One of Microsoft's big talking points at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week is that the Windows Phone Marketplace has hit 50,000 apps.
To cite one example of this meme, Microsoft spokesman Frank X. Shaw blogged Monday night, "Windows Phone has more than 50,000 published apps and games in Marketplace -- with an average of 300 more added each day."
It's a minor data point, and a small number compared to Apple's count, but it's moving in the right direction. For reference, Microsoft is just under 10 percent of the number of available apps in the iOS App Store, which Apple put at more than 500,000 in October.
By comparison, Microsoft in March was at 10,000 apps, which was less than 3 percent of Apple's total apps at the time of about 350,000.
A point that Microsoft often makes is that it's important to have the right apps rather than a high overall number of apps. The app-to-crap ratio is definitely worth keeping an eye on, although I find that sometimes more is more.
When it comes to productivity and business requirements, Windows Phone generally has all the capabilities I really need, between the phone's base features such as Office and apps in the store. In many cases, the implementation is better on the Windows Phone than on the iPhone. On the other hand, when it comes to hobbies, I find I'm forced to use my wife's iPhone because Windows Phone versions of the apps just aren't there yet. For my nature and outdoor interests, for example, Apple's store has great stuff and the Windows Phone has very little so far.
The fact that Microsoft continues to push, however, is a great sign. Even as the company is making signature apps (other than Office) available for iPhone and Android, there's still a full-court press to get more apps into the Windows Phone Marketplace. This effort and momentum is even more impressive given the huge disincentive that small developers have to spend their limited resources on Windows Phone when iPhone and Android have much, much bigger addressable markets.
What about you? Are you finding the apps you need in the Windows Phone Marketplace, or do you have to use other platforms to make your smartphone do what you want to do? Leave a comment below or e-mail me at [email protected].
More from CES 2012:
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 10, 20121 comments
AT&T will carry an HTC Titan II with the Windows Phone OS that sports a 16-megapixel camera and LTE support in the next few months.
The device is one of the first announced in what promises to be an action-packed Consumer Electronics Show for Windows Phone. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reportedly has already been on stage during the AT&T keynote today, although his swan song keynote at CES doesn't happen until tonight.
The Titan, you may recall, is HTC's gargantuan smartphone. The display on the Titan is 4.7 inches, and the size will be the same for the Titan II.
The amount of megapixels in the camera, however, is doubled. Granted, megapixels alone is no indicator of quality. I've used 5-megapixel cameras on an HTC Trophy (Windows Phone), a Samsung Focus (Windows Phone) and an Apple iPhone 4, and the quality was mediocre, good and very good, respectively.
That said, the Titan II's titanic rear camera will come with a fast, wide-angle lens, image stabilization, a panorama mode and burst shot mode, among other features, indicating that HTC is paying attention to the optics.
What it does show is that the pace of Windows Phone device releases appears to be quickening. By Windows Phone standards, certainly, the first Titan was just released, and now there's a new one. Meanwhile, the device's LTE support on AT&T is an interesting wrinkle in the recent spat between Verizon and Microsoft over LTE support.
More from CES 2012:
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 09, 20121 comments
In the run-up to the Consumer Electronics Show, the Gray Lady ran a long piece over the weekend on Windows Phone.
It's relatively light on news, other than not-for-attribution confirmation that Nokia planned to unveil a Windows Phone-based Lumia 900 today at CES.
But The New York Times got good access to Windows Phone principles, including Joe Belfiore and Terry Myerson, about the development process for Microsoft's entry. Juicy details include a "cage match" meeting in Redmond in late 2008 after the iPhone had taken off. It was during that one marathon meeting that a Microsoft team basically decided that there was nothing in Windows Mobile worth saving.
The article, "The Critics Rave... for Microsoft," is available here.
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 09, 20120 comments
Nokia on Monday unveiled a new Windows Phone that will be coming to AT&T's U.S. network this spring. While it shares the slick industrial design of Nokia's other two Windows Phone entries, it includes one key additional feature: a front-facing camera.
