In recent weeks, there’s been a buzz around the iPhone’s potential as a business handset, despite its original launch as a purely consumer-focused device. In part, it’s because Apple has plans to beef up the iPhone’s capability for corporate email. However, it seems Microsoft could be weighing in too, with plans to bring Office to the iPhone.
Check these comments from Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s specialised devices and applications group, in an interview with Fortune:
“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone. To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now… The key question is, what is the value that we need to bring? We’re still getting comfortable with the SDK, right? It’s just come out. So we had a guess as to what feasibility would be like, now we’ll really get our head wrapped around that.”
The same article suggests that Microsoft subsidiary TellMe is also eyeing the iPhon, potentially bringing its voice recognition technology to Apple’s handset.
(via Fortune)
Microsoft has signed a deal with Nokia to bring its Silverlight platform to millions of mobile phones. If you are wondering what on earth Silverlight is, it is essentially a browser plugin that enables rich web content such as animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback.
Allowing the software to run on the Symbian operating system on Nokia mobiles marks an extremely aggressive push for Microsoft into the mobile web space as well as what might be the beginning of the end for watered down, clunky mobile web browsing. The union is also an unlikely consolidation of efforts between two companies that have been competing in various areas of mobile technology.
Continue reading ‘Breaking news: Microsoft and Nokia targeting mobile internet together’
Remember MSN Direct and those funny SPOT wristwatch PDAs Microsoft were trying to flog a few years ago?
No? Well, to be honest they’d slipped our minds too. It seemed like a good idea at the time - internet-enabled widgets that downloaded little snippets of information like weather reports, stock prices and news headlines and displayed them on a digital watch. Unfortunately, the watches were a bit pricey and not much of the technology ever made it across to the UK.
The MSN direct service is still going, however and Microsoft clearly think there is some mileage to be had from their little widgets - they have just announced a technology preview of MSN Direct for Windows Mobile devices.
The tech preview is a free download and should work with any non-touchscreen Windows Mobile device.
Once installed it will use your phone’s data connection to grab updates for your chosen widgets. Widgets can be cycled through using the keypad or joystick and any links within the MSN Direct content (usually to more MSN content) can be opened in Internet Explorer with the click of a button.
Engadget are reporting that Microsoft and Nokia have been conducting talks about Windows Mobile - the implication being that Nokia might bring out a phone using Windows Mobile as the OS intead of Symbian.
John Starkweather, Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business International Marketing Director (the sign on his door must be about three feet long) is quoted as saying “[Nokia] obviously have significant investments in Symbian but there are a lot of places where we have significant synergies and we would love to see the day where those synergies would extend completely with Windows Mobile,”
Quite what that means is anyone’s guess - panic on the streets and dogs and cats living together, quite possibly. One one hand, a Nokia WinMo device makes no sense - it could harm Symbian, a company that Nokia has invested in heavily - while on the other hand.. it still doesn’t make a great deal of sense.
Should anything come of this - possibly some kind of mutant phone running a hybrid S60/Windows mashup - Pocket Picks will be there to gawp incredulously and keep you informed.
The makers of Zumobi have entered into an agreement with Microsoft that will see their novel, tile-based mobile browser appearing on WIndows Mobile 5 & 6 handsets.
Zumobi is a sort of combined portal-cum-rss reader that fetches web pages and massages them to mobile-friendly dimensions, browsable by a unique tile-based interface. When we last took a look at Zumobi here at Pocketpicks we were impressed by its looks and ease of use but worried about a lack of content and customisability.
There is no word yet on whether Zumobi will be appearing as just another bundled app or if it will end up being a major part of the future Windows Mobile interface. The fact that it looks a bit ‘iPhoneish’ at first glance might point towards the latter, if you were a cynic.
When we took a look at the beta version of Zumobi, they were touting its targetted advertising ‘features’ - fingers crossed Microsoft don’t decide that ads are the killer app that WinMo needs to take on Symbian and the iPhone.
