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Networks has launched a raid on Ciscos channel in the wake of the
networking kingpins spat with former ally HP.
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(Source Yahoo UK News)
Posts Tagged “networks”
Mar
17
2010
 
Cisco launches new Borderless Access productsPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Cisco today announced the release of Cisco Borderless Access (CBA), part of Read Full Story…
Report for app store GetJar forecasts number of downloads will rise from 7bn in 2009 to almost 50bn in 2012 Mobile app downloads are expected to increase from more than 7bn downloads in 2009 to almost 50bn in 2012, according to a report. The independent study, carried out by Chetan Sharma Consulting for Getjar, the world’s second biggest app store, forecasts that the global mobile application economy will be worth $17.5bn in 2012, more than CD sales, which it predicts will be $13.83bn. It says that market will continue to grow exponentially as mobile devices become as powerful as computers, and wireless networks deliver consistently higher bandwidths. “With the consumer appetite for mobile apps rocketing, the opportunities for developers are huge,” says the CEO and founder of GetJar, Ilja Laurs. The study says that initially the focus of making revenue from apps was based entirely on paid downloads or subscription-based models, but this is going to change. Today, advertising-based revenue accounts for about 12% of app revenue, but by 2012 this figure is expected to rise to 28%. For some platforms such as Google’s Android, advertising revenue is predicted to be even bigger than revenues from paid downloads. The price of mobile applications ranges from $0.99 to $999 but the average selling price in 2009 was about $1.90, the study says. Over the next three years this is predicted to decrease by 29% and apps will get cheaper; however, advertising revenue derived from apps is likely to stay relatively flat. By 2012, so-called “offdeck” apps that are offered independently from a carrier will be the biggest revenue generator, accounting for almost 50% of all app revenue. By comparison, in 2009, apps available from mobile operators still accounted for more than 60% of all app revenue, but this will fall to just under 23% by 2012. As the WSJ Digits blogger Jennifer Valentino-DeVries points out, the study will by no means be the last word on the subject, but it provides at least a look at why so many companies are excited about mobile.
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Mar
14
2010
Google forced to delay British launch of Nexus phonePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Setbacks with the internet group’s first handset will see competing products arrive on the market first Google’s attempt to break into the mobile phone market has hit serious problems in Britain with the launch of its flagship Nexus One device understood to have been delayed until the middle of next month. The setback means that by the time Google’s first own-branded foray into the market this side of the Atlantic is available to consumers, its local network partner Vodafone will have launched a competing product, which analysts say is better, called the HTC Legend. While Google has been working with the industry on the Android mobile phone software for several years, the Nexus One, made by Taiwan’s HTC, is the first handset over which the search engine group has had complete control. But launching a new phone has proved more difficult than Google expected. It was released in the US in January, but Google’s decision to sell it solely through its website immediately came in for criticism as buyers struggled to get help with technical problems, and Google, which has traditionally relied on email for consumer contact, was forced to introduce telephone helplinessupport and the problems it has experienced in the US has given it reason to pause over the phone’s launch outside the US, to make sure it has its customer service operations in place. Last week Goldman Sachs slashed its estimate for Nexus One sales this year from 3.5m units to 1m worldwide. In the UK, Google will not only sell the phone at full price to any customer who wants to put their existing sim card into it, but it has also teamed up with Vodafone, which will offer the device free to anyone willing to sign a £35 monthly contract. But the delay in the launch of the Nexus One, which under Google’s original plan would have been available earlier this month, means that it will come after the launch of rival Android devices that analysts reckon are at least as good, if not better. Vodafone, for instance, will be offering the HTC Legend in April which has the same operating system as the Nexus One but is more stylish: being built from a single piece of milled aluminium. Orange and T-Mobile, meanwhile, will both be stocking the HTC Desire – which is exactly the same as the Nexus One, but has an optical trackpad instead of a trackball – from next month. The delay also means the Google device will be available in the UK only weeks before another hotly anticipated gadget, Apple’s iPad. Several of the UK’s mobile phone companies are finalising deals with Apple to sell the tablet computer to British consumers. Unlike its last mobile device, the iPhone, which was offered through just one exclusive partner for the first two years, the iPad is expected to be available through multiple network operators from the start. Apple will ship two versions of the iPad in the UK, one that can access the internet using short-range wi-fi networks and one that can also access 3G mobile phone networks. But Apple needs to sign deals with at least one UK mobile network, because the iPad makes use of micro-sims, meaning that buyers cannot just put the sim card from their existing handsets into it. In fact, it will be the first device launched in the UK that uses micro-sims. Apple said earlier this month that the device will go on sale in the UK towards the end of April but the mobile phone companies believe that the 3G version of the iPad will not be available until May. Orange, T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone all expect to be selling the iPad to customers and they are all locked in talks with the Californian company. Apple, however, has made it plain that it does not want iPad users to be tied to long-term contracts with any mobile phone operator. Instead it wants users to be able to pay for mobile network access on a pay-as-you-go basis.
