Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 Released!

Microsoft has officially released Internet Explorer for Windows 7.

You can download it here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/downloads/ie-10/worldwide-languages

More US companies plan to support Windows Phone 8 than Blackberry 10

Underlining that Windows Phone has now moved ahead of Blackberry in USA in terms of market share and mind share, a recent survey by iPass® Inc. and MobileIron,  which drew from the experiences of 477 IT executives worldwide, found that IT is more bullish on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 handsets than on RIM’s BlackBerry 10 phones.

The majority (about 75 percent) of respondents were currently employed IT professionals, at the director level or above. Fifty (50) percent of respondents worked for companies with more than 1,000 employees.

The survey found only 34 percent of IT managers plan to support BlackBerry 10, compared to 45 percent who plan to support Windows Phone 8 devices going forward. This is an improvement on the current level of Windows Phone 7 support, which is around the 32.6% mark, and a large drop in support for Blackberry, which is currently at the 62% mark. iPhones are currently supported by 77% of businesses, while Android phones are supported by 61%.

The survey also found however increasingly strong support for the Bring Your own Device movement, with 81 percent of respondents stating their company now accommodates personal devices in the office, underlining the need to continue fighting for consumer market share, as the business and consumer market continues to converge.

The survey took place between December 2012 and January 2013. The full iPass/MobileIron Mobile Enterprise Report can be found at here.

Windows Phone Tops BlackBerry In U.S.

Windows Phone sales exceeded BlackBerry sales in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2012, says Strategy Analytics.


The real battle in the U.S. smartphone market isn't for first or second place, at least not yet. Apple and Google will continue to tussle for the smartphone crown for some time to come. No, the real war will be waged for third place. Right now, it looks like there may have been a change in the rankings.

"Microsoft Windows Phone overtook BlackBerry OS to become the third largest smartphone platform in the influential United States market during Q4 2012," reported Strategy Analytics. "It was the first time Microsoft has surpassed BlackBerry since 2006."

If true, it shouldn't be much of a surprise. Sales of BlackBerry smartphones in the U.S. are probably at their lowest point in a decade. Sales have been dropping steadily for some time. Further, BlackBerry widely publicized that it planned to launch BlackBerry 10 in late January. Fans of BlackBerry devices know enough to wait for the Z10 and Q10, announced last week, to arrive.

At the same time, Microsoft launched Windows Phone 8 during the fourth quarter with a half-dozen new models. Solid smartphones, such as the Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC 8X, went on sale in November at aggressive price points.

In fact, at least one source reported that WP8 sales have been incredibly strong. New statistics from AdDuplex show that in the 90 or so days since its release, there are now more active Windows Phone 8 users than Windows Phone 7 users. Considering that WP7 has been around for more than two years, that's a notable data point.

This may be a temporary victory for Microsoft, though. With BlackBerry 10 reaching U.S. store shelves in March, BlackBerry's turnaround saga begins in full. The first BB10 smartphone, the Z10, has seen decent initial demand in other markets, even outselling some WP8 devices. With the Z10 and Q10, expected to arrive in May or June, BlackBerry has a fighting chance against Microsoft.

It will be up to Microsoft's OEM partners to continue to bring new and exciting WP8 devices to market. Nokia is prepared to reveal new gear at Mobile World Congress later this month, and other smartphone makers, such as HTC and Samsung, are sure to introduce new WP8 hardware before the Q10 goes on sale toward the end of the second quarter.

Unfortunately, we'll need to wait until the close of the third or fourth quarter to see if BlackBerry or Microsoft will be standing in third place behind Apple and Google.

‘Blue is large update for Windows 8, Windows Phone and Hotmail’

Blue would not only be the codename for a large update for Windows 8 but also a large update for Windows Phone, Windows Server, Hotmail and Skydrive. Microsoft will update its products every year from now on, according to ZDNet.

The Blue update would be the first time that Microsoft will update a large amount of its products at once. ZDNet claims that the information comes from a reliable source close to Microsoft. The site frequently receives correct insider information about Microsoft which makes the rumor trustworthy. The site was also the first to report about the existence of the Blue update.

If the information is indeed correct, it’s the first time that information becomes available on a large update for Windows Phone 8. The mobile operating system already received an updated called Portico, but this was rather small and mainly fixed some bugs. A large update hasn’t been announced, but could now be part of the Blue release.

