Microsoft peaks at mobile strategy
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InfoWorld - SAN FRANCISCO -- At the CTIA Wireless IT &amp; Entertainment 2004 conference Monday, Mike Wehrs, Microsoft&#8217;s director of technology &amp; standards for its Mobility Division, disclosed some details about Big Red&#8217;s future mobile plans.
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The popularity of mobiles packed with features is set to explode as they get better and cheaper, say analysts.
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Microsoft has released details about a new version of Windows Mobile, the software behemoth's operating system designed for devices such as smartphones and PDAs. The OS, called Windows Mobile 6, will be available in the second quarter of 2007, offering an interface that resembles the recently launched Windows Vista.
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The wide variety of operating systems on mobile phones is hindering the growth of cool mobile Internet applications, according to Arun Sarin, CEO of network operator Vodafone.The success of a mobile Internet application can be influenced by how easy it is to develop for a particular software platform, and how attractive the resulting application is to use.&quot;The first imperative for us is world-class user experience,&quot; Sarin said in the opening keynote session of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday.&quot;The easier the interface, the more you use it and the more you get onto the Internet.&quot;Mobile phone operating systems are key to that experience, he said, but there are too many of them: as many as 30 or 40, Sarin estimated.&quot;We have to reduce that number. There&#39;s no way that developers of cool applications can develop for that many operating systems. If we had three, four, five, that would be better,&quot; he said.&quot;Note, I didn&#39;t say one!&quot; he said, with a nod to the market for PC operating systems. &quot;We&#39;ve seen that movie before.&quot;One reason for the proliferation of mobile phone operating systems is that, historically, handset suppliers offered their own proprietary code to make the best use of their phones&#39; limited processing and memory resources. Developing applications for such closed systems is difficult.Today&#39;s high-end phones, though, have as much computing power as low-end PCs, spawning a new market for operating systems such as Symbian OS or Windows Mobile that run on phones from multiple manufacturers.That ought to reduce the number of software platforms in the market, but more are still arriving, including several based on the open source operating system Linux.Vodafone distributes and supports phones with many different operating systems, but not the one that for Sarin proved the importance of the operating system: Apple&#39;s iPhone.&quot;Apple has raised the bar with the iPhone, and we all now know how important user interfaces are,&quot; he said. &quot;We as an industry will have to raise our game to provide the kind of user interface that our customers are now becoming accustomed to.&quot;Apple changed the market with slick software and a closed design tied to its own hardware, initially making it difficult for developers to add applications. The company plans to open things up a little with the release of a software development kit (SDK) later this month.Another new arrival in the mobile phone operating system market is Google, which hopes to change the market with a different approach: making it easy to build and use compelling mobile Web applications.Google began by releasing the software development kit for&#160;Android, an application framework built on a Linux base, and founded an industry group, Open Hardware Alliance, to encourage its use. Several chip makers are&#160;demonstrating prototype phones running Android&#160;in Barcelona this week, and Google hopes that manufacturers will release handsets based on the software later this year.Naturally, Google hopes to profit from this move by driving greater use of its services on the Web. But other companies will benefit too, if their sites are usable by more phone owners.For Sarin, that&#39;s good news too: more Internet use means more revenue-generating data traffic on his network.
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Microsoft is considering opening up Mobile Device Manager to support devices that don't run the Windows Mobile operating system.
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Microsoft appears to have won the battle to dominate the enterprise market segment for PDA and mobile OS makers, which is expected to show continued modest growth.
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Microsoft plans to announce beefed up remote Windows Mobile phone management capabilities with the introduction of System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 on Tuesday.The software will allow IT administrators to remotely secure and manage mobile phones much the same way they manage PCs and laptops, said John O&#39;Rourke, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business.Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer planned to make the announcement during the opening speech at the CTIA Wireless I.T. and Entertainment conference in San Francisco.IT administrators using Mobile Device Manager will be able to remotely do things like turn off a phone&#39;s camera and prevent the use of unauthorized messaging services. That&#39;s important for companies that must comply with regulations requiring them to record information sent from employee devices, O&#39;Rourke said.Mobile Device Manager integrates with Microsoft&#39;s System Center so administrators with that software can use the existing active directory and group policy feature to disseminate policies. For example, an organization may already have a set of policies for a group that contains field sales people so an administrator can choose to set mobile policies for that same group, pushing out changes to all of their Windows Mobile phones at once.The software also supports secure access to corporate information through VPN (virtual private network) connections. That allows phone users to access files that may be behind the corporate firewall and it also lets them use Web-based applications that reside on the corporate intranet, O&#39;Rourke said. Some companies may have internal Web-based expense reporting forms, for example, and the secure connection means that Windows Mobile phone users can use those forms from their phones.Mobile Device Manager comprises client and server software. Windows Mobile users will need to update their phones with the software. That process can happen a number of different ways, including requiring users to connect their phones to a PC and install the new software. Microsoft is working with device makers and operators to coordinate the update, similar to the way that they worked together to update devices to&#160;Windows Mobile 6.0&#160;from the previous version of the software. AT&amp;T is expected to announce at the conference how it will update devices on its network, O&#39;Rourke said.Once phone users have the software, they&#39;ll need to connect to the corporate network and log on before an administrator can start remotely managing the device. That&#39;s a one-time process, similar to one that corporate workers often go through when using a new laptop, he said.Microsoft expects to release System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008 in the first half of next year, O&#39;Rourke said. The server software should be able to support as many as 5,000 users, although it&#39;s not complete so the exact number hasn&#39;t been determined, he said.Windows Mobile 6.0 already offers some remote management capabilities. For example, an IT administrator can remotely wipe a Windows Mobile device in case it&#39;s stolen and manage passwords for the device, without Mobile Device Manager.Some Windows Mobile competitors also have similar remote management capabilities. Nokia&#39;s Intellisync device management offering, for example, allows IT administrators to remotely manage a variety of devices, including Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and Palm phones, as well as laptops and desktops. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server also includes group-based remote administration and management functions. Microsoft&#39;s Mobile Device Manager will only manage Windows Mobile Devices.
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Some of the first Windows Mobile 6.0 phones to hit the market will include Opera Software ASA's mobile browser, in addition to Microsoft Corp.'s browser.
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Microsoft continues its battle to dominate digital music distribution, with news it plans to make its music services available to mobiles before Apple does.
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InfoWorld - Mobile phones play an important role in Microsoft's software-plus-services vision, CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday.
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InfoWorld - Mobile phones play an important role in Microsoft's software plus services vision, CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday.
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Mobile phones play an important role in Microsoft's software-plus-services vision, CEO Steve Ballmer told the CTIA show in San Francisco today.
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Yahoo's emerging mobile business isn't likely what is driving Microsoft to bid $44.6 billion for the company, but Yahoo's early strides in mobile could be a nice strategic bonus down the road.
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A Microsoft executive indicated that it would make sense for the company to develop an iPhone competitor.
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A mix of mobile gadgets and services will jockey for dominance at the Mobile World Congress.
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US software giant Microsoft is aiming to get its audio and video software into mobile phones before it is beaten to the 650-million-handsets-a-year market by rivals like Apple.
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Microsoft has made the newest version of its mobile OS faster, sleeker and much more Vista-like than previous versions.