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Mar
05
2010
Picking facts from speculation on iPad launch prices and datesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Why the collapse in online advertising might be leading you to read pretty much anything about Apple’s new gizmo Hey, have you heard? Apple’s iPad is having production problems! And it’s not having production problems! Also, it’s going to cost £389! Or possibly less, or more. And in the UK the 3G version is going to be exclusively on Vodafone. As well as being on Orange and O2. Also, it’s going to be released in the UK two weeks after the US, where it’s being released on March 26, or actually 29th, except it’s being released at the same time. And it’s going to cost.. OK, enough breathless murmery. Let’s clear the air. There is an astonishing amount of speculation going on about Apple’s iPad. Very little of it seems well-founded – or even grounded in logic. The facts about the iPad: Apple hasn’t given a precise launch date; “60 days” was the best Steve Jobs had on 27 January. It’s not given one for the UK either. It hasn’t said how much the various models will cost in the UK. It hasn’t said whether the 3G mobile-connected models will be available in the UK (though it’s expected) and it hasn’t said which network(s) it will be going with. Which is about par for the course for some Apple products. And of course is enough for ever so many “news” stories. Let’s start with some of the things where people are prepared to put their names to the claims. The Register reports that Vijay Rakesh, an analyst at ThinkEquity analyst, told investors in an advisory note on Thursday that checks with manufacturers suggested “some minor delays” in ramping up production for the tablet. They can only make 200,000 to 250,000 iPads per month at present; production may not hit 800,000 to 1m units per month until at least April. “We believe this is just a minor hiccup in a longer-term entirely new revenue stream and product road map for [Apple],” Rakesh wrote. Earlier this week another US analyst, Peter Misek at Canaccord claimed that “unspecified production problems” will hold initial availability to about 300,000 units – and said Apple may keep the iPad to the US only or delay the launch into April. This was then contradicted by DigiTimes – usually the fount of unspecified vague insights into the Taiwanese and Chinese computer manufacturing insights which turn out to be bang on 50% of the time, and completely off the other 50% – which was told by Foxconn Electronics that everything’s on schedule and that it should be able to ship between 600,000 and 700,000 iPads this month. Apple said.. nothing. Conclusion: they all could be right. The iPad was announced in January, and if Foxconn has been making 200,000 for a couple of months, it’s got a nice stockpile sitting waiting for a container ship. Meanwhile Foxconn could be ramping up production towards that 800K figure. So we conclude: forecasts of a US-only launch unlikely to come true. And “delays into April”? Remember that at the launch (scroll to 7.22pm) Steve Jobs announced that they Wi-Fi only models would go on sale in 60 days, the 3G models in 90 days because they “require approval from carriers”. 90 days from the iPad launch takes you… into April. OK. Assume that it is going to launch in the UK at about the same time as in the US. Two questions: how much will it cost? And which networks will the 3G version be available on? The cost question is interesting. Apple has told us it won’t announce the UK price until it launches at the “end of March”. We’ve done our own calculation (helped by Macworld) which gives us a starting price guess of £424 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only (Macworld suggests £388), ranging up to £705 for the Wi-Fi/3G 64GB model (Macworld: £693). And which operators? No