Microsoft News Tracker

Today, Research in Motion (RIM) and Microsoft announced an agreement to provide Windows Live Messenger and enhanced support for Windows Live Hotmail on RIM’s BlackBerry smartphones:

Microsoft Corp. and Research In Motion (RIM) today announced an agreement to provide Microsoft Windows Live services on BlackBerry smartphones. As a result of this collaboration, BlackBerry smartphone customers will enjoy easy mobile access to Windows Live Messenger and an enhanced level of integration between Windows Live Hotmail and the BlackBerry platform.

The integration of Windows Live services into the BlackBerry platform will allow customers who use Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger on their BlackBerry smartphone to benefit from the BlackBerry platform architecture with the ability to communicate in real time using push technology, and an exceptional mobile communications experience. Customers will also be able to seamlessly access their Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger account from their BlackBerry smartphone by simply entering their Windows Live e-mail address and password once.

There are more details on the features by following the link. Microsoft did a similar (but larger) deal with Nokia back in August, 2007. One wonders whether any money is changing hands in these deals or at least how the porting and support expenses are allocated, but no information has been provided.

Nancy Gohring reports that Apple’s iPhone has pulled ahead on Windows Mobile in US smartphone sales:

Even after being on the market for less than half a year, more iPhones sold in the fourth quarter than Windows Mobile phones in the United States, according to research from Canalys.

Canalys researchers estimate that the iPhone had 28 percent of the U.S. converged-device market in the fourth quarter of 2007. Research in Motion, with 41 percent, had the largest share of the market. Windows Mobile phones had a 21 percent share of devices sold in the quarter, falling into third place behind Apple.

(more…)

Windows Mobile 6.0 (codenamed Crossbow) has been available to phone manufacturers since November 2006, but will get its formal public introduction on Monday according to Ina Fried at CNET:

Microsoft plans on Monday to officially announce Windows Mobile 6, formerly code-named Crossbow, at the 3GSM trade show in Barcelona. The first devices using the software aren’t expected until spring, however, with the bulk of products using the new operating system likely to come in the second half of the year.

Among the most visible changes is the ability to type in a few letters of a song, contact or e-mail subject and have the phone automatically show only matching results. The software also supports HTML e-mail. But for Exchange messages to be viewable in that form, a company also has to have Exchange 2007, the new version of Microsoft’s e-mail server software.

Windows Mobile 6 also builds in support for Windows Live instant messaging and e-mail, which enables users to see whether a contact is online and to get their Hotmail or Windows Live Mail messages pushed down automatically.

After years of struggling to make inroads in the phone business, Microsoft is starting to find its way. Its software is now on many of Palm’s Treo devices and also on new, slim phones like Samsung’s BlackJack and T-Mobile’s Dash. The company sold 3 million licenses of Windows Mobile last quarter, up 90 percent from a year earlier.

Because it uses the same core–Windows CE 5–the new mobile operating system is expected to work with nearly all the existing Windows Mobile 5 applications.

That’s also why some have called Crossbow Windows Mobile 5 Second Edition. The next big change in Windows Mobile is coming with Photon which is about a year away.

There are more details on Crossbow in the CNET report including that support for Office 2007 file formats will not arrive until the summer. Also there has been a nomenclature change:

Pocket PC Phone Edition, for touch screens, becomes Windows Mobile Professional, while Smartphone edition, for non touch screens, becomes Windows Mobile Standard. A third version, Windows Mobile Classic, is designed for PDAs without phone capabilities, an increasingly small slice of the market.

Photon is also supposed to finally unify the Pocket PC and Smartphone editions (by whatever name) which today generally require the development of two different versions of applications.

Update: Matthew Miller at ZDNet has a nice mini review and Jay Greene at BusinessWeek.com puts it all in perspective:

For Microsoft, the mobile phone business has been marked more by defeats than victories. When it pushed into the business in 2002, handset makers and mobile phone carriers balked, worried that the software giant would try to marginalize partners, squeezing the lion’s share of profits for itself just as it has in the PC business. What’s more, its software was clunky, and a battery hog to boot, making devices running it unappealing.

The turning point came in September, 2005, when Microsoft convinced longtime rival Palm to put Windows Mobile inside its popular Treo device. Microsoft Senior Vice-President Pieter Knook calls it a “watershed moment” for Windows Mobile’s legitimacy. Over time, the company became more willing to let handset makers and carriers define the customer experience, as long as users tapped into e-mail servers running Microsoft’s Exchange software.
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Those improvements, along with the global familiarity with Microsoft’s software, helped it leapfrog BlackBerry. IDC’s estimates for 2006 worldwide market share for so-called converged devices—mobile phones that can handle e-mail and surf the Web—put Microsoft’s share at 9.8%, compared with 7.3% for BlackBerry. Still, BlackBerry held the U.S. lead through the first nine months of 2006, with a 49.4% share versus Windows Mobile’s 29% share. And worldwide, both significantly trail Nokia-backed Symbian, the mobile-operating system that’s huge in Europe and Japan.

Reuters:

Microsoft aims to double the number of mobile phones running its Windows software this year from 6 million at the end of 2005 and to keep up this rate of growth in coming years, a Microsoft executive said.

“The number of devices operating on Windows Mobile doubled to 6 million last year,” Peter Knook, head of Microsoft’s Mobile and Embedded Devices division, told Germany’s Euro am Sonntag in an interview published on Sunday.

“We want to make 100 percent again this year and to grow further at this rate in coming years.”

Microsoft competes in the market for smartphones, which can run software applications such as email, mobile TV and games, with British software maker Symbian, owned by the world’s top handset producers including Nokia.

Besides Symbian, Research in Motion (e.g. Blackberry) will have something to say about it too.

Jeremy Kirk at InfoWorld:

Microsoft, which has been carving a larger slice of the mobile device OS market, is developing a new product, code-named “Crossbow,” which will incorporate features such as instant messaging, a Microsoft executive confirmed Monday.

Crossbow will have strong links with Office 2007 and Exchange 12, Microsoft’s pending new office application suite and e-mail server, said Pieter Knook, senior vice president for the mobile devices and telecoms sector. Crossbow would be the successor to Windows Mobile 5.0, released in May 2005.

Crossbow will take aim at the Symbian and BlackBerry operating systems. The OS will contain a new mobile version of Office Communicator, an Office 2007 enterprise communications application, that includes instant messaging on public and private networks, Knook said.

“As the Office [2007] PC versions of those applications improve, we’re tracking that on the Windows Mobile side,” Knook said.

Knook said it’s premature to say when Crossbow would be released, but that the company plans for an annual mobile OS release.
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Microsoft is gaining ground with Windows Mobile 5.0, but Symbian is dominant, said Nick Spencer, a research analyst with Canalys.com.

Near the end of 2005, Microsoft held a 16 percent share in the worldwide mobile OS market compared to 63 percent for Symbian, 10 percent for Access Co.’s PalmSource, 7 percent for Research in Motion’s BlackBerry and 4.5 percent for others, including Linux-based ones.

On the question of dates, Bink.nu points to a Microsoft presentation that gives (apparently inadvertently) more information on Crossbow and its successor, Photon. The net:

Crossbow:

• 4Q2006 with launch in 1-2Q2007
• Major upgrade of Windows Mobile 5

Photon:

• 4Q2007 with launch in 1-2Q2008
• Windows Mobile 6