Desktop & Mobile | Windows 7

Microsoft Smartphones Beaten by Bada: Gartner

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Aug 112011

Pop quiz: What’s Bada?

If you had to look it up, that’s okay. Bada is a mobile operating system developed by Samsung, and launched in mid-2010. It has a developer community, and made its debut on the Samsung Wave handset.

It’s also beating Microsoft in the smartphone marketplace, at least according to Gartner.

The research firm pegs Microsoft’s share at 1.6 percent for the second quarter of 2011, down from 4.9 percent a year ago. It trails Google Android with 43.4 percent, Nokia’s Symbian with 22.1 percent, Apple iOS with 18.2 percent, RIM’s BlackBerry franchise with 11.7 percent and Bada with 1.9 percent.

Other analyst firms have traced Microsoft’s smartphone market tumble over the past several quarters. Research firm comScore, for example, recently estimated that Microsoft smartphones declined from 7.5 percent to 5.8 percent of the market for the three-month period ending in June. That included both Windows Phone and the company’s more antiquated Windows Mobile platform, which is being phased out.

As I’ve mentioned previously, I like Windows Phone. I find the tile-based user interface more conducive to productivity than your usual grid-like screens of individual apps. I like what I’ve seen with the upcoming “Mango” update, although Microsoft keeps declining to give me a review unit. I think the platform has some serious potential, but unless someone does something radical fairly soon, it’s going to end up in the dustbin of dead tech alongside the Kin phone and Symbian.

Microsoft certainly seems determined to stay the course. Over the next few months, manufacturers ranging from Samsung and HTC to LG Electronics and ZTE will all (supposedly) produce Windows Phone devices loaded with Mango, which boasts around 500 new features. Most of those features are little tweaks, but some are radical: new multitasking abilities, for instance, and Bing baked deeply into the user interface.

There’s also Microsoft’s partnership with Nokia, which must have seemed like a good idea on paper: the Finnish phone maker adopts Windows Phone as its primary platform, boosting Microsoft’s global reach and sales. Soon after the partnership announcement, analysts chirped about how Nokia would help power Windows Phone’s market share past that of Apple’s iOS and RIM’s BlackBerry franchise by 2015.

But Nokia’s shedding market share so fast I can’t look at the analyst numbers without thinking someone must have taken the decimal place on the share percentages a little too far to the right. Recently minted Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (a former Microsoft exec) compared his company’s situation to a burning oil platform, but it’s now worse than that: the platform’s threatening to explode into tiny flaming pieces drifting all over the North Sea.

My point is, Microsoft can’t count on Nokia for salvation. And it can’t count on Mango, not when rival operating systems are prepping for their own great leaps forward. All Microsoft can do is continue to pour money and effort into the platform in hopes that, two or three years down the road, the landscape changes in ways that allow it to incrementally gain market share instead of lose it. That’s an awful position for any company to be in, but I’m not exactly hearing any alternative plans out there.

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Is Windows Phone Going Down in Flames?

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Aug 092011

There’s an increasing amount of data that suggests Windows Phone, despite Microsoft’s massive marketing campaign and partnerships with any number of companies, is struggling to survive.

Microsoft always knew it’d be a hard road ahead for the platform. But as I mentioned in an eWEEK article yesterday, executives in Redmond probably harbored the hope that Windows Phone would enjoy steady and incremental gains over several quarters.

Yet that doesn’t seem to be the case. Research firm comScore is estimating Microsoft’s smartphone market share declined from 7.5 percent to 5.8 percent for the three-month period ending in June. That included both Windows Phone and the company’s more antiquated Windows Mobile platform, which is being phased out.

Meanwhile, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer estimated Microsoft’s possible revenue from Windows Phone at less than $613 million. That figure came from subtracting Xbox 360-related revenue–some $8.103 billion–from that of its overall Entertainment and Devices Division, leaving $613 million split between Windows Phone and a variety of much smaller projects such as Zune and Surface.

Even CEO Steve Ballmer’s acknowledging the adoption issues: During a July 11 keynote speech at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference, CEO Steve Ballmer described the newish platform’s market share as “very small.”