clues. Obviously, we speak to our contacts there; but so far they’ve had little to offer. So what then are we to make of the sudden flurry of emails recently from really small sites (and I do mean really small) which claim to know the launch date and/or chosen carrier? Here’s an example I received recently: “We just got word on Vodafone being the official launch partner of the iPad in the UK, direct from Vodafone. Details in the below blog post. This is from the same guy who provided details that O2 would be the Palm Pre’s UK carrier well before announcement.” And a link to the site. But we’re not going to link it here. I’ll explain why in a moment. Then there was the email from another site which said it had the price for the low-end iPad: “We are pretty confident regarding the pricing, the tip came from a source who works closely with Apple UK, obviously we can’t say much more about this. “We are 99% sure that the base model will be £389, regarding the other prices of the 32GB and 64GB models, our source said that these are likely to be the prices, although he did mention that the prices on the last two aren’t set in stone as yet.” (I should point out that the other site didn’t approach me; I contacted it to ask how sure they were of their sources.) Hmm, so have we missed a trick? Are we getting blown out of the water by dedicated bloggers running niche sites who have contacts in just the right places? Perhaps. But consider another possibility. I spoke to someone who has very good contacts in the mobile phone industry. The reply: “My source at Voda says nothing signed yet but is checking, also it’s kinda weird but [the person quoted in the Vodafone story] left a year ago.” So why the certainty in that story? My contact noted: “There are going to be more and more stories like this as the collapse in online advertising has pushed sites into e-commerce and they need the links from [the Guardian] to push them up the [search] rankings. There are quite a few mobile phone so-called bloggers already in the UK who are actually little more than affiliate channels for the mobile phone operators. That’s often how they get their stories. Watch the links when you click through, it’s often quite instructive. There is, for instance, a very well respected UK mobile phone blogger who gets a lot of very good Orange scoops. Of course he does, my mates at Orange point out, the other half of his business is a retailer for Orange so he finds out about new phones at the same time as the rest of the channel. Is that journalism? Who knows these days.” We conclude: the maths suggests that the iPad will very likely come in around the £389-£399 mark (we like the Macworld number better than ours, which by being above £400 isn’t a marketing-friendly price sticker). Networks? Whichever ones can handle the micro-sims that the iPad uses. Given that Apple is still with only one network in the US, but in the UK has signed up three (O2, Orange and Vodafone; Tesco is a virtual MNO), it’s hard to know whether it will try to be a kingmaker again or prefer to spread the love like butter among them all. Rationally, being on all three (while making them think it’s exclusive until it’s announced) would be better for sales – people could just add an iPad plan to their existing contracts. OK? We hope that puts your minds at rest about prices and operators. As for launch dates… well, Apple traditionally goes with Tuesdays or Fridays. Strictly, 60 days from the iPad announcement puts you on Sunday 28 March, so take your pick: Monday 29th, or Friday 26th? Or might it get pushed further along? As for the 3G version, if there’s a 90-day delay, then you’re not going to see it until April 27 (on the 90-days-from-iPad-ground-zero principle). So even that US analyst could be right. And remind us what you’d be buying an iPad for? We’re interested to hear.