The Nokia Lumia 900, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, will have a 1-megapixel front-facing camera for video chats.
The main knock on Nokia's previous two phones, the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, was that the devices only had rear-facing cameras. With Microsoft's massive recent investments in Skype and Lync, making Windows-based phones without a video chat camera seemed an odd design choice.
Like the Windows Phone-based HTC Titan II announced earlier on Monday, the Lumia 900 is designed for AT&T's 4G LTE network.
Other features of the Lumia 900 include a 4.3-inch AMOLED screen, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with a Carl Zeiss wide-angle lens and a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor. Color choices are cyan and black.
More from CES 2012:
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 09, 20122 comments
The trend lines look menacing for Internet Explorer's days as the de facto Web browser standard, a role IE held due to its long-standing dominance in market share.
According to figures released by StatCounter for all of 2011, the Google Chrome browser ended the year with 27 percent of global share, while Microsoft's IE closed out with 39 percent. At the beginning of 2011, Chrome claimed 16 percent of global share and IE had 46 percent share.
It follows other recent Chrome milestones noted by StatCounter, including eclipsing Firefox as the No. 2 worldwide browser in November and Chrome 15 becoming the most popular Web browser version for the first time on a weekly basis in mid-December. (Chrome overtook IE 8 for the weekly win.)
On the StatCounter chart, Chrome's rising line looks sure to intersect with IE's falling one sometime in 2012 -- and it looks like it will happen earlier in the year rather than later.
To be sure, as other media outlets have noted, StatCounter isn't the only word on browser share. At the end of the year, Net Applications put IE's overall share at 52 percent, Firefox's at 22 percent and Chrome's at 19 percent.
Nonetheless, IE has been losing share at a relatively unchecked rate for years now. While the market researchers may differ about the rate of decline, the fact is that on at least one of the two major measures, Microsoft probably won't hold the lead at the end of 2012. Big shift.
[Click on image for larger view.] |
| Top five browsers of 2011. Source: StatCounter |
Posted by Scott Bekker on January 03, 20121 comments
It may be a few days before Christmas, but it's been a busy week when it comes to enterprise-class vendor support for media tablets and mobility solutions.
VMware Inc. is releasing software to allow Kindle Fire users to view virtualized versions of Windows and other operating systems on Amazon's media tablet.
VMware announced this week that a VMware View Client for Android will soon be available in the Amazon Appstore for Android to make it easier for Kindle Fire users to install the client and access virtual desktops.
The announcement came as VMware unveiled across-the-board updates to VMware View with new clients for Kindle Fire, Mac and Linux, and updated clients for Android and iPad.
Also this week, Citrix released GoToMyPC for Android tablet and Citrix Receiver for Android, expanding that company's roster of supported clients.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 21, 20110 comments
Reports are starting to come in about reference designs for "Medfield," Intel's latest effort to be relevant in the smartphone and tablet conversation.
Back at Computex, Intel highlighted the 32nm Medfield processor, which is a System-on-a-Chip (SoC) technology to compete with ARM-based systems. Design goals included tablets that weighed under 1.5 pounds and provided all-day battery life. The chipmaker's roadmap called for the processors to enter production sometime in 2011 and for Intel OEM partners to come out with Medfield-based tablets in the first half of 2012. At the time, Intel was talking about supporting Google Android, Windows and MeeGo. The MeeGo joint project between Intel and Nokia was scrapped when Nokia entered a long-term partnership with Microsoft.
Reviewers at MIT's Technology Review got their hands on Google Android-based Intel reference designs of a smartphone and tablet based on Medfield. The reference designs are supposed to inspire OEM partners as they create products based on Medfield over the next few months.
Of the smartphone, Technology Review wrote:
The phone prototype seen by Technology Review was similar in dimensions to the iPhone 4 but noticeably lighter, probably because the case was made with more plastic and less glass and metal. ... The phone was powerful and pleasing to use, on a par with the latest iPhone and Android handsets. It could play Blu-Ray-quality video and stream it to a TV if desired; Web browsing was smooth and fast.
