Will Microsoft Gain from Samsung (& Google)’s Loss?

Samsung has been ordered by a court of law to pay Apple $1b due to patent infringements present in many of their devices, including some of their most popular phones and tablets. It was alleged that Samsung had copied Apple’s appearance and indeed I think this was the correct ruling, even though I do not wish to encourage the already abusive Apple with even more money.

But this result has lead many speculators to suggest that Microsoft may be an unexpected beneficiary, because shockwaves will have been sent throughout the Android industry, instilling fears within OEMs about the OS and the chances of a similar fate occuring to them in the near future. As a result, it was claimed that these crucial OEMs, including HTC and Huawei, will seek to put great emphasis on product differentiation and producing products that aren’t lookalike iPhones (which, for the record, don’t even look all that great). Indeed, Apple CEO Tim Cook held up a Nokia Lumia Windows Phone and announced that this was an example of how not to copy. This was a hugely important moment, and it follows numerous Apple related people who have stated their admiration for the Lumia line and Windows Phone as a OS.

Samsung will have to take a significant hit initially, but if there was one company in the Android space that could take that it, it’s them. If, in the long run, this results in them producing more diversified products, I don’t see where the complaints would come from. Google will probably be the biggest losers, despite not directly being involved in the court case, because their OEMs will surely lose some confidence in the OS, and if that aids Microsoft in their push to bring Windows Phone more into the market, along with the imminent release of Windows 8 alongside it, I think everyone else will benefit from the increased competition. The Android OEMs will all be in a fairly similar position, and so I doubt any one particular one will suffer, although I suspect those already supporting Windows Phone will be given a headstart. LG must be feeling pretty silly right now. Microsoft execs took to Twitter to share their glee at the result of the trial and why shouldn’t they?

Oli

 

Nokia Lumia 710 for only £7.50 per month on Carphone Warehouse (UK)

Up until Thursday the 16th (A level results day, for anyone interested), the Carphone Warehouse are offering the deal of the year on phones. It’s the Nokia Lumia 710, a very powerful phone for an entry level smartphone, for only £7.50 a month, with 100 minutes, 5000 texts and 250mb data. Alternatively, the same phone is available for £10 a month with 250 minutes, 5000 texts and 500mb data. Both deals are with Carphone Warehouse’s network Talk Mobile, which uses Vodafone’s coverage so it’s pretty good.

The phone is also available off contract for only £99 + £10 top up, which is also an excellent deal.

This is a deal not to miss out on for UK citizens so I would recommend you get your skates on and snap up this deal.

http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/buy/NOKIA-LUMIA-710-KM017-FCON
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/buy/NOKIA-LUMIA-710-KM010-FCON
http://www.carphonewarehouse.com/buy/NOKIA-LUMIA-710-VOD10-WEB10

Windows Phone 8 Announced

Only two days after the announcement of Microsoft’s Surface tablet range (RT and Pro versions), they have at last formally announced Windows Phone 8, the successor to Windows Phone 7, a brilliant and underused smartphone OS. The ‘Apollo’ name has apparently been dropped, it’s just Windows Phone 8. I’m going to give you guys a run down on what’s been announced today.

With this main announcement, come many more exciting ones to do with the new OS. The most important of which being that WP8 and Windows 8 will have a shared Windows core, meaning many aspects of one OS will be easily transferable to another. I cannot stress enough how important this is for the OS… Windows 8 will be in most people’s homes in a few years’ time, so having Windows Phone so easy to make apps and design for… the number of apps is going to skyrocket. From the images I’ve seen, it looks like there will be no changes to the basic appearance of Windows Phones – they will all still have the standard 3 keys at the bottom, and a full capacitive touchscreen. The Windows key has been updated to the new look though, while the back and search buttons have also been changed to fit the theme.

There will also be, at last, multi-core support, although it could be argued that Windows Phones are optimised to run on single cores and so don’t need the extra one (or more). They claim to be focusing on battery life, so only dual core for now. I’m glad they’re focusing on battery life, it’s very important to me.

Two new high resolution screens were announced - 1280×768 and 1280×720 (on top of 800×480). There will also be MicroSD support, so for all of us wishing we had more storage space, we can upgrade if we want. IE10 will be built into the OS too, providing (presumably) a similar experience to that in Windows 8, which is certainly a good thing.

Furthermore, porting games is to be made much easier with native code support, meaning big name games such as Angry Birds Space and Draw Something are more likely to make their way over to WP8 in the future, and apparently, the best games will run better than ever before. Here’s hoping a little bit of Xbox mechanics is built in to the phones then. I suspect there may also be greater differences between what a top end WP8 phone can do and what a low end one can.