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Mar
04
2010
No phone, no net: why rural children are leavingPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Government commission says more needs to be done to help young people stay in rural areas The lack of mobile phone reception and broadband coverage in rural areas has become the No 1 issue in dissuading young people from staying on in the countryside, the chair of the Commission for Rural Communities has said. In a report to the prime minister, Stuart Burgess, the government’s rural advocate, said that the long-term future of the countryside is in jeopardy because so many young people are being forced out of rural areas to find homes, jobs and support. In what was described as a “snapshot” of the state of the countryside, Burgess found that almost 60% of urban areas are able to receive a cable-based broadband service, while in villages and hamlets this drops to 1.5%. The report said that lack of internet access was a major issue for children who live in rural areas. “With social networking such a feature of youth culture, lack of access can lead to frustration and exclusion.” The issue was one for both parents and children. In an interview with the Guardian, Burgess said that “the No 1 issue is broadband access and mobile phone networks for young people thinking of buying houses in rural areas. For children there’s an expectation that they will be able to use the internet for homework. Yet we have seen schools’ internet network close down at 4pm in rural areas and there’s no internet at home.” He called on the government to introduce a scheme nationally modelled on a successful pilot in remote Cumbria, which now has the highest penetration of broadband in any rural area in England. Burgess said that for adults phone reception was becoming essential and that he wanted mobile phone companies to treat the countryside as a foreign country allowing customers to “roam for a network to connect to. When you go abroad mobile phones roam for a network to connect to. Yet in rural areas, where you may only have one provider, if your phone is from another company you cannot access the signal.” The recession had thrown into sharp relief the historic advantages of towns in Britain. At the end of June 2009, 40% of 16- 24-year-olds in rural areas were unemployed or economically inactive, but the report pointed out that of the 573 Job Centre Plus outlets in England, only 23 are in more rural areas. “Government-approved training schemes, accessed largely through Job Centre Plus, are not a viable option in rural areas.” The report says that even recent government initiatives have been unequally distributed. Of the 3,000 Sure Start Children’s Centres in England only 80 are in villages and hamlets and on average these each have to provide for 2,500 children, more than double the average for urban centres.
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Mar
03
2010
Cisco plugs security into mobile working linePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Secure Borderless Networks aims to combine the features of VPN and mobile security, to protect everything from the datacentre to end devices
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Mar
03
2010
Most smartphone users are disappointed, claims FanfarePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
People are buying increasing numbers of smartphones, but are they living up to the media hype? Fanfare thinks not…. Smartphone sales are growing fast, but “57% of smartphone users are disappointed with handset and application performance,” claims a report from Fanfare (PDF: registration required). However, the results reflect a very small sample: “155 members of the public” and “the survey was conducted online and filled in anonymously,” so don’t bet your lunch on its applicability to the Great British Public. Most of the issues appear to be internet related, with streaming media, web browsers and social networking applications causing the most problems. And then there’s the part that could be important to Fanfare, which offers automated testing services:
Dissatisfied smartphone users typically tell their friends and family (57%) and social networking sites (58%), which could have a negative effect on sales. Indeed, it makes social networks much more of an influence on purchasing than “traditional media” (by 64% to 40%). Fanfare marketing man David Gehringer says: “The Apple App Store and Android Market have served up billions of app downloads, giving smartphone owners the ability to use their phones in new and exciting ways. But now that the novelty is wearing off, users want their applications to be more reliable.” The report says:
I’d like this to be true, but I can’t really see much evidence. It seems to me there’s a big fashion element to smartphone sales and (based on a much smaller sample than 155) people like being one of the first to own a sexy new gadget. How well they can make it work it is another matter. Nor is this a criticism of media darlings such as Apple’s iPhone, HTC and Google Android phones, various BlackBerry handsets and the odd Palm. All of these seem more reliable and usable than what I remember of the Nokia 7110 or 8110 (The Matrixphone), while disappointed iPhone owners seem to be a very rare breed indeed. So, are you happy with your smartphone, and if not, is the backlash about to start?
