Microsoft Set to Demonstrate Windows Mobile 7 Next Week
Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) report that Microsoft is set to demonstrate its next-generation smartphone software, to be known as Windows Mobile 7 or Windows Phone, at next week's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. According to BusinessWeek:
On Feb. 15, Microsoft will unveil its latest effort to get back into the game. The renamed Windows Phone operating system, set to be introduced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, will "move the bar forward," said Robbie Bach, president of the company's entertainment and devices division.
With Windows Mobile 7, Microsoft is reportedly seeking to pursue tighter integration of its software with third-party hardware, looking to place stricter limits on the basic characteristics of devices running Windows Mobile 7 so as to ensure a more consistent quality of user experience and reduce the need for application developers to make sacrifices otherwise required for applications to run on the wide variety of hardware running Windows Mobile in its current form. From The Wall Street Journal:
New devices based on Windows Mobile 7, due out later this year, will be the first to reflect a much tighter focus at Microsoft on how its software works with hardware made by other companies. In the past, Microsoft has taken much the same approach in mobile software as it has in the PC market, licensing its operating system to nearly any hardware maker that wanted to install it on their systems.
Microsoft's new strategy addresses the level of integration possible in the iPhone, with Apple making both hardware and software, and Android, where Google has taken a more active role in handset design to improve the Android user experience. Microsoft has seen growth of its Windows Mobile user base stagnate, with Apple calculated to have passed Microsoft in U.S. sales as long as ago as late 2007 and moved beyond Microsoft in installed U.S. user base late last year.
Popular Stories
Apple will adopt the same rear chassis manufacturing process for the iPhone SE 4 that it is using for the upcoming standard iPhone 16, claims a new rumor coming out of China. According to the Weibo-based leaker "Fixed Focus Digital," the backplate manufacturing process for the iPhone SE 4 is "exactly the same" as the standard model in Apple's upcoming iPhone 16 lineup, which is expected to...
Key details about the overall specifications of the iPhone 17 lineup have been shared by the leaker known as "Ice Universe," clarifying several important aspects of next year's devices. Reports in recent months have converged in agreement that Apple will discontinue the "Plus" iPhone model in 2025 while introducing an all-new iPhone 17 "Slim" model as an even more high-end option sitting...
Apple typically releases its new iPhone series around mid-September, which means we are about two months out from the launch of the iPhone 16. Like the iPhone 15 series, this year's lineup is expected to stick with four models – iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max – although there are plenty of design differences and new features to take into account. To bring ...
Apple is scaling back its Hollywood spending after investing over $20 billion in original programming with limited success, Bloomberg reports. This shift comes after the streaming service, which launched in 2019, struggled to capture a significant share of the market, accounting for only 0.2% of TV viewership in the U.S., compared to Netflix's 8%. Despite heavy investment, critical acclaim,...
Last Friday, a major CrowdStrike outage impacted PCs running Microsoft Windows, causing worldwide issues affecting airlines, retailers, banks, hospitals, rail networks, and more. Computers were stuck in continuous recovery loops, rendering them unusable. The failure was caused by an update to the CrowdStrike Falcon antivirus software that auto-installed on Windows 10 PCs, but Mac and Linux...