Confused by Windows Mobile? Don’t know your ActiveSync from your elbow? Help may be just a click (and a short sign-up process) away.
Microsoft has launched Windows Mobile Training - a free web site that offers tutorials in choosing and using Windows Mobile devices.
It’s all a bit corporate, and at heart is a promotional resource to push Windows Mobile 6, but there is a good selection of Flash tutorials on topics from using WinMo with Vodafone Live to installing third-party apps.
Also available are product demo videos, PDF documents featuring articles and howtos and resources for small businesses.
Personally, I think a community element would be even more useful. Although it may not give the desired party line on every issue, something like Ubuntu Forums would be really useful - more experienced Windows Mobile users offering advice to newbies.
You will need a Windows Live ID to log in - this can be created for free directly from the front page.
The Inside Microsoft blog has what is claimed to be a leaked internal Microsoft document detailing some of the features we can look forward to seeing in Windows Mobile 7 - codenamed Photon.
Now, this may turn out to be an elaborate hoax (albeit one that someone has spent a lot of taking putting together) but assuming it is true WM 7 is going to be really interesting.
A complete interface redesign seems likely, with much more emphasis placed on finger gestures and movements rather than the stylus. So far, so iPhone - but Microsoft also seem to be taking a leaf from Nokia’s book by implementing motion-sensitive controls. Users will be able to control the phone by turning, twisting and shaking it and devices will behave differently if turned face-down or kept in a pocket, for example.
Rather than incorporate an accelerometer, WM7 will instead use the camera to detect motion - how well this will work in low light is anyone’s guess.
The full list of features can be found here, complete with eyecandy.
If you use a Nokia phone, you probably have a bundled copy of Quickoffice lurking in its memory, maybe seeing some occasional use when someone sends you a word doc as an attachment to an email.
The free version that ships with your phone is ok for viewing the occasional file, but you can’t edit or create documents and it only supports older MS Office file formats. Although few people would go out of their way to edit Powerpoint presentations using a numeric keypad and a tiny joystick, if you use your phone for work it is a handy thing to be able to do in a pinch.
Quickoffice Premier version 5.0 can handle the latest XML-format MS Office 2007 files and will let you create and edit Excel, Word and Powerpoint docs right on your handset.
At $69.95 its not cheap, and there doesn’t seem to be a demo version available, but if you need to view or edit MS Office docs and only carry a S60 mobile phone then it is worth a look.
Gizmodo have a preview of the next two versions of Windows Mobile (v7 & 8). Obviously, a lot of this is speculative at the moment but essentially, Microsoft are aware that Windows Mobile 6 has a few problems and have some impressive-sounding plans in place for the future.
Windows Mobile can be a bit slow, particularly on cheaper handsets, so Microsoft plan to raise the minimum hardware requirements for a WM device so that even the lower-spec models can keep up.
WM 7 will feature new versions of all the basic apps, most crucially a faster, more feature-rich Internet Explorer that can finally compete with other mobile browsers (*cough* Safari *cough*)
WM 8 will be rewritten from scratch and promises a new UI, global search and much tighter integration between the different components and apps that make up the operating system.
Can they pull it off? Well, who knows - Vista hasn’t exactly been the revolution in desktop computing that Microsoft promised either - but now that the iPhone has given the smartphone market a much-needed kick in the shorts, they might not have any choice..
Well, it had only been out for a year - Microsoft has finally released a free update for Office Mobile that adds support for its Office 2007 file formats.
The new Open XML (eXtensible Markup Language) formats for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents are said to reduce file size, which is a bonus if you are downloading them over GPRS, and they add security features.
Available for download here, the update also adds support for working files stored within ZIP archives, some viewing enhancements for Excel spreadsheets and support for the SmartArt diagram format.
It’s a rather chunky 12MB download, and you will need at least 6MB free on your Windows Mobile (version 5 or 6) device to install and run the upgrade.
Recent Comments