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Mar
01
2010
Simon Fuller aims for social networking TV reality hitPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
If I Can Dream to use live streaming, video uploads, myspace auditions, Twitter and blogging It seems all too familiar: five young people move into a house together in a series that follows them as they shoot for stardom in Hollywood. But while If I Can Dream, the new show from the pop and TV impresario Simon Fuller, may sound like a cross between Big Brother, The Real World and Pop Idol, it’s altogether more ambitious. For a start, the five aspiring stars have agreed to allow the cameras to track them 24/7. And in addition to the weekly episodes, which will be shown on Hulu.com from tomorrow, there will be a live streaming feed at ificandream.com and, in the show’s most audacious move, a chance for new hopefuls to win a place in it via a public vote and an open worldwide audition. That global audition is all part of If I Can Dream’s push to be the first reality TV hit of the social networking era. The hope is that it will become a blogging mainstay, disseminated through Twitter and uploaded on mobile phones. “I am determined to continue pushing the boundaries of mainstream entertainment,” Fuller has said. “The next frontier is the video world of authentic real-time interaction. It is time the public got to see the truth behind what it takes to launch the careers of young artists.” The man behind Pop Idol, So You Think You Can Dance? and the Spice Girls is rarely wrong about trends and if this latest idea takes off it will change the way in which we watch television, paving the way for other producers to cut TV networks out of the loop altogether. But how likely is Fuller’s vision of a real-life Truman Show in which the curtain concealing the factory that makes stars is torn down Wizard of Oz-style? Cynics will question whether in an age of scripted reality shows such as The Hills or MTV’s latest hit, Jersey Shore, it is possible to show “the truth”; and it’s hard not to wonder if the soon-to-be-famous five realise what they’re getting into. “We don’t want to be reality stars, we want to be star stars,” one of them, Amanda Phillips, said. “Our show’s not about sticking a bunch of short-fused people in a small space with a lot of alcohol and seeing what happens. If it was, none of us would be here.” But is that the reality? Only the show’s God, Fuller, really knows.
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Feb
26
2010
It’s not our fault: Decoding Palm’s memo to staffPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
It’s been a tough year for Palm. The company is betting everything on its new handsets, the Pre and the Pixi – but with sales not doing as well as expected, the company issued a profit warning yesterday. To explain what was happening, chairman and chief executive Jon Rubinstein sent out a memo to the company’s staff. As is typical with these things, it was largely stuffed with corporate speak and coded messages – so I’ve come up with this handy paragraph-by-paragraph translation that might help explain what Palm thinks is going on.
Hey guys! Whatever I say, don’t forget we’re in this together.
We’re not selling as many phones as we thought we would: sales were flat despite the fact that we started selling handsets with Verizon – America’s second-biggest phone network (with 91m users) – in January. We were expecting sales to go up. They didn’t. This could be awkward.
Given how sales have gone over so far, we’d probably need to double our sales in the next three months to satisfy our original targets. Let’s be honest, that’s not happening, is it?
People aren’t buying enough of our phones. And networks don’t want to order phones that people aren’t buying.
(Before we go on, I’m going to sugar the pill. Over the past year or two we’ve been burning through our cash reserves like crazy – having some money in the bank buys us some more time. That’s awesome news!)
Yes, it sucks – but the pain you feel today is nothing compared to the pain you would have felt if we’d suddenly announced in a few weeks that we’d missed our targets by 30%.
We’ve been trying to work out what’s gone wrong…
…and we’ve decided it was Verizon’s fault.
In fact, we think they’ve done such a bad job that we’re trying to school them so that they actually know what our products do. Plus, we gave it a cool name that implies we’re taking action!
Not many people know we exist – but when they know we exist, we sell a few more handsets. That’s got to be positive, right?
We need to get better at a few things – largely the “making things” part, and then the “selling things” part. Perhaps some of you haven’t been as focused as you need to be (yeah, I’m talking to you).
I’m not firing anyone… yet.
Give me a few weeks to prepare before asking me anything.
I secretly watch lots of cheerleader movies.
