Microsoft News Tracker

Back in March, Microsoft submitted a novel device to the FCC which would utilize the unused “white spaces” in the US TV spectrum (which vary from city to city) for portable personal digital communications. Last week, the FCC’s assessment came in and it wasn’t a pretty sight because the prototype failed to correctly detect when frequencies were in use and would thereby cause interference. This week, more details came out it and it was revealed that Microsoft’s prototype was defective:

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In recent months Microsoft has signed cross-license agreements with a number of large hardware electronics firms like Samsung and Seiko-Epson and today announced another with LG Electronics, the Korean electronics giant. This is standard practice for larger corporations, but there is a novel aspect in today’s agreement in view of Microsoft’s recent grumblings about Linux patent infringement: 

LGE will be making ongoing payments to Microsoft for the value of Microsoft patents as they relate to Linux-based embedded devices that LGE produces.

That’s not exactly new since the Samsung announcement said:

Samsung will also obtain coverage from Microsoft for its customers’ use of certain Linux-based products.

It’s hard to tell what is really going on here from press releases and the companies won’t reveal the actual financial and technical details, but the whole point of cross-licensing agreements is mutual insurance. It wouldn’t surprise me if any of these firms using Linux took out a little Microsoft Linux insurance as part of the deal.

Some Microsoft news items from this week that did not find posts of their own:

State by state, Microsoft responds to creeping threat of OpenDocument Format:

Ed Homan, an orthopedic surgeon representing a central Florida district in the state legislature, thought an amendment touting open-source document formats he tucked into a 38-page bill wouldn’t draw much attention.

But within an hour of the proposed bill’s reading in late March, Homan said, he was greeted in his office by three lobbyists representing Microsoft Corp.

“They were here lickety-split,” Homan said. “I had no idea it was going to get that kind of reaction.”

Office 2003 SP3 will be a security upgrade featuring technologies from Office 2007. No date.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager Beta 2 released.

China Telecom gives Google Web advertising rights. Microsoft had earlier done a search deal with China Telecom, but doesn’t seem to be in any position to provide Chinese ads, since they have farmed their own out to Baidu.

No demand for Microsoft Office in the cloud according to Microsoft execs. No surprise there.

Executive departures:

• Microsoft Director of User Experience for Windows Tjeerd Hoek is leaving to join Frog Design as executive creative director of software and hardware convergence.
• Dane Glasgow, general manager of Windows Live Search, is leaving Microsoft to “work for various nonprofits and spend more time with his family.” It’s part of the continuing reorg of Live Search under new boss Satya Nadella.

Microsoft angst fodder:

• Survey: 30% Of Businesses Have No Plans To Upgrade To Windows Vista. The ChangeWave Alliance says it is 58%. I say that this is hardly a surprise and not unique to Vista.
• Google surpasses Microsoft as world’s most-visited site according to comScore.
• Google kicks Microsoft out of first place in world brand rankings.
• Vista is Microsoft’s Waterloo and Vista is ME II.

Legal shenanigans:

• Microsoft Sued Over Windows, Office, And SQL Products
• Microsoft, Dell, Gateway sued over video patents

Finally one from last week - Microsoft and Samsung signed a broad patent cross-licensing agreement.

A number of players in the IPTV market got together to form a standards group, but some big names were noticeably missing:

Companies that provide television over internet protocol technology joined forces on Monday to set a single global standard, so that all systems would work together.

The Open IPTV Forum is backed by companies including Ericsson, Matsushita’s Panasonic, Philips, Samsung Electronics, Siemens, Sony, AT&T, Telecom Italia and France Telecom.

Not on the starting list are Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft, the market leaders and alliance partners in IPTV networks and software.

Filmmakers and TV production companies were not on the list either, but the forum said everyone could join.
…
The nine founding companies said they want results fast and will hammer out technology requirements by September and a first set of technology specifications by year-end.

Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent are busy suing each other over patents of course, but that doesn’t seem to keep them from forging ahead in IPTV.

Speaking of the patent lawsuits, I see that Microsoft has now got the U.S. International Trade Commission on Alcatel-Lucent’s back. You’d think that such great pals could work out a deal.

The ink on last year’s Microsoft Zune press releases was barely dry when speculation started about a Zune Phone egged on by CEO Steve Ballmer. Now the rumors are heating up again after John Letzing at MarketWatch spotted a likely FCC filing. However, reading the fine print reveals a strange duck that is “an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) device to be used for ‘consumer broadband access and networking.’” The general suspicion is that this means WiMAX which is a high bandwidth wireless technology that is just getting off the ground. To add to the mystery, Google, HP, and Intel are listed as a supporters of the FCC application.

However, Matt Hickey at CrunchGear fans the flames with the speculation that a Zune phone would run on a high speed 4G WiMAX network like the one to be built by Sprint/Nextel. This lash-up could provide a mobile VoIP offering plus the likely ability to use ordinary Wi-Fi hotspots. Even better, CrunchGear’s inside sources say that the Zune phone will be announced in March and shipped in May thus neatly upstaging Apple’s iPhone.

All of this is certainly exciting, but the idea of a Zune Phone brings up the more fundamental question of where it would leave Microsoft’s Windows Mobile partners who are ready to show off their new Windows Mobile 6 handsets next week at 3GSM. Microsoft’s Zune crew apparently has license to run roughshod over other parts of Microsoft and their partnerships as evidenced by the hapless PlaysForSure partners (e.g. Creative Technologies, iRiver, Samsung) who got blindsided by the Zune portable media player itself last year. A Zune Phone in whatever form hits right at the phone vendors who have signed up for Windows Mobile (e.g. Samsung, Palm, HTC, Motorola, LG) just when it was showing signs of success, at least in the USA. Beyond the technical particulars, the real Zune Phone question then is whether Microsoft is willing yet again to shutter one of their own projects and cannibalize their partners’ markets in favor of rolling their own.

Update: Microsoft says FCC filing not Zune-related. Fair enough, but as long as the Zune Phone remains a possibility there will still be an inherent conflict with Windows Mobile.