Tag Archives: Windows Mobile

UPDATE 1-LG aims to boost phone sales 20 pct, bets on Android

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w-mobile* Aims to boost mobile phones sales by 20 pct to 140 mln Stocks
* More than half of new smartphones in 2010 to use Android
* Targets double-digit market share in smartphones (Adds details, background)
SEOUL, Jan 13 (Reuters) – LG Electronics Inc, the world’s No. 3 mobile phone maker, aims to increase handset sales by 20 percent this year and is pinning its hopes on Google’s (GOOG.O) Android operating system to beef up its smartphone lineup.

The South Korean maker of phones, TVs and appliances faces stiff competition in 2010 due to its relatively weak footing in the booming smartphones business against Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Research In Motion (RIM.TO) and Palm Inc (PALM.O). Continue reading →

Mobile Still waiting to see what sticks

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mobileDespite Apple’s tremendous success with the iPhone, we’re still in the early innings of mobile adoption. As such, a strategy of “throwing-lots-of-things-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks” makes a lot of sense.

It’s true of platforms like Google Android, but it’s also true of applications. Continue reading →

T-Mobile Pins Outages on Software Glitch

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t-mobileOn Wednesday, T-Mobile said it had discovered the root cause of the outages on Tuesday: a software glitch.

The explanation was posted on T-Mobile’s support forums at 3:30 PM PT on Wednesday. T-Mobile also reconfirmed in a separate message, posted earlier at 9:30 AM PT, that it had restored service to all customers, including voice, text, and picture messaging.

Some users, however, said they were still without service, and took to T-Mobile’s support forums to prove it. “Really guys? Seriously? 4pm PST I wasn’t receiving messages. 4:44PST I wasn’t receiving messages,” “stevenjcarney” wrote. “My friends boyfriend is also not receiving messages. This is not fixed. FIX IT.” Continue reading →

Nokia N-Gage Gaming Platform

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Nokia has finally decided to kill off its N-Gage gaming platform after years of shifting the strategy behind it with little success.

Nokia introduced N-Gage in 2003 as a standalone handheld gaming device, which developed a small but enthusiastic following. Nokia later discontinued the device and instead came up with a plan to develop phones that would support the N-Gage platform. After a delay, it began introducing phones that could play N-Gage games in early 2008. Continue reading →

Will Windows 7 Reboot PC Sales?

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Why the boost to the tech business from Microsoft’s new operating system may disappoint the bulls

For the first time in years, the PC market is starting to draw serious attention from Wall Street. Dell (DELL) shares surged after the company beat earnings expectations for the second quarter. The next day chip giant Intel (INTC) gave the sector another lift by raising its forecast for PC processor sales. Hopes are building among investors that the industry will see a revival in growth as Microsoft (MSFT) unveils its new operating system, Windows 7, on Oct. 22 to replace its troubled Windows Vista. “I think the uplift is going to be significant,” says Brian Blair, an analyst with equity research firm Wedge Partners.

The question is how significant. Before Vista, a new Windows release could set off a corporate and consumer buying binge—not only for PCs, but also printers, mice, and software. Some analysts have pointed out that the Windows pop this time could be especially pronounced, since many people never bothered to buy Vista and some 600 million PCs are running the nine-year-old Windows XP.

But the tech bulls may be disappointed. Given the weak economy, PC unit sales are expected to rise 6.9% worldwide in the fourth quarter, according to research firm IDC. That would be the first quarter-over-quarter increase this year, but far short of the boost from releases such as Windows 95. “A lot of people are going to have to rethink their assumptions,” says IDC analyst David Daoud. The firm expects PC sales to rise 6.1% in 2010.

Microsoft declined to comment for this story. But even the software giant has tried to tamp down expectations for the new operating system. “[The impact is] likely to be elongated over a couple of years, to be honest,” Bill Koefoed, the company’s investor relations chief, told shareholders in August.

That’s not a reflection on Windows 7 itself. In preliminary testing the software has earned largely positive reviews, despite a few complications with installation. Besides delivering boot-up speeds and reliability that Vista didn’t, Windows 7 will help PCs work better with high-speed networks, a key step as companies use more software programs online. Consumers will also be able to more easily view and share even high-definition content, whether it’s a TV show on Hulu.com or a home video. “Windows 7 will put the pizzazz back into PCs,” says Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of graphics chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA).

The economy is the primary reason for the holdup in near-term PC sales. While some companies are boosting their capital spending, most will make do with their existing computers for now. Kris Kutchera, vice-president for information technology at Alaska Airlines (ALK), says she will wait as long as possible to upgrade, maybe until 2012. “There’s not a huge value for us to move [to Windows 7],” she says.

Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Will Debut on 3 LG Electronics Smartphones.

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mobileMicrosoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 will also roll out on three LG Electronics smartphone models in coming weeks, and eventually 13 devices made by the company by the end of 2010. Other manufacturers, such as HTC and Sony Ericsson, have announced this week that their upcoming smartphones will include Windows Mobile 6.5, which comes with features such as increased touch-screen functionality and Windows Marketplace for Mobile, Microsoft’s mobile applications store.
LG Electronics announced on Sept. 3 that it would launch three smartphones within “the next few weeks” equipped with Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5, and would release 13 Windows phones in total by the end of 2010. By doing so, LG joined other smartphone makers planning to port the operating system onto their devices.