Microsoft is betting a lot on its upcoming “Mango” update, due to final release sometime this fall. Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics and Nokia have all committed to building new Windows Phone devices preloaded with Mango, along with Acer and ZTE. Some 500 new elements to the update include expanded functionality for the Xbox Live and Office hubs, new multitasking abilities, and Bing deeply baked into the user interface.

But will Mango really reverse Windows Phone’s fortunes? I find that questionable, particularly since Mango will release just as Apple’s iPhone 5 (presumably) hits the market, along with a new generation of ever-more-advanced Android smartphones.

Microsoft is also pinning its hopes on a partnership with Nokia that will see the Finnish phone maker adopt Windows Phone as its mobile software platform. Following the announcement of that partnership earlier this year, a few analysts suggested that Nokia’s global presence would boost Windows Phone to new market heights within the next few years. Research firm IDC, for example, even went so far as to predict that Windows Phone would overcome both Apple’s iOS and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry franchise to become the second-ranked smartphone platform after Google Android.

According to its latest financials, though, Nokia’s bleeding market share, thanks in part to competitive pressures from the likes of cheap Android devices, and also because nobody’s willing to buy Symbian OS devices that’ll be effectively mothballed in a couple of quarters. If Microsoft ever harbored the hope that it’d inherit Nokia’s market share for Windows Phone with relatively little attrition, that’s looking highly unlikely. Nor does the partnership help solve Microsoft’s issues in the United States, where Nokia has a negligible smartphone-market presence.

As I mentioned yesterday, that leaves Microsoft betting that the Mango update, combined with a massive ad campaign and new manufacturing partners, will help change its trend-line among U.S. users. Now don’t get me wrong: I like Windows Phone, and I think robust competition always improves a market. But the current data suggests Microsoft’s smartphone dreams are in very serious trouble.

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Microsoft, Google Patent Battle: Uglier and Uglier

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Aug 042011

Microsoft and Google aren’t exactly bosom buddies, but a recent series of Tweets and blog postings by the respective companies’ executives threatens to make that already-tense relationship extra sour.

Earlier this year, a consortium led by Microsoft and Apple (which included Sony, EMC, Ericsson and others) outbid Google for 6,000 wireless technology patents held by Nortel Networks. Some of Nortel’s patents covered the LTE (Long-Term Evolution) technology used by many smartphones currently on the market, and could have provided Google the cover it needed to repel intellectual-property lawsuits from its rivals.

Now Google’s on the offensive, claiming that the consortium’s motive for buying those patents is being scrutinized by federal regulators. “Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other’s throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what’s going on,” David Drummond, Google’s senior vice president and chief legal officer, wrote in an Aug. 3 posting on The Official Google Blog. “Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anticompetitive means–which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop.”

He went on to claim that the Justice Department is “looking into whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for anticompetitive means.”

Microsoft decided it was time for a street brawl.

“Google says we bought Novell patents to keep them from Google,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, wrote in an Aug. 3 Tweet. “Really? We asked them to bid jointly with us. They said ‘no’.”

The same day, Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of corporate communications (say that three times fast), also Tweeted: “Free advice for David Drummond – next time check with Kent Walker before you blog.”

He included a link to an Oct. 28 email sent to Brad Smith by Kent Walker, Google’s general counsel, suggesting that “a joint bid wouldn’t be advisable for us on this one.”

Is that a smoking gun? Not necessarily–that short email doesn’t delve into many particulars over the deal itself. But if Microsoft intended to blunt Google’s attempt to make itself look like an aggrieved party, it’s certainly succeeded–the online chatter this morning definitely seems in Redmond’s favor.

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Does Microsoft’s Bing Have An End Game?

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Aug 012011

The New York Times published an article July 30 describing Microsoft’s pushback against Google in search and search advertising. For anyone who’s been following the Bing-Google battle over the past few months or years, there’s not an enormous amount of new information in the piece (aside from how Microsoft will name its next three search-upgrade cycles after rock bands). Nonetheless, it’s an excellent refresher on the overall search wars, and how Microsoft seems determined to burn hundreds of millions of dollars (and employ a massive team of people) in order to stay in the game.

Bing has gained incremental but steady market share over the past two years, but that’s come at an enormous cost to Microsoft, whose online services division lost $2.56 billion over the last fiscal year despite a rise in revenue.

“This is a long-term journey,” Qi Lu, president of the division, told the Times. But that’s basically all you can say when you’re setting fire to a mountain of cash.

