David Gatti

WP7 Multi-tasking will be selective, other titbits from MWC 2011

February 15, 2011 | By David Gatti

We interviewed Greg Sullivan, Senior Product Manager for Windows Phone 7, at Mobile World Congress 2011, and discussed some of the recent news and other issues surround Windows Phone 7.

We touched on a few issues which have been near and dear to our readers, for example the lack of a 1st party Messenger app (coming, maybe, in the future), LG’s underperformance due to their poor aesthetics (refused to be drawn on this) and the slow rate of updates (again, it appears Q1 is still “early 2011”).

More interesting and informative was the discussion around multi-tasking however. It appears fast task switching does not mean multi-tasking, but rather rapid suspend and restore, and that real multi-tasking will be exclusive to certain tasks such as the background music task, much like on the iPhone. I suspect most of our readers will feel this is a better solution, although ultimately we will have to wait till MIX 11 to see how many use cases will eventually be covered.

We also touched on the Nokia, Navteq and Microsoft partnership. When Nokia announce that they will use Windows Phone 7 as its new main system for phones, they said that this partnership with Microsoft would work in both directions. Nokia would stop spending time and money developing its own system, and Microsoft would do the same for maps. How this would work out was initially unclear, but the interview revealed a bit more.

As we know, Windows Phone 7 outside the US is limited in the services available. Nokia will help change this with all the data that they already collected for OVI Maps, meaning:

1. Review of places
2. Directions
3. Points of interest
4. And any dataset that Nokia uses in OVI Maps.

But this is not all. Another big problem for Microsoft in Europe is the Zune Market. Nokia will help with that to. It appears Microsoft will inherit many of the licences Nokia already have for distributing music in many countries, meaning Zune will be able to rapidly expand to other markets.

As you can see this partnership is easily the best thing that could have happened to Microsoft , Nokia and us customers, mainly because a lot more than money was exchanged, to the benefit of customers of both companies.

Let’s hope all this goodness will come sooner rather than later.

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Nokia and Microsoft join together to conquer the World: Thoughts from MWC 2011

February 14, 2011 | By David Gatti

nokia3 We are after the Nokia keynote and I must say that I’ve been impressed by what I’ve heard. It is hard not to think that the partnership with Microsoft is a great idea. For a long time Nokia did try to fight in this new smartphone market and failed every time. They never were able to make a UI that made sense for the smartphone enthusiasts and even the hard core fans of the Nokia brand after switching to the iPhone never went back even with the latest and greatest phone from Nokia.

With Windows Phone 7 as their main operating system for smartphones it will hard for Nokia not to sell millions of devices even in the US where they are struggling to make a hit. Now, the only thing that they have to do is to focus on the hardware and their services to lock their users under their brand.

Continue reading →

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Windows Phone 7 launches in Saudi Arabia

December 21, 2010 | By David Gatti

wp7arabia HTC has launched the HTC HD7, with the HTC Desire HD in Saudi Arabia. The region is traditionally a great consumer of high-end handsets, including previously Windows Mobile handsets.

Mohamed El-Rahawan, marketing manager, HTC Saudi Arabia said “Customers in Saudi Arabia have been eagerly awaiting the launch of these new models. .. As for the HTC HD7, this will be a whole new mobile experience for users thanks to Windows Phone 7. The HD7 is packed with features that will excite and engage users, who will also hugely benefit from the level of customization that the phone offers, which is designed to help users find and use the features optimally and easily,”

Neeraj Seth, MENA marketing manager, HTC Middle East & North Africa, said “the Saudi market has always been extremely receptive to HTC products which makes the Kingdom vital to our market consolidation plans in the region. We believe that the feature-rich HTC Desire and HD7 will particularly appeal to the country’s young, tech savvy population, and accordingly HTC plans to market these phones very innovatively to this segment.”

“HTC has major plans for the KSA market, given its strategic importance to our overall scheme of things in the region. Over the coming period, we will be making significant investments on branding and promotion-related initiatives to create greater visibility for our brand and further build on our ‘connect’ with our growing customer base in the Kingdom,” Kais noted.

According to SaudiWP7.com the handset comes in at a relatively pricy 3290 Riyal (Around $877), but delivers on the promise of Steve Ballmer to have a Windows Phone 7 handset in the area by December. They note Android still does not support Arabic, making Windows Phone 7 a rather attractive proposition.