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Feb
24
2010
Three ISPs sign up for Bournemouth sewer fibrePosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
One of Britain’s first fibre-to-the-home networks, which uses the sewer system for connectivity, has moved a step closer to going live
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A group of cross-party MPs has called on the government to rethink its Read Full Story…
Feb
22
2010
Apple and Google compete at Mobile World CongressPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
As the battle between Apple and Google hots up at the Mobile World Congress, the smartphone boom signals good times for media firms Richard Wray Announcing the BBC’s move into the mobile phone market with its own news, sport and video applications for the iPhone last week, Erik Huggers, the director of future media and technology, said the new generation of so-called smartphones are a “great conduit to our audience”. It is a conduit that until recently has been, if not closed, then certainly constricted for media companies. But the explosion of downloadable applications, rapid rise in mobile broadband take-up and, crucially, the weakening of network operators’ stranglehold on the market have opened up a massive opportunity. The attraction is easy to see: there are already four times as many mobile phones in the world as there are PCs, and those phones are getting cleverer. In the run-up to Christmas, one in four of the phones sold by Vodafone across the world was a smartphone – that is, a phone with the same computing power as a laptop you could buy a few years ago. Within a couple of years there will be more smartphones than PCs on the planet. Even the mobile phone operators’ reaction to the weakening of their position, banding together in order to mount a fightback in the apps world, should benefit media companies. Then there is Google, which has not only provided the industry with a serious, and more importantly open, competitor to the iPhone, but looks increasingly likely to usher in a new era of mobile advertising. Huggers made his announcement in Barcelona at the mobile phone industry’s biggest annual get-together, Mobile World Congress, which showed that while the iPhone began the boom in the smartphone market, the rest of the industry is catching up and a range of devices are set to hit the shops that will help media players get to a mobile audience. The iPhone drove a wedge between customers and the mobile phone networks. Other players had tried it, such as Nokia, but Apple succeeded. For years the mobile phone companies acted as gatekeepers to their customers. Content companies had to strike deals with each operator, jostling for position on the “portals” created by the networks. Consumers, however, did not want their phone company picking what content they could view on their phones and portal usage was minimal. So the networks knocked down their walled gardens. As consumers ventured into the mobile web, many media companies – including the BBC – created mobile versions of their websites that could be easily viewed on a phone’s small screen. But usage remained low because even the mobile web, on many devices, was a pale imitation of the “real” internet. The iPhone was different and when it switched to 3G technology a year and a half ago the mobile web came of age. It has weakened the networks and given media companies the chance to bypass them. The relationship an iPhone customer has is with Apple first and their network provider second. The network is merely paid for providing access – Apple gets paid for content. It is an aggregator for media companies worldwide, and what started with music has become a wide variety of content, thanks to its App store. But Apple does not have the market to itself. Already more than 20 phones with Google’s rival Android operating system have been produced, which have a crucial advantage over the Apple device: Android supports Flash, which should help advertisers realise the potential of the mobile web. “Crucially, Apple does not and will not support Adobe Flash on its iPhone or iPad products,” explains Brad Rees, chief executive of Mediacells Limited, the mobile market experts. “From an advertising creative perspective, this has meant iPhone application specialists win most of the pitches for mobile microsites. In the online world, the language of big-budget agency creatives is Adobe Flash, and this is precisely where Android hits the sweet spot. Even though Nokia has been offering full internet phones for a while, it’s the Google proposition which resonates.” In his keynote speech in Barcelona, Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, promised the search engine giant is “not trying to run roughshod” over the mobile phone companies or turn them into “dumb pipes” in the air. The companies, however, are not so sure. Two dozen of the world’s biggest announced during the congress that they are getting together to produce a completely open apps platform – allowing consumers to take their applications with them when they change handsets. In return for this portability, the networks would start to get a slice of revenues – although exactly how is still unclear. This is potentially big news for media companies as it raises the possibility that they will be able eventually to develop their apps just once, and put them on a massive array of handsets straight away. And it’s another indication that at long last the mobile floodgates are open. Full coverage of Mobile World Congress including galleries and analysis at guardian.co.uk/business/ mobileworld congress
