Microsoft Sees Music Opportunity in Cell Phones
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U.S. 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 said its Zune music player will include wireless technology that will allow owners to share songs and playlists easily.
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Microsoft&#39;s MSN division is expected to finally enter the music business this week with a public beta of its new online music service.
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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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Microsoft Corp. is offering a &quot;preview release&quot; of MSN Music, its answer to Apple&#39;s popular iTunes Music Store. The music download service is available in the United States exclusively for users of the Windows
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Microsoft Corp. MSFT.O said on   Thursday the ability to share music through wireless   connectivity is a key element for its new "Zune" portable media   player to win over consumers from Apple's market-leading iPod.
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Microsoft could dominate the media player market if it can turn the Zune into a media-optimized, extensible mini-PC that really works.
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CANNES/HELSINKI  - The world's largest mobile  phone maker, Nokia, and software giant Microsoft struck a deal  on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music  on-line and play it back on their handsets.
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Nokia and Microsoft, which have a history as rivals, have decided to work together when it comes to mobile music.
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Nokia is joining forces with Microsoft to allow its mobile phone users to more easily download music to their handsets.
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The phenomenal success of the iPod has inspired many imitators, and now Microsoft Corp. wants to get a piece of the action with its Zune player, due this year, which will include  wireless connectivity.
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In an effort to show wide support for its newest Windows Mobile operating system, Microsoft Corp. is highlighting several announcements from handset makers on Monday at 3GSM in Barcelona.
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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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Software giant Microsoft unveils a music-downloading service - MSN Music - to rival Apple's iTunes and other providers.
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The mobile phone and music industries are hoping to kick-start mass-market consumption of music over mobile handsets by unveiling on Monday a new, low-priced flat-rate service intended to challenge Apple's plans to offer music on its iPhone device.
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The software giant may be developing a Windows Mobile OS-based competitor.
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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.