Windows Phone 7 is set to offer full Asian script support by the middle of 2011. The increasingly rapid roll-out of Windows Phone 7 worldwide would have helped to contribute to the 1.5 million Windows Phone 7 handsets shipped in only 6 weeks.

Via the Saudi Gazette.

Thanks HabeebAlAli and Ubaid for the tip.

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SMS Bomber–the dark side of Windows Phone 7 jailbreaking

December 20, 2010 | By David Gatti

screenshot1-180x300 CodeJoker has just released an application with nothing but nefarious use to the jailbreaking community.

The app, SMS Bomber, can send up to 140 text messages at one time to an unfortunate recipient, at the same time running up fees (unless you have an unlimited SMS plan) for the sender.

Beau Allison, who created Torrent Remote, currently in Marketplace, and who paints his organization as a team who "like to “push the boundaries of standards and policies”, found their app rejected from Marketplace for that very reason, with Microsoft “citing concerns that a consumer could easily rake up an unanticipated bill etc.”.

The app works by adding 140 outgoing SMS messages to the Windows Phone 7 queue, something which cant be very healthy for stability either.

While we are all for being in full control of your phone yourself, this app illustrates that this is at best a double-edged sword.

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Windows Phone 7 already nearly a 1% of Android installed base, taking market share from iPhone and Android

December 16, 2010 | By David Gatti

wp7iphoneandroid

Chitika, a small ad network, has released some data collected over the last 20 days collected from browser ad impressions, and they note Windows Phone 7 already makes up 0.9% of Android impressions and 0.6% of iPhone impressions, from a total of 31.5 million impressions.

While they claim “that number is remaining relatively stable, with very little significant market share growth in WP7” a simple linear regression ( and even just eyeballing the graph) shows a clear upward trend, with Windows phone 7 taking around 0.1% market share of the combined share of its rivals in just 20 days. Of course at that rate it will take 30 years for Microsoft to take 50% market share, but hopefully Microsoft can accelerate it at some point .

Read the blog post at Chitika here.

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Second wave of Windows Phone 7 devices coming at Mobile World Congress

December 16, 2010 | By David Gatti

china-director-speech-was-confidential This is according to Digitimes’s unnamed sources at least, who are expecting a new set of handsets running Windows Phone 7, including the Asus E600.

The source also confirmed that support for Chinese localization for Windows Phone 7 will have to wait till the second part of 2011, with Microsoft trying to rope in Lenovo, Huawei Technologies and ZTE.

Lending further support to this is this tweet by shinji koshikiawa, the Mobile Business Lead of Microsoft Japan, who complains:

(Microsoft) China is in trouble. Executives’ speech often makes the headlines even if they preface it is "strictly confidential".

The tweet appears to relate to a speech by Yang Tianyang, Microsoft’s Greater China director, regarding both late 2011 support for Chinese Windows phone 7 and also the “Mango” update which will bring Windows Phone 7 up to version 7.5.

Thanks Tezawaly from nanopho.jp for the tip.

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46% of Enterprise IT departments plan to support Windows Phone 7 in 2011

December 15, 2010 | By David Gatti

itsupportwp7 The Enterprise Mobility Foundation, Strategy Analytics and FierceMobileIT conducted a survey of 250 small, medium and large businesses on their enterprise mobility strategy and came away with some interesting information.

The most important finding is that no single mobile operating system will dominate, with business settling on at least four different mobile platforms: Android, BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Phone 7, with companies will increasingly rely on users bringing in their own smartphones.

Good news for Windows Phone 7 is that 15% of businesses already support the OS, and this support will triple to 46% in 2011.

With smartphones increasingly belonging to end users rather than the business, enterprises also have to be increasingly flexible regarding the devices being used for personal use, mainly social networking, which are top on the list of apps end users want, and which is fortunately also a strong point of Windows Phone 7, which is trying for a good balance between work and play.

Windows Phone 7 is seen by some analysts as a threat to RIM’s Blackberry enterprise dominance, with Dell, if they ever get their troubled handset out of the door, planning to push their device and the OS as an enterprise mobility solution for their mainly business clients.

Read more on the survey at Fiercemobileit.com

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