Microsoft Phone Software is Coming in the Spring
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Microsoft Corp. plans a launch this spring of its next- generation operating system for wireless devices, Windows Mobile 6, which is important for the company's efforts to grab market share beyond the desktop.
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(InfoWorld) - High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), the largest maker of handsets that use Microsoft software, has launched four new smart phones including one that'sÂ designed to rival the BlackBerry. The HTC S620, formerly code-named Excalibur, is a slender 12.8 millimeters (mm) thick and weighs 130g. It's designed to promote the push e-mail function of Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 software and to compete with Research In Motion's popular BlackBerry device. The phone has a navigation bar below the screen which provides easy access to Outlook Mobile, Word Mobile, Powerpoint Mobile and a PDF viewer. It has a 2.4-inch color screen, a full QWERTY keypad and a host of wireless functions, including quad-band GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) and EDGE (Enhanced Data GSM Environment), WLAN (wireless-LAN) and Bluetooth. The S620 is due to be offered by phone operators throughout Europe in October, when prices will be announced. Some models will be customized for certain network operators. The other phones also run Windows Mobile 5.0, and all four of them come with a mobile version of Microsoft Office, which includes most of the Office applications except for Excel. All of the phones are being offered initially in Europe, with the U.S. and possibly Asia to follow. The HTC P3300 is a smart phone that combines the functions of a PDA (personal digital assistant) with a GPS (global positioning system) device. It marks the start of a new partnership for HTC, which teamed up with TomTom International BV, an Amsterdam-based maker of personal navigation products. The P3300 comes with TomTom's Navigator 6 software and a 2.8-inch color screen to view a set of preinstalled maps for Western Europe. The handset runs Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 and other Microsoft applications. HTC and TomTom will probably work together on other devices in the future, they said. For users who want a 3G smart phone with high-speed Internet connectivity, HTC developed the P3600. The handset, which also uses Windows Mobile 5.0, features e-mail, calendar and word processing software. It also has a 2.0 megapixel camera and comes ready to run on HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks. It's due to be available in Europe from September. The last of the new handsets, the HTC S310, is a small, candy-bar style quad band mobile phone designed primarily for messaging. It also runs on Windows Mobile 5.0 and will be available throughout Europe in September. HTC has already lined up some major European mobile phone operators to sell the devices. For example, T-Mobile International plans to launch a customized version of the HTC P3300 in several European markets, HTC said.
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Several different versions of the enterprise messaging service will be released.
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InfoWorld - Sony Ericsson will begin selling its first phone using Windows Mobile software this year, Microsoft was due to announce on Sunday, just ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
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Microsoft prepares to release a new application for delivering "snippets" of data to Windows Mobile devices at the Mobile World Congress.
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Microsoft's CEO shares his big plans in mobile software, and why he thinks the iPhone is "quite nice."
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Software makers are partnering with third-party wireless applications providers to develop their mobile systems
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The software giant may be developing a Windows Mobile OS-based competitor.
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REDMOND, Wash. - Microsoft Corp. plans a launch this spring of its next-generation operating system for wireless devices, Windows Mobile 6, which is important for the company's efforts to grab market share beyond the desktop.
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Microsoft&#39;s new Mobile Device Manager faces a shortcoming because it is exclusive to Windows Mobile devices, but that might change, an executive said on Tuesday.Scott Horn, general manager at Microsoft&#39;s mobile and embedded device group, left the door open to potential future support for non-Windows Mobile devices.&quot;Today, we have nothing to announce,&quot; he said. &quot;But we&#39;re looking at it, we&#39;re thinking about it. Who knows what the future brings?&quot; Horn spoke during a press lunch at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference in San Francisco on Tuesday.He mentioned that Microsoft has in the past licensed ActiveSync as a way to extend services to non-Microsoft devices.Microsoft introduced System Center Mobile Device Manager&#160;at the conference. The software lets IT administrators manage and secure Windows Mobile phones. Unlike some other management products on the market, including Nokia&#39;s Intellisync, it is compatible only with phones running the Windows Mobile operating system.AT&amp;T, which is supporting Mobile Device Manager, said there is inertia among IT administrators. IT managers are worried about security and management issues, said Mike Woodward, vice business marketing for AT&amp;T. He thinks that the software as well as the services from a new company,&#160;Enterprise Mobile, will spur more enterprise use of mobile phones. Woodward could not offer specifics about how it will support Mobile Device Manager or how exactly it will work with Enterprise Mobile.For now, the new software and the services from Enterprise Mobile, which help enterprises deploy and manage mobile phones, are designed for large businesses. Mobile Device Manager, expected to come out next year, could support as many as 5,000 users. Enterprise Mobile doesn&#39;t expect to begin thinking about serving smaller businesses for another 12 to 18 months because it will be focused on making sure it knows what large enterprises need, said Steve Moore, president of Enterprise Mobile.