Microsoft previously announced that Windows Mobile 6.5 would be available on Oct. 6. The three LG phones will be introduced in Europe, the United States and Asia before expanding globally at a later unspecified date; the models will include “a full touch-screen device, a touch slider with QWERTY keyboard and a QWERTY bar-type handset.”

The LG phones will also include the LG Application Store, which will feature 2,000 downloadable applications. There was no word on how that would interact – or conflict – with Microsoft’s own mobile-applications store, Windows Marketplace for Mobile.
In what has become a busy week of announcements surrounding Windows Mobile 6.5, HTC and Sony Ericsson also announced smartphones for fall 2009 that would feature the new version of the operating system. Those phones, the HTC Touch2 and Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X2, will also include functionality such as Flash-supporting Internet Explorer Mobile and expanded touch-screen support.

The HTC Touch2 is slated to debut on Oct. 2, with broad availability in “a variety of European and Asian markets in early Q4 2009,” while no firm date was given for the rollout of the Xperia X2.

Microsoft is taking several steps in an attempt to make headway against Apple’s iPhone, the Palm Pre, RIM’s BlackBerry line, and other smartphones that have a substantial foothold on the mobile marketplace. In addition to Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which will debut in October with 600 applications for consumers and businesses, Microsoft is also planning a broad debut of Windows Mobile 6.5 on phones manufactured by HTC, LG Electronics, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba. Networks that support the operating system will include AT&T, Bell Mobility, TELUS and Verizon Wireless.

Although Microsoft has updated a number of interface features in Windows Mobile 6.5, ranging from improved touch capabilities to customizable widgets, rumors abounded in August that Redmond was planning yet another release for the fourth quarter of 2010, Windows Mobile 7, that would include functionality designed to let the operating system compete against the Apple iPhone and the Palm Pre.

Microsoft also plans on differentiating itself in the market, and perhaps obtaining more developer loyalty, by suggesting that applications designed for Windows Mobile be sold at higher prices than the Apps for the Apple iPhone.

Although smartphone sales increased industrywide by 27 percent in the second quarter of 2009, Microsoft has found its own share of the smartphone operating system market steadily eroding, falling during that period to around 9 percent. If its initiatives in the mobile realm fail, the company risks missing out on an expanding market that may see mobile application downloads approach nearly 20 billion per year by 2014.

Is Windows Mobile 7 in beta already?

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Mobile
According to a Motorola employee’s LinkedIn profile, Windows Mobile 7.0 might already be in beta.
What if Windows Mobile 7.0 wasn’t as far off as some would expect? What if the operating system was already in early beta testing phase somewhere deep inside the caverns of Redmond? What if Windows Mobile 7.0 devices arrived less than a year after the first Windows Mobile 6.5 devices? Microsoft might just stand a chance then. It’s a long stretch, but Hand Huang’s LinkedIn profile, which says he’s a Chinese Senior Engineer at Motorola, puts the words “Windows Mobile 7.0″ and “Beta” right beside each other:

3. Joining Caesar product development, lead a team to do telephony feature and other applications development. Migrated relative applications from Windows Mobile 6 to Windows Mobile 7
Language: C++
Tools: VS2008, AKU, Platform Builder
Runtime Environment: Windows Mobile 7.0 (Beta)

UX Evangelist found this mention of Windows Mobile 7.0, and a ton of other ones, while scouring LinkedIn. If you’re wondering, the “Caesar” reference is likely the same one as the one on Siddharth Saxena’s LinkedIn profile: “Responsible for the integration of BCM4325 wlan chip on Caesar Platform (OMAP3430) on WM7 as a native host driver.” In other words, it’s just one of the many chips Microsoft is making sure the next version of Windows Mobile will work with.

Windows Mobile 7.0 being in beta so soon is not as farfetched as it might sound at first. The operating system has already been in development for years and last month, we noted how the Windows Mobile 7 Search and Windows Mobile 7 Browser teams were looking for internal testers.

Rumors have April 2010 pegged as the month the OS will hit RTM, and November 2009 the month Windows Mobile 7.0 gets put into testers hands. For that to be true, Windows Mobile 7.0 would have to be in some beta form by now. So what’s so special about November? Unsurprisingly, it’s when PDC09 is taking place. (Will attendees get a beta copy or at least some glimpse of the new mobile OS?)

At the same time though, we have a separate rumor from last month that states Microsoft will update Windows Mobile 6.5 in February 2010 (new whispers are calling it Windows Mobile 6.7), positioning it against Google’s Android, while in Q4 2010 the company will unleash Windows Mobile 7 against the iPhone. April 2010 doesn’t fall into Q4 2010, and although Microsoft might end up taking its sweet old time between RTM and actual devices, that’s a rather long wait, even for the software giant. Nevertheless, we always love to note how Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer declared in March 2009 that Windows Mobile versions need to start coming out faster, so there’s still hope.