Near Field Communications (NFC) will also be built in, which is a nifty little feature that allows things to be done simply by holding your phone near something – such as a reader at a cafe – to pay for goods, or open a webpage, etc. Their goal is ‘to effectively replace the whole wallet’. Apparently, magazines can (after pressing the phone against them) offer the chance to push the content to the phone. Not sure why you’d want to do this, but it’s pretty cool. There is seemingly heavy ‘Wallet’ integration, with many applications, notably PayPal, only a tap away. I don’t think it’s available in the UK, but they mentioned that a Chase app is in the works, suggesting that there are many other big names already developing WP8 apps. Expect a big influx in apps (I believe they will work for WP7 too, touchwood). In app purchases is another related addition in WP8, and it’ll make buying on Amazon and eBay a lot simpler, while in other apps, upgrading to the ‘full’ version will be accessible via a PIN input.

Offline map support will be another nice touch, allowing users to download maps and use them even when they don’t have signal. Nokia’s mapping technology will be built in to support this. This doesn’t bode well for other OEMs – Nokia are clear Microsoft favourites. There is a hint that Office has changed considerably from the Mango version, which is something I was really hoping for. Office is one of the main attractions of Windows Phones for many people.

The start screen is also due a change! After going on about live tiles for quite a while, Microsoft explained that the new start screen is going to have large, medium and small tiles. Customisable to fit people’s tastes via a resize arrow on the usual customisation mode of the start screen. A great plan; I always needed to see more than the initial 8 apps! Below is the new start screen in action, looks good, no? They can be either standard size, a quarter of that size, or double as wide (same height). It now looks a lot more like Windows 8, with just as many tiles visible at once, and it looks a little less empty. I love it. Will the number of tile theme colours be increased? That is a the next BIG question to answer…

It’s nice to see that at last Microsoft are allowing for more customisability of the OS. This will make cheaper phones cheaper, and more expensive phones better, and OEMs will better be able to differentiate theirs, hopefully. This is a massive step in the mobile wars, and Microsoft’s rivals should take note, and some of the less determined OEMs of theirs (i.e. everyone but Nokia) should sit up too. LG may be regretting sitting out of the Windows Phone game if this is what it’s going to be like. I am certainly very excited, this looks like a fantastic future is coming for Windows Phone. But will people at last listen to reason, to the amazing UI experience and all the integrated Microsoft features and apps? We shall see.

On a final note, there is news on the Windows Phone 8 Update topic, and it’s that there is an update – Windows Phone 7.8 – which appears to make the most of the new start screen features, but obviously lacks other Windows Phone 8 functionality. This was to be expected, but it could be worse. Anyway, I’ll be looking at getting a Windows Phone 8 phone pretty sharpish anyway!

Any thoughts? Let me know below.

Oli

Would Windows Phone Sell Better if Carriers Offered ‘Trials’?

I have had a sudden thought. How costly would it be for carriers to have unlocked models on new phones, so that they can give them to potential customers for, say, a week, so they can try the new phone out? Obviously there would be a cost, but the phones would get re-used and there would surely be increased sales (just think of how effective the ‘trial’ version of games is! I would have hardly bought any without it) of various phones. But I think the biggest benefactor of this scheme would be Windows Phone. Generally, people don’t like stepping out of their comfort zone. Almost all the people who buy a Windows Phone love it, but not enough people are willing to step away from Android and buy it, so if one was offered as a trial for free, surely more people would be won over by the beautiful and intuitive OS.

This idea would work by the carrier allowing any SIM card into the phone so there’s no obligation for the customer to make a commitment, but their details would of course be noted so they could be charged if they fail to bring the phone back in the time slot (without valid reason) or bring it back damaged or faulty.

In fact, Microsoft (or Nokia) could actually fund a scheme such as this, should it prove profitable. I am sure they would be willing to take the extra cost if it meant both getting increased sales of Windows Phone out there, and also getting an effective WP advert out to those trialists who don’t opt to buy one too. The biggest problem with Windows Phone is that people are too afraid to give it a go because they think it can’t be as good as the other OSs because they’re so much more popular – well here’s a chance to show them! #SmokedbyWindowsPhone etc. work nicely, but nothing beats actually being able to use a phone for yourself. Perhaps a week is a little too long to give each customer, but half a week should do for people to get a good feel of a phone before returning it to the carrier who can then perform a hard reset on the phone so no personal data remains for the next trialist.

Above all, Windows Phone deserves a chance to prove its worth to people. Of course, everyone’s different, they don’t have to love it and subsequently buy one, but I expect it would massively increase the chances of someone doing so.

