Ballmer: Microsoft will power the mobile revolution
198617
'Not Apple. Not RIM.' CTIA Steve Ballmer believes that Microsoft is the only company with "the wherewithal" to dominate the world of mobile computing.â¦
63670
Microsoft has announced a version of their digital rights management platform geared specifically for mobile content.
649628
At Gartner Symposium ITXPO, Microsoft Chief Executive, Steve Ballmer touched on quite a few topics that are targeted towards Microsoft&#39;s end consumers.
184729
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.
400073
The software giant may be developing a Windows Mobile OS-based competitor.
544491
InfoWorld - Mobile phones play an important role in Microsoft's software plus services vision, CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday.
305985
Steve Ballmer says Microsoft is going to be a force in new technology areas, one of these days. Really.
713804
Ultramobile PCs, the new product category developed by Microsoft, have been unsuccessful so far because they're too expensive and their batteries don't last long enough, says a top AMD executive.
150458
2007 could be called the year of the mobile operating system.Since Microsoft entered the scene around five years ago, the smartphone operating system industry has been fairly stable. Symbian, Linux, Research in Motion, and Windows Mobile make up the bulk of smartphone software, each to varying degrees of success in different regions.But in 2007,&#160;Apple introduced the iPhone, which runs its own brand of software, and Google announced that next year its&#160;Android mobile operating system platform&#160;will come out.The entrance of two new operating systems from well-known brands shakes up the plans of some mobile operators, creates some headaches for end-users, presents bigger challenges for application developers, and indicates some fundamental changes in the mobile industry.To put the discussion in perspective, realize that smartphones make up a relatively small portion of overall mobile phone sales. In 2006, 8 percent of phones sold were smartphones, said Chris Hazelton, an analyst with IDC. That&#39;s set to grow in 2007, but will likely hit only the low double digits, he said.Why all the interest then? The industry has high hopes that existing phone owners, who now make up a large part of the overall population in developed countries, will want to move on to the next generation of more capable smartphones.In addition, operators are gradually indicating that they&#39;re stepping aside from their role as gatekeeper and will allow more outside companies to offer phones and services to their customers, opening up new opportunities for software, hardware, and Web services companies.Verizon and AT&amp;T have recently made bold statements indicating that they&#39;re opening up their networks to more devices. While end-users might have the option to use a wider variety of devices,&#160;Verizon&#39;s announcement&#160;at least comes with a catch. &quot;It&#39;s like, &#39;OK, we&#39;ll bow to what you want, but be careful what you wish for. You can bring these phones to our network, but if you have problems, don&#39;t call us&#39;,&quot; said Hazelton. Verizon hasn&#39;t promised technical support for handsets that run on its network as part of its new open program.Still, at the very least mobile customers in general will soon be able to add the iPhone and new Android phones to the list of handsets they can choose from. That&#39;s good and bad for phone customers. &quot;End-users will probably need to do a bunch more homework,&quot; said Scott Horn, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s mobile communications business. That&#39;s because they&#39;ll need to figure out if the new software can support the features and services they want.At the same time that operators are opening up to new handsets, they&#39;re also beginning to ease restrictions on which online services customers can use. The trend started in Europe, where operators such as Vodafone have said that the bulk of their online data revenue came from services offered by third parties outside of its portal. Operators also learned how difficult it is to build a portal of desirable services. &quot;It&#39;s an incredibly resource intensive and expensive undertaking,&quot; Horn said. The shift away from the walled garden is just starting in the United States, he said.Allowing easier access to Web services is relevant to the software on the phones. Microsoft says that some handset makers and operators are interested in Windows Mobile because of its support of popular Microsoft services&#160;such as&#160;Live IM and Hotmail for mobile users. Google has a whole host of services that it targets at mobile users, from which it hopes to earn advertising dollars. And Apple has cleverly linked the use of the iPhone and its software with iTunes, where customers can buy content.All of these changes represent a major challenge for many operators. Some operators have in the last year or so said they want to support just a couple of operating systems as a way to cut costs related to support and training, Hazelton said. &quot;I think carriers are kind of backing down on the demand that there be fewer platforms,&quot; he said, as a result of the new software hitting the market.The additional operating systems might also pose a problem for application developers. &quot;It will be hard for application developers to pick,&quot; Hazelton said. Developers don&#39;t always focus on just one platform, but there will be so many operating systems in the mobile space that it will be difficult for them to choose which will be the most popular. For now in the United States, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile have the largest developer base and that should continue in the foreseeable future, he said.But the new operating systems should also serve to grow the number of developers, Horn said. Developers will continue to have to make bets about which platform will pay off. &quot;That&#39;s always been the case. Developers say, &#39;Where&#39;s the biggest market for my talents and which market has the lowest cost to enter?&#39; In many ways, it&#39;s an economically driven decision for developers,&quot; Horn said.The experts agree that the new operating systems don&#39;t pose a threat to any particular existing platform provider. &quot;The more entrants in the near term means faster growth in the category, driving us all up collectively,&quot; Horn said. &quot;There will be big players and there will be niche players, we&#39;ll see different business models.&quot;Hazelton agreed. &quot;There&#39;s more a benefit than a threat because it serves to broaden awareness of smartphones,&quot; he said.