In addition to focusing on the granular features that supposedly differentiate it as a “decision engine”–including the ability to search for flights and shop for stuff–Microsoft seems intent on boosting Bing’s viability via partnerships with other companies. That includes Redmond’s deal with Yahoo to handle the latter’s back-end search, something that helped increase Bing’s market share. It also involves a deepening relationship with Facebook, which is also not exactly Google’s best friend.

Over the past few months, more and more Facebook features have found their way into Bing’s user interface. When you query Bing for specific people, for example, the search engine can offer Facebook information on the results page. If you’re traveling to a new city, such as Paris, Bing can tell you which Facebook friends live there. Bing Director Stefan Weitz once described this process to eWEEK as “infusing the emotional” into queries, and it certainly helps further differentiate Microsoft’s offering from Google.

However, Microsoft investors seem less than sanguine about the online services’ costs, inevitably raising questions about Bing’s end game. Does Microsoft want to topple Google and send it to the dustbin of history? Is it content with Bing as a strong second-runner in search, provided it can stem those gargantuan operating losses? Certainly Microsoft can’t divest itself of Bing entirely, given the increasing importance of the cloud to the company’s overall fortunes, not to mention its inability to cede anything to Google.

Whatever its ultimate goal, and barring some sort of massive collapse on Google’s part, Microsoft will likely have to satisfy itself with slow gains in the space.

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Microsoft’s Office 365 Ready to Duel Google Apps

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Jun 292011

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took to a New York City stage June 28 to roll out Office 365. That alone hints at the importance attached to this latest cloud-based effort, which Microsoft hopes will blunt the momentum of Google’s work in the cloud-productivity arena.

Ballmer claimed Office 365 will give small- to midsize businesses an “edge” in competing, without the burden of complex on-premises systems. Indeed, most of Microsoft’s promotional materials seem angled toward that particular audience segment. That’s unsurprising, considering how analysts have been telling me for months that Google Apps’ presence is strongest in companies with relatively low headcount.

Certainly the competition between Microsoft and Google has intensified in recent months. Tom Rizzo, senior director of Microsoft Online Services, insisted in a May 17 interview that businesses were trying Google’s business-cloud offerings before shifting back into Microsoft’s camp. Google executives took exception to Rizzo’s assertions, arguing that Google remained the leading choice for businesses interested in cloud-based email and collaboration.

And so it’s gone on, for some time. But now there’s Office 365: Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online unified onto a cloud platform available for between $2 and $27 per user per month. Supposedly, Office 365′s backend infrastructure is also tougher and more reliable than its predecessor, BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite), which had suffered some service outages in recent months. Does that mean it’s time for the Google legions in Mountain View to start shaking in their collective boots?

Google certainly seems a little freaked out about it, launching a preemptive PR blitz ahead of Office 365′s launch. “Office 365 is built for Microsoft. [Google] Apps is built for choice,” Shan Sinha, Google Apps’ product manager, wrote in a June 27 posting on the Official Google Enterprise Blog. “Office 365 is optimized for Windows-based PCs and devices, which reduces your flexibility. Our applications are designed to work well on any device, on any operating system.”

But according to some analysts, Office 365 isn’t poised to conquer the cloud just yet.

“While Office 365 does put Microsoft in mortal combat with Google,” Matthew Cain, an analyst with Gartner, wrote in a June 28 email, “it is not really an existential threat for Google since Microsoft is essentially validating the model that Google pioneered with Google Apps.”

He added: “I would expect that Office 365 actually heightens interest in Google Apps … the first ingredient we need for companies to wholly embrace cloud-based personal productivity and collaboration tools is time. Time–and I mean 3-5 years–will prove or disprove the soundness of the model in terms of economics, security, stability and functionality.”

Other analysts seemed to concur:

“Microsoft is struggling to show value given that Google is preaching ‘free,’” Rob Enderle, principal analyst of the Enderle Group, wrote in a July 27 email. “They need to reeducate their market quickly, but don’t see this as a marketing but a product problem, and are playing Google’s game as a result.”

For the substantial majority of companies, Office 365 likely won’t wholly replace desktop-based Office anytime soon. Nonetheless, it’s an ever-cloudier IT world out there.

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