We will take care of the registration costs.
To assist you with your development activities in the near-term, we will ship one free Nokia E7 device to all program members. Additionally, we will send to you one free Nokia WP7 device, as soon as it becomes available.
To accelerate your mobile app development, we will provide free tech support on all Nokia technologies for the next three months (up to 10 tickets). Equally, if you would like to take advantage of a free User Experience evaluation of one of your apps, please let us know and we will work with you to make those arrangements.
We will also be extending our business development support to all Nokia developer and content program members who are currently developing apps for Nokia devices, and we will assist in publishing those apps in Nokia’s Ovi Store. We will continue to offer ideas and guidance for ways to fully promote your published apps so that you can reap the rewards of your hard work.
If you have any questions, or need any help from us in the days ahead, we want you to know that you can count on us to be there for you. We are truly excited about working with you to discover new opportunities that will lead to future successes. “
Windows Phone Games