150327
DAVOS, Switzerland  - The arrival of a truly mobile Web, offering a new generation of location-based advertising, is set to unleash a "huge revolution", Google Inc Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Friday.
179949
Windows Mobile will continue to power smartphones produced by Microsoft partners, Gates says.
318955
What will tomorrow's mobile devices look like? asks Bill Thompson
169873
Microsoft  will not launch a product that competes directly with Apple's  iPhone, Chairman Bill Gates said in an interview with Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
359327
Microsoft releases Windows mapping, search, functions for phones.
494298
Open-source strategies are gathering steam in the mobile computing realm with companies like Wake3 and Funambol leveraging open source to bring iPhone-style browsing and e-mail to devices.During a meeting of the Mobile Monday Silicon Valley group at Microsoft offices in Mountain View, Calif. Monday evening, representatives of Wake3, Funambol, and Wind River noted the rise of open-source software on handsets. Wake3, for its part, is bringing the open-source WebKit mobile Web browser to Windows Mobile systems."WebKit for Windows Mobile really is, in essence, a kind of iPhone browsing for Windows Mobile," said Daniel Zucker, CTO of Wake3.He and an official at Wind River stressed the paradigm shift brought on by the iPhone. Instead of persons inquiring about what type of wireless service someone is using, they want to know if they have an iPhone, said Bill O'Such, Wind River director of engineering."It's really changed the balance," O'Such said."The iPhone opened up everyone's eyes. For the first time, you could really get true desktop browsing on a device," Zucker said.Wake3 plans a public beta release of WebKit for Windows Mobile in a few months. It will have full support for JavaScript, but Adobe Flash support is not expected. "You pretty much need a license," from Adobe, said Zucker. Instead, Wave3 will support technologies like SVG.At Funambol, the company specializes in push e-mail based on the Funambol open-source project, formerly known as Sync4j."We're actually seeing a tremendous surge of interest in open source in mobile," said Hal Steger, vice president of marketing at Funambol. The company has commercial and open-source versions of its software.Technologies like the iPhone and Google's Android along with the upcoming available wireless spectrum have spurred interest in open source for mobile systems, according to Steger. Also, prices are dropping for data plans for mobile phones."All things are kind of coming together," he said.Open source has helped Funambol get its software into the hands of more developers, who can test the software, fix it, and contribute code changes back to the community,? Steger said."If you've ever developed a mobile phone application and you're trying to address the mass market, there's a fundamental problem," he said. Half the world owns a cell phone but there are more than 1,000 models and many operating systems to support. But developers via open source can test the software and try it on their own phones."What we like to say is open source enables the largest mobile developer community to make any device work on any network. That's probably the biggest single advantage at least from our experience of open source to mobile," said Steger.To give developers incentives, Funambol pays developers $500 to $3,000 to work on projects, such as a Google Android client for Funambol or a Google Gmail connector. The company also pays $25 to persons to test their phone to see if Funambol works on it.Funambol differs from Android, which is Google's open-source stack for mobile devices, in that Android is for the client while Funambol is a server application, Steger said.Attendees pondered how Android would stack up against LiMo. The LiMo Foundation is intending to build a hardware-independent Linux OS for mobile devices."It's a hard question to answer," O'Such said. The market will decide, he said.? Wind River Systems is part of the Open Handset Alliance, which has a hand in developing Android, as well as a member of the LiMo Foundation.
347905
Vocalisation. Vocalisation. Vocalisation CES The future of the mobile phone is... er... voice. So said Microsoft staffers during Bill Gates' (final) CES keynote speech last night. Voice for calls, obviously - but also voice for controlling the phone...â¦
719219
Microsoft prepares to release a new application for delivering "snippets" of data to Windows Mobile devices at the Mobile World Congress.