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Research workers showed off some of their projects, including several that find new uses for mobile phones, on Monday at a summit in Redmond, Wash. Eric Chang, director of incubation at Microsoft's Advanced Technology Center in Beijing, described Fone+, a product that lets users connect their mobile phones to a TV, a keyboard, and a mouse. Fone+ would let users take advantage of the growing processing power in mobile phones that enables more computing functions but would allow them to use phones to access the Internet with a full keyboard and on a larger screen. The product would be aimed at regionsÂ such asÂ China, where PC penetration is still quite low but mobile phone ownership is high. Users could also connect other devices, such as external storage, to the phone through the cradle. The phone could connect to the Internet either wirelessly or through broadband wired connections, Chang said. While some parts of China have broadband, others are covered by at best GPRS or EDGE, relatively slow mobile connections, he said. Chang expects to demonstrate the application Tuesday at the summit. The application appears to have caught the eye of Microsoft executives such as Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer, who mentioned Fone+ at a conference earlier this year. Another researcher showed off applications that combine physiological sensors with mobile phones. One application developed and tested by Nuria Oliver, a researcher at Microsoft Research, combines a heart-rate sensor with a music-tempo analyzer to let runners use music players in their mobile phones to set their workouts. With MPTrain, a user first chooses a workout on the phone that might include two 10-minute periods of intense exercise interspersed with periods of slower exercise. The application then analyzes the music in the user's phone to choose songs based on their tempo and length, matching the chosen workout. "The phone knows where your heart rate should be based on the workout you want to do," Oliver said. "It determines whether you need to slow down, speed up, or keep the same pace and based on that selects the right song to induce you to run at the right pace," she said. She tested how well a song encourages a runner to change pace and found that music works remarkably well, compared to runners trying to pace their workout on their own without music. Oliver has also developed and tested an application that can be used by people who suffer from or think they might suffer from sleep apnea. People with sleep apnea repeatedly stop breathing as they sleep, often many times a night, and perhaps for a minute or longer. Wearing a small sensor on a toe that communicates with a mobile phone over Bluetooth, a user could sleep at home and monitor their heart rate and level of oxygen in their blood. Most people with sleep apnea undergo tests when they are hooked up to many sensors on their bodies and must sleep in a hospital for one or two nights. Oliver's application would allow users to remain in the comfort of their own homes and monitor their sleep for longer periods of time, allowing them to note how different factorsÂ such asÂ food or stress may affect their sleep, she said. The researchers showed off their projects at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, a conference where Microsoft invites members of academia to discuss issues in computer science research. Microsoft Research, a group comprising 700 researchers in five labs around the world, works on a variety of projects that may ultimately become Microsoft products or be sold to external sources.
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Upcoming smart phone will feature a mobile version of F-Secure's antivirus software.
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The push is on to get Instant Messenger software on more and more mobile phones.
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Microsoft's new Windows Mobile OS promises to take advantage of Exchange Server 2007 features that will provide a richer e-mail experience.
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(InfoWorld) - For business users who want Microsoft Office on their cell phones, Windows Mobile 6, the upcoming version of Redmond's mobile operating system to be unveiled next week, will be a must-have upgrade. Mobile 6 comes with mobile versions of Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. With the continuing increase in sales of smartphones at the expense of handheld devices, Office makes a lot of sense, especially for synchronizing with desktop files, according to Rob Enderle, principal at the Enderle Group. Carriers and handset manufacturers who believe they can put the limited memory and storage to better use, however, are out of luck. Microsoft Office still comes with Mobile 6. According to John Starkwether, a product manager in the Mobile and Embedded Devices Division at Microsoft, Office is part of the package. Starkwether conjectured that if a vendor really wants to exclude Office from the operating system, an accommodation might be possible. Additional upgrades to the mobile OS include Microsoft's Direct Push Technology with automatic synchronization of Outlook calendars, tasks, and contacts using Exchange Server. For security and management, Mobile 6 will also give mobile network managers the capability of remotely wiping out all data from a device should it be lost or stolen. Other security features include certificate options and storage card encryption. Business users will also be pleased with the inclusion of mobile versions of the .Net Compact Framework and SQL Server in order to access a company's standard line of business applications remotely. The Office applications are the most robust to date for the limited capacities of a cell phone. Spell checking in Word, though, is not included. E-mail viewing will be easier on the eye with formatting, tables, and pictures viewable as originally generated. One-click options for e-mail, such as "reply all", moving a message to a subfolder and "delete" have been added to accommodate the restricted functionality of a small device. Windows Vista users on the desktop will be able to swap music, pictures, movies and Outlook information between the Vista PC and the mobile device. Windows Live will integrate mail, messenger, search, contacts, and spaces. Call history is now placed inside the individual contact card. Enderle said that although there was "a lot of great stuff" in Mobile 6 Microsoft still has to focus on ease of use. "Compared to the Apple iPhone with its simplified interface, Mobile 6 is still complex to use," Enderle said. Devices with Windows Mobile 6 will ship worldwide in the second quarter.
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Developers will get to write applications for the iPhone. Sort of.
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TechWeb - The operating system is expected to include BlackBerry-like push e-mail and take advantage of features in Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and Microsoft Exchange.