Microsoft built a custom Windows Mobile user interface for a new phone that T-Mobile USA expects to announce on Monday, evidence that Microsoft may be getting more serious about pursuing the consumer mobile market.
The phone, built by HTC, will be the first in a line of phones from T-Mobile using the new Shadow brand, said David Sholkovitz, marketing manager at T-Mobile.
While Microsoft has worked with operators to help modify the operating system to fit their needs, this project represented a new level of partnership, said Doug Smith, director of marketing for Microsoft's mobile communications business. "I'd say this was one of the deeper partner involvements we've had on a new product," he said.
Despite underwhelming consumers and being snubbed by enterprises, Windows Vista's numbers keep growing, with Microsoft saying Thursday that it has now shipped 88 million copies of the operating system, almost double the number of copies of XP in the same amount of time at its launch.
In late July, Microsoft said it had hit the 60 million shipment mark with Vista.
Microsoft had previously said that it had shipped 20 million copies of Vista in its first month and 40 million copies of Vista in the first 100 days.
A Freemont, Calif. couple was among a handful of defendants sentenced to prison Oct. 23 for defrauding Microsoft out of more than $29 million by illegally obtaining discounted software.
Husband and wife team Mirza and Sameena Ali, ages 60 and 53, respectively, received five years in prison and were ordered to pay more than $20 million in restitution to Microsoft and forfeit roughly $5 million after being convicted last year of a host of charges, including money laundering and 30 counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud.
You've heard all the doom and gloom from the blogosphere, now it's time for some reality: In just 9 months on the market, Microsoft has sold 85 million copies of Windows Vista, most of which are the high-end editions such as Vista Home Premium and Ultimate. More interesting, perhaps, sales are actually increasing: Microsoft sold 25 million copies of Vista in the most recent quarter, so it's on track to have well over 100 million users by the end of the year.
Taking a page from major enterprise software providers like Oracle and SAP, Microsoft announced this week Business Ready Customer Care, an initiative that includes major enhancements to its maintenance and support program for Microsoft Dynamics, ERP and CRM, applications.
The customer support initiative does three things: Extends for five years the time over which Microsoft will support its products; offers more creative financing solutions for buying its CRM and ERP products, and promises to create a more transparent environment for its channel partners and their customers about future upgrades and products.
At a conference called Interop, it only makes sense to have a
keynote on interoperability. That call went to Tom Robertson, general manager of interoperability and standards at Microsoft, who spoke of the topic this morning at the show in New York.
Robertson argued throughout his talk that Microsoft is open to
interoperability and has numerous tools that it uses to be interoperable.
"Why do we need interoperability? It's about customers, individuals
companies and governments," Robertson said.
Microsoft is beginning to look like the growth stock it was in the 1990s.
After years of dependable double-digit growth and a stock that went nowhere, Microsoft had come to resemble a mature company. But for the second time this year, the software giant posted the kind of growth that it routinely did in the 1990s.
Microsoft's first fiscal quarter sales rose 27% to $13.76 billion, the company reported late Thursday. That was about $1.2 billion more than analysts expected, and earnings of 45 cents a share were 6 cents more than Wall Street was looking for.
Microsoft's consumer security software changes the AU settings in Windows XP and Vista without telling users or getting their approval, a researcher said Thursday -- behavior that may explain recent reports of patches being installed and systems rebooting without permission.
When Microsoft responded to new charges of silent changes last week, however, it denied that AU settings were ever altered without user approval, and it didn't mention OneCare as a possible culprit.
Scott Dunn, an editor at the "Windows Secrets" newsletter, reported Thursday morning that OneCare silently changes AU settings as it installs. No matter what AU setting the user selected previously, OneCare's installer quietly changes it to the fully automatic option.
Windows 2008 early adopters and testers who already have an MCSE on Windows 2003 can get the early jump on being certified to work with the newest networking OS from Microsoft, and they can do that many months before the software hits the shelves in February next year. Microsoft has plans to release Exam 70-649 TS: Upgrading Your MCSE Windows Server 2003 to MCTS Windows Server 2008, on Monday, Oct. 29. This, according to an e-mail from David Lowe, senior product manager for the Windows Server Marketing group.
This year will mark the first time that Microsoft and its partners will have a chance to make their pitch for why Vista PCs should be on your holiday gift lists.
To kick things off, Microsoft is holding a Windows Vista holiday-preview event this week in New York, aimed primarily at the consumer press (folks like Vogue, GQ, Cosmo, etc.) Windows officials are here to show off how far Vista has come in the year since the product was released to manufacturing.