Oli

Windows Phone Overtakes iPhone in China

It seems incredible to be reading this, a mere 2 months after its release in the world’s most populous country, but that we are. Windows Phone has attained a solid 7% market share while iPhone (which has been out for years, of course) only has 6%.

This is largely due to the release of low-end phones such as the Nokia Lumia 610, and indeed I expect most of the sales were thanks to Nokia and Chinese manufacturers such as ZTE (who has produced the Orbit and Tania, both on the low-end scale of WP7).

These are very promising signs indeed, with China being such an influential economy, and I expect such rapidly increasing market share to spread WP7 throughout the rest of Asia. Chinese government blocks Facebook, which is a huge shame as its use is one of the most impressive things about WP7 for me (see #SmokedbyWindowsPhone), and it’s also a brilliant way of growing – even through uploading pictures through a WP7 device, your friends would see the WP7 name beneath the picture.

I am sure there will be more low-end devices released in the near future, and in reality it is something that should’ve been done a long time ago. This segment of the market is a crucial one and one that Google have managed to capture a lot of already. Luckily Apple can’t release a low-end iPhone (or at least I assume not!), and RIM I assume will be playing 4th fiddle in the smartphone war soon enough, so it’s a vital time for WP7 to strike.

But I don’t just think low-end devices are what’s needed. People crave a proper ‘hero’ WP7 device, to be to WP what the HTC One/Samsung Galaxy Nexus are to Android. You could argue that we have this in the form of the Nokia Lumia 900 or the HTC Titan II (in the US), but for me these devices aren’t quite it. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both fantastic devices from what I gather, but I’ve tried a 900 out in the shops, and I actually preferred the 800. Nokia got rid of the smooth unibody design that was so unique to the 800 and with the same resolution the quality of the 900′s screen looks slightly more pixelated. We require a phone that people can hardly say a bad thing about, and I do think it is important to get phones like that out in the West, but perhaps not in developing countries just yet – the Lumia 610 would look worse next to a new hero WP7 phone, and would lose share.

When WP8 and W8 come out later this year, we will see the game change in the West, but it seems WP7 is doing a fantastic job for itself over in China already. One can only speculate how the release of a new heavily related computer OS will affect demand for WP7/8 devices, but let’s hope it’s a strong link.

Oli

US Windows Phone Market Share

How much do you think Windows Phone will grow by the end of the year? Will the releases of Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 help it considerably? And if you have any view on how BlackBerry will be doing by the end of the year, in light of the BB10 announcement, I’d like to hear what you’ve got to say.

Oli

 

Vote below:

Why are there so many Windows Phone 7.5 handsets being announced at the moment?

Many phones like the Nokia Lumia 710 (pictured), the lower-end Samsung Omnia M, ZTE Tania and the HTC Radar and Titan, have started appearing at a time dangerously close to the expected release date of Windows Phone 8 (around the same time as Windows 8, so either in the summer or autumn, probably the latter).

It seems strange that the OEMs are starting to release so many more phones at this point in time because people will presumably want to go for the newer WP8 phones once they become available, and so will put off buying one until it’s out. Well it may just be an indicator that WP8 is going to run, in at least some form, on WP7.5 handsets like those mentioned above. Of course, I think it would be highly optimistic to expect it to run on the original WP7 phones like my very own HTC Mozart 7, but we can all hope. However, it’s also come to my attention that most of these releases are low end offerings, with the obvious exceptions of the Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan (and Titan II), but to be fair, the OEMs needed to have proper flagship phones and not just leave WP until WP8 comes out, they need to keep with the pace. But Samsung has hung back, announcing a couple of fairly low spec’d phones. I fully expect a version of the Samsung Galaxy SIII to be running WP8 when it comes out. The main reason I can suggest that so many of these phones are being announced only now is that they are bound to drop in price pretty fast. It’s a wise move for Microsoft (and the OEMs) to capture the new smartphone users’ demand, as well as the heavy duty users’, and ultimately I think that makes sense because WP7 is so god-darn easy to use, while still being customisable and enjoyable for more advanced users.

It remains to be seen how well these new releases will go down, but hopefully they will aid WP in attracting at least a slightly higher market share than before. Even if you’re an Apple or Google fan-boy, you must surely like the idea of BlackBerry losing users and a little serious competition, right?

Lumia 900 Released on Phones4u

The Nokia Lumia 900 has at last been released in the UK, over a month after it was released in the US, to a warm reception. This is certainly good news for Nokia and Windows Phone fans, but it would’ve been better if they had announced the release date to build the excitement, like they did in the US.

From now until the end of the month, the phone will be exclusive to Phones4u, but after that it will be available from many other highstreet stores. If you purchase one before the end of the month, though, you get free Monster headphones worth £199, so it’s definitely worth doing it sooner rather than later! 