Technology Review called the tablet, running Google's Ice Cream Sandwich OS, "noticeably nicer to use" than older tablets based on Google Honeycomb.
Look for more details on Intel's tablet and smartphone plans around CES.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 21, 20110 comments
Memo to Microsoft: The administrator isn't the customer anymore. The end user is.
Even at this late date, with Microsoft playing catch-up on smartphones and tablets and losing overall PC share, there is daily evidence that Microsoft doesn't get it yet.
My most recent example: I was participating with a community group in a demo of a Software as a Service content management system for the group's Web site. We were doing the session over GoToMeeting with a vendor.
No sooner had we booted up the group leader's Windows 7 laptop and finally gotten the GoToMeeting presentation running both online and on the phone when Microsoft, in its administrators'-concerns-are-always-paramount wisdom, shut everything down to launch the latest Patch Tuesday updates. The entire group had to sit there in limbo until Microsoft deigned to give us our system back.
Now, I know these things can be configured to give the user more or less control, and I completely understand that critical patches must be installed. Yes, I also get that many users will never get around to patching if Microsoft gives them too much choice. That said, those configuration options are rarely very clear, and there has to be a way to back out of the update process.
Here's the thing: There was no obvious place for us to say, in effect, "Stop this update process! We are actually using this computer to do one of those productivity things it's supposed to be intended for. We've scheduled five people on two coasts to meet right now. Put this off until we shut the computer down later."
It's a small example of a once-competitive but now self-defeating mentality in Redmond. If Microsoft doesn't put the user experience at the center of its engineering decisions, users will move their centers to platforms that seem to care about them.
There's ample evidence in the Windows Phone OS that I use on a daily basis that some Microsoft product groups understand this new reality. Hopefully, that understanding will pervade the Windows 8 team.
For a long time, the user experience was a secondary concern for Microsoft because there was really nowhere else for users to go. With the consumerization of IT, users have a lot more power. Microsoft would do well not to forget that.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 20, 20114 comments
Regular readers of my column in Redmond Channel Partner magazine and this blog know that I'm pretty enthusiastic about Microsoft's direction as the company responds to the explosive emergence of smartphones and tablets. Microsoft has chosen to play a long game, and I think it's got a shot.
But don't let it be said that I won't note an opposing perspective. Robert Scoble, the influential blogger and one-time Microsoft evangelist, thinks Redmond is dead, dead, dead.
In an item on Friday, Scoble threw shovelfuls of dirt on Microsoft's grave in the tablet market.
He starts off this way:
"Android tablets will be a bigger deal than Windows 8 tablets.
"After meeting with Japanese OEMs for my CES previews I just don't get how Microsoft can subsidize Windows 8 to compete with the Android tablets."
Read Scoble's whole piece here. He makes some good points about developer attitudes, price pressures and even iPad momentum in the enterprise. I think he's undervaluing Microsoft's cross-(Microsoft)-platform strengths, but he points out real hurdles that Redmond will have a very tough time clearing.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 19, 20110 comments
The worldwide media tablet market saw huge sequential growth in the third quarter of 2011, although sales of devices like the iPad came in below forecast and didn't quite keep up the jaw-dropping momentum of Q2.
Those are the results of the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet and eReader Tracker released Thursday.
In all, media tablet shipments into sales channels hit 18.1 million units last quarter. That's up 24 percent on a sequential basis and a whopping 265 percent from the year-ago quarter.
But IDC notes the result is nearly 6 percent below its original forecast of 19.2 million units. What's more, the sector was seeing 89 percent sequential growth from the first quarter to the second.
Nonetheless, the Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm continues to see strong demand for media tablets in Q4, and actually increased its worldwide shipment forecast for all of 2011 from 62.5 million units to 63.3 million units.
The market remains Apple's to lose, with 11.1 million iPad shipments in the third quarter for a 61.5 percent share, according to IDC.
"Amazon and Barnes & Noble are shaking up the media tablet market, and their success helps prove that there is an appetite for media tablets beyond Apple's iPad," said IDC analyst Tom Mainelli in a statement. "That said, I fully expect Apple to have its best-ever quarter in 4Q11, and in 2012 I think we'll see Apple's products begin to gain more traction outside of the consumer market, specifically with enterprise and education markets."