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Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) has won a contract from Swisscom, a telecommunications service provider in Switzerland, to upgrade its mobile packet core network to handle growth in data traffic due to increased use of smartphones. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read Full Story…
Heads or tails, Jha winsAn odd detail has emerged from Motorola’s divorce plan. After trying but failing to find a buyer for either the mobile phone business or the set top box business, the company is now seeking a simpler separation splitting the company into two bits: networks, and everything else.…
Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn’t work Read Full Story…
BARCELONA (Reuters) – The chief executive of Vodafone Group Plc, the world’s largest mobile network operator, expressed the fears of many on Tuesday when he said Google Inc should not be allowed to dominate the mobile space. Read Full Story…
Flat-fee deals for mobile broadband will be a thing of the past if global Read Full Story…
Feb
16
2010
Supreme Court decision in Vtesse vs BT to have huge bearing on competition in the fibre optic marketPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Vtesse Networks has had its case against BT overruled by the Court of Appeal. Read Full Story…
Feb
16
2010
More questions than answers about the Windows Phone 7 SeriesPosted by CompareMobiles.com in Mobile News
Microsoft made a splash by pre-announcing the Windows Phone 7 Series phone yesterday, but it might all be forgotten by the time phones appear for the (Christmas) holiday sales season Microsoft’s launch of its Windows Phone 7 Series phone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona yesterday was a huge success if you judge it by the amount of press and blog coverage. But it also provided very few details, including when phones would go on sale. Microsoft says they’ll be out before Christmas, but so will a lot of other new phones. Microsoft’s list of Windows Phone 7 partners includes Asus, Dell, HP, HTC, LG, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba, and it expects to have phones on most networks, including AT&T, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, SFR, Sprint, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, Telstra, T-Mobile USA, Verizon Wireless and Vodafone. In other words, Windows Phone 7 is still a platform. Microsoft hasn’t followed Apple’s proprietary route, though whether phone makers will still have access to the phone’s source code and the right to change it remains to be seen. The demos showed the Windows Phone 7’s roots in the attractive user interface developed for Windows Media Center PCs and reworked for the Zune HD and the free Zune 4.0 software for Windows*. They also showed the phone’s extensive integration with Windows Live and Facebook, though at the moment, it looks as though Twitter is supported via Windows Live. Email support includes Microsoft Exchange synchronisation, Live Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail and other services. But it’s not clear where Microsoft stands on supporting Silverlight, Adobe Flash, or the still-emerging HTML5 standard. Silverlight support would be welcomed by companies who want to put their business applications on the phone, and it would answer the objection that — apart from Microsoft Office — Windows Phone 7 phones are aimed much more at consumers than at businesses. Adobe Flash would be welcomed by many users and web developers, and would give Microsoft a selling point against Apple, which refuses to support Flash. However, the question is still open. The Seattle Times managed to get a quote from Karen Wong Duncan, a Microsoft product manager: “We do not support Flash. We are partnering closely with Adobe. As Steve Ballmer said earlier, we are not opposed to having Flash on the platform.” HTML5 support would be welcomed by everybody, especially if Microsoft included an expensive H.264 video codec for playing YouTube and other videos without using Flash. But we don’t know what sort of browser will be included in Windows Phone 7 phones, or what its capabilities might be. Windows Phone 7 also has an Xbox Live connection, and users will be able to score points in multi-player games, but Microsoft didn’t provide details. Apparently we’ll learn more at the Mix 2010 conference in March. Finally, there has been no mention of what has sometimes been called Pink: the code-name for putative next generation versions of the old Sidekick device. (Microsoft bought the company.) The lack of detail makes it look as though Microsoft has announced too early. Presumably it couldn’t resist the opportunity to make a splash at WMC, and there’s only one a year. Next year’s congress would be too late…. * This is worth a download if you want something to manage an MP3 player: it’s much nicer than Windows Media Player. However, you won’t be able to use the Zune Marketplace outside the US.
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