I went into a Phones4u shop yesterday to see a space where a new demo Lumia 900 was to be placed in the coming days. The salesperson was quick to praise Windows Phone OS and showed me a bit about the Lumia 800 too, although I’ve already used a few of them before. 

The Lumia 900 itself sports a 4.3′ clearblack display which is supposed to be far superior to the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy’s respective screens. The display itself is 480×800 pixels, which is standard for Windows Phone, but this doesn’t take away from the phone, it’s still got a brilliant screen. With 16gb storage you can store as many apps as you want, effectively, and 512mb RAM and 1.4ghz processor are by no means drawbacks to the phone – indeed, Windows Phone is designed to require less powerful processors. This does not mean it is a lightweight OS, merely that it will not use up as much battery and get as hot as other phones. Indeed, after a software update, the Lumia 900 is suggested to have an exceptional battery life, something I know some customers are very concious of. The Windows Phone interface is like nothing you’ll have experienced before, so it’s well worth a try to see if you like it. The physical body of the Lumia 900 is unique, the polycarbonate body (ranging in colours!) and amazingly smooth transition from screen to plastic is incredible. Well worth a check out. 

The phone has won many awards, including #52 of the top 100 gadgets of the decade and it also won the Best Smartphone award at CES 2012
http://www.complex.com/tech/2012/04/the-100-best-gadgets-of-the-complex-decade#50
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_Lumia_900#Launch
 

 Overall, this is set to be an exceptional smartphone and if you’re looking for something to break the boring mould of iPhone and Android layouts, with added features for convenience and superb social networking, this is well worth a look. It should not end up the most expensive phone on the market either, so give Windows Phone a try. Just look at the reviews on Amazon.com – 4.8* of about 300 reviews – its customer satisfaction is simply unrivalled, making it the most highly rated smartphone on Amazon, and even Apple’s Siri will tell you that is is the ‘best cellphone ever’, if asked. 

New Windows Phones

It’s about time Microsoft push for a few more phones for its Windows Phone platform. We see endless numbers of models being released by all varieties of OEMs running Android, and the only time a new WP7 phone is released, it’s so rare. I would have thought all the incessant advertising of the Lumia 800 (which I think is fantastic, by the way) in the UK would get WP7 noticed a bit more, but it hasn’t had much of an effect yet. It seems clear to me, however, that only time will tell before people actually start to try WP. And when they do, they’ll be sucked into its incredible interface and ease of use, as well as its ever increasing marketplace, Xbox Live games, Microsoft Office, SkyDrive functions, and overall fantastic user experience. I cannot sing its praises enough. The Nokia Lumia 900 looks an absolute beast.

Also, WP7′s share in Germany has reached 6%, which is very impressive for a relatively new OS trying to crack a huge duopoly in one of the markets that doesn’t usually favour Microsoft products. However, in the UK the marketshare remains about 1% or so, while in the US it’s reaching 2%. Not groundbreaking my any means, no, but it’s a start. There’s certainly more to come, especially when Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 come about.

So I’d like to see a few more additions to the current roster of Windows Phones. The HTC Titan II NEEDS to come to the UK. As does the Lumia 900, it should arrive in about a week. The Samsung Focus 2 is also supposed to be good. LG are not committing to WP7 for the forseeable future, which isn’t the greatest shame as their company’s going down anyway. Samsung and HTC are by far the most powerful OEMs to have on your side, apart from, of course, Nokia.

Furthermore, I want to see retailers actually push sales of Windows Phones. Too many of them are resistant to talking about them when I ask. They have none of it, they’re too busy explaining why the HTC One X is what I want. I’ve tried it, and it’s good, but it’s no Windows Phone. The reason they don’t push Windows Phone is that even they haven’t tried it. Especially in Phones4u, apparently the biggest UK seller of Windows Phones, they need to educate their staff on the full range of OS, because otherwise they’re sure to have pre-determined opinions. People fear change, when really, change is what keeps things interesting.

Windows Phone Apollo

WP8 is coming up later this year and it’s going to be great, it seems. It remains unsaid as to whether WP7 phones will be able to run Apollo, buy I would assume not. That means, if I want to keep up with Windows Phone, and I do, that I’ll need to reinvest, perhaps through selling on my current phone (HTC 7 Mozart). It seems Samsung and HTC both plan to make Apollo phones, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Sony, Nokia and LG to add themselves to that list either. Motorola is owned by Google, so won’t, and nor, obviously, will Apple. Nokia in particular though will be bringing out a new powerhouse of a Windows Phone to accompany Windows 8. I hope that, from all their attempts and their close partnership with Microsoft, Nokia don’t alienate the other WP manufacturers, causing them to cease production of further Windows Phones.