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 15, 20110 comments
Nokia, the Finnish phone company betting its future on Microsoft's Windows Phone platform, will mark the U.S. debut for its devices on Jan. 11, when T-Mobile rolls out the Nokia Lumia 710 running Windows Phone 7.5 "Mango."
The Lumia 710 is the economy-priced version of the two Windows smartphones Nokia unveiled in late October. After a $50 mail-in rebate with a two-year service agreement including voice and data, the device cost is expected to be $49.99. (The "expected" phrasing, weirdly, comes from T-Mobile's announcement. You'd "expect" them to know what they'll charge for the phone at this point, but whatever.)
In announcing the Lumia 710's availability Wednesday, T-Mobile articulated some of the reasons that Microsoft and Nokia business planners must believe they still have a shot despite the long lead in smartphones held by Google Android-based devices and Apple iPhones.
T-Mobile's news release noted that 150 million people in the United States haven't upgraded to their first smartphones. Cole Brodman, chief marketing officer for T-Mobile USA, made the argument that T-Mobile's voice and data plans, combined with the relatively inexpensive new Nokia device, would be attractive to first-time smartphone buyers. "Our research shows nearly everybody in the U.S. wants a smartphone, but many believe they can't afford it," Brodman said in a statement.
In the same release, former Microsoft partner executive and current Nokia Americas President Chris Weber added, "This is the perfect first Nokia Lumia experience and the start of our re-entry into the U.S. smartphone market."
Michael Stroh, who posts regularly on the official Windows Phone Blog, wrote that the T-Mobile version of the Nokia phone will come "pre-stocked with popular apps including ESPN, Netflix, The Weather Channel, Slacker Radio, T-Mobile TV, and Nokia Drive for voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation." The voice navigation app is being touted by Nokia as a major differentiator for their devices.
The device has a 3.7-inch ClearBlack WVGA touchscreen, a Qualcomm 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor and a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera. Unlike the version launched in Europe, the Lumia 710 for T-Mobile in the United States is available only in white and black. European carriers have blue, pink and yellow versions, as well.
The other notable missing feature of the Lumia 710 and its higher-end-but-not-publicly-announced-for-America-yet sibling, the Lumia 800, is a front-facing camera (FFC). The omission is important because the Nokia devices will compete with a second-generation of Windows Phone devices that mostly have FFCs and because key Microsoft apps like Lync and Skype are expected to eventually depend on FFCs for some functionality.
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 14, 20111 comments
A smartphone app with a lot of business potential just shipped -- Microsoft on Monday formally posted the Lync 2010 for Windows Phone app in the Windows Marketplace, and versions for other smartphone platforms are on the way.
"The Lync 2010 for Windows Phone app is...available today, and Lync 2010 clients for iPhone, iPad, Android and Nokia Symbian have been submitted to their respective mobile app marketplaces and will be available as soon as they have been approved," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement Monday.
According to the spokesperson, the new Lync mobile clients allow instant messaging, call-related features and audio conferencing using a Lync ID.
To be useful, the mobile client will depend on a user's company having a Microsoft Lync 2010 server installed. Once the Lync server administrator enables mobile clients, users can download and begin using the Lync 2010 mobile apps, according to the Microsoft Unified Communications Group Team Blog.
While the Windows Phone version features Microsoft's Metro-style user interface, the clients for iPhone, iPad, Android and Symbian will use the tab interfaces familiar to those platforms, according to Microsoft.
The shipment of the Windows Phone version, at least, ends a frustrating wait by partners for a product that was first discussed in late 2010 and kept having its promised 2011 delivery redefined as later and later in the calendar year.
Also on Monday, Microsoft released OneNote Mobile for iPad, the first version of the Microsoft Office-family application tailored for Apple's tablet, and an update to OneNote Mobile for iPhone (version 1.3).
Posted by Scott Bekker on December 12, 20110 comments