Besides the large yearly updates that should be released at once, it’s likely that Microsoft will also release smaller updates more often. Release dates for these updates would vary per platform. The yearly update cycle isn’t new for Microsoft but other large tech companies use the same method. Apple releases a new version of iOS and Mac OS X every year and Google releases large updates for Android at least two times a year. Canonical also releases two updates of Linux variant Ubuntu.

In the meantime development of Windows 9 also seems to have started. ZDnet has posted a picture of a Linkedin profile (now changed) that reveals that Microsoft has developers in India working the successor of Windows 8.

Spotify Lands On Windows Phone 8

Spotify has just landed on the Windows Phone 8 platform, giving Microsoft’s mobile users access to one of the world’s largest music streaming platforms.

Before today, the app was only available on iOS, Android, Symbian, and to legacy Windows Phone users, but Spotify has spread the love around to the newest version of the Windows Phone software.

The app is currently being released as a free beta in the Windows Phone Store.

If you’re reading this, you should already be familiar with Spotify, but in case you aren’t familiar, here’s the deal. Spotify is a music streaming platform that helps you discover new music.

Users can create their own playlists, or browse the playlists of others, and the best part is that you don’t need an internet connection to do so. The platform also works in the cloud, meaning your phone’s Spotify library is also available on your PC.

The app is free and available now, with a 30-day free trial. After that, premium service will cost $9.99 a month.

Windows Phone 7.8 finally arrives for older Lumia devices, adding apps and Start screen functionality

Nokia has announced that Windows Phone 7.8 has arrived and is encouraging people to update their Lumia devices. In a video uploaded to YouTube, the phone manufacturer highlights what’s new with the updated Windows Phone operating system, and how users can do so through their Zune software.

Promised by Microsoft in early 2013, Windows Phone 7.8 is considered by some to be the company’s “stopgap measure” for older handsets. If you’ve purchased a Windows Phone device that didn’t come with Windows Phone 8, you’re out of luck because you won’t be able to get it without buying a newer phone. To that end, Microsoft released Windows Phone 7.8, with a new Start Screen similar to Windows Phone 8.

Nokia says that the updated operating system has been shipping pre-loaded on its Nokia Lumia 510 device, along with other phones in the Lumia family. For those with Lumia 510, 610, 710, 800, and 900 model phones, update notifications will appear soon.

To update your phone, Nokia says you should connect the device to your computer through Zune for PC or the Windows Phone app for Mac and then follow the onscreen instructions.

Some of the features that the Lumia phones will receive as a result of the update includes more tiles, Internet sharing, Bluetooth sharing, image enhancements like Camera Extras, and release of apps such as Contact Share, Play To, and Nokia City Lens. Nokia says that the Start screen experience has also been refreshed to allow tiles to be resized, there are new options to lock the screen, receive a daily background image from Bing, and increased language support.

Windows Phone 7.8: hollow, pointless, and essentially useless

A few days ago, Microsoft released the long-awaited Windows Phone 7.8 update for all those users who will be stuck on Windows Phone 7 forever because there's no upgrade path to Windows Phone 8 other than buying a new phone. Now that it's here, what, exactly,does WP7.8 to the table?

Windows Phone 7's core consists of Windows CE 6.0, as we already detailed a long, long time ago. For Windows Phone 8, the company made the bold move of leaving the venerable Windows CE behind in favour of the just as venerable Windows NT. According to Microsoft, this brought with it heftier system requirements that Windows Phone 7 devices couldn't fulfil.

This was a slap in the face of the - admittedly, small - existing Windows Phone userbase, especially since Windows Phone 7 devices were still being sold, and, in fact, are still being sold today. As a sort of peace offering, Microsoft promised us Windows Phone 7.8. Its release has taken quite a bit longer than anticipated, but now that it's here, was it worth the wait?

Well, first of all, we're looking at yet another one of them phased rollouts, so it's very likely your phone hasn't been updated yet at all. There are a few ways to force the update - the Zune trick,manual .cab files, or the automated .cab install - but if you don't want to take any risks, it might take a few weeks before you'll get the update. Even though I've already happily moved on to an HTC 8X, I grabbed my unbranded and unlocked HTC HD7 out of the closet to see what WP7.8 is all about. I had to use the automatic .cab tool to update, but it worked.

So, what does Windows Phone 7.8 bring to the table? To be honest, very, very little. Despite the version number jump from 7.5 to 7.8 and the update's symbolic function as a peace offering, it's purely cosmetic, and other than resizable live tiles, a few new accent colours and minor changes to the lock screen, it brings absolutely nothing to the table. So, it basically comes down to the only new feature being resizable live tiles - of which the small versions, the new size, look fuzzy because the developers haven't updated their applications to include the proper resources.

The deprecated nature of WP7 also becomes apparent when looking at applications. You see, just as with the shift from 7.0 to 7.5, developers can't just submit a single version of their application to Microsoft. Instead, they have to maintain both a WP8 and a WP7.8 version of their application. With Windows Phone already playing a distant third fiddle to the Android and iOS juggernauts, you can't really blame developers for not bothering with WP7.8 at all, moving to working on WP8 versions only.

And so, Rowi on WP8 is version 3.2.0, but only 2.2.0 on WP7. Facebook - 4.1.0 on WP8, 2.8.0 on WP7. Not only is the operating system itself outdated, the applications are as well. You'll have to settle for slower versions, possibly with bugs that have already been fixed in the WP8 version. For a platform with few users, this doesn't seem like an inviting prospect for developers.

Really, that's all there's to it. There's nothing else to add here - that's how utterly insubstantial the Windows Phone 7.8 update is. There's no noticeable speed improvements, no defining new features, and - my biggest complaint, which I saved for last - it didn't address Windows Phone 7's biggest problem.

I was under the impression that Windows Phone 7.8 would significantly improve upon its predecessor in one particular area: the browser. Internet Explorer 9 in WP7.x was already lagging behind when it was new, and this has only gotten worse with the years. Sadly, Windows Phone 7.8 does not update Internet Explorer to version 10, which is way, way better. In other words, you're getting an update, but you're left with an old and outdated browser.

So, all in all, Windows Phone 7.8 is hollow, pointless, and essentially useless. It does nothing to address the total and utter abandonment of loyal Windows Phone 7 users, and doesn't solve the problem of current Windows Phone 7 buyers already buying outdated, deprecated stuff.

I honestly have no idea why this was released in the first place.

Windows Phone, BlackBerry will coexist with Android and Apple

The latest figures and forecasts show that despite Android and Apple's dominance, there's room in the global smartphone market for BlackBerry and Microsoft too.

Despite lavish launch events, intuitive operating systems and cutting-edge handset design, many consumers will be thinking twice about taking a chance on a Windows Phone or BlackBerry handset due to the dominance of Android and Apple and the perception that the smartphone market is essentially a two-horse race.

However, according to ABI Research, although Android will indeed account for the lion's share of global market for some time to come, of the 1.4 billion smartphones predicted to be active by the end of 2013, 45 million, or 3.2 percent, of that total will be Windows Phones and 1 percent (20 million) will be BlackBerry.

As senior ABI analyst Aapo Markkanen comments: "2013 should be seen as relative success for both Microsoft and BlackBerry. For the end of the year, we expect there to be 45 million Windows Phone handsets in use, with BlackBerry 10 holding an installed base of close to 20 million. Microsoft will also have 5.5 million Windows-powered tablets to show for it."

But while a comparatively tiny marketshare, especially compared with Android's predicted 57 percent share (based on 798 million handsets) and Apple's 294 million device 21 percent share, Microsoft's and BlackBerry's shares will still be sufficient to keep developers engaged and involved and therefore continue to make apps for both platforms.

"The greatest fear for both Microsoft and BlackBerry is that the initial sales of their smartphones will disappoint and thereby kill off the developer interest, which then would effectively close the window of opportunity on further sales success. Our view is that the installed bases of this scale would be large enough to keep these two in the game. It will definitely also help that both firms have actively kept the developers' interest in mind while designing and rolling out their platforms," says Markkanen.

So for consumers in the market for a handset that bucks the trend but who are worried that this show of individuality could saddle them with a smartphone with no apps and no future sixth months later, don't panic. At least, for the moment.