It was a fateful day back on Feb. 16, 2009. That's when LG Electronics' then-vice chairman and CEO Nam Yong met with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Barcelona, Spain. There, at the world's largest mobile industry trade show called the Mobile World Congress, LG Electronics and Microsoft inked an agreement for strategic collaboration. LG wanted to use Microsoft Windows Mobile OS as its platform for some 50 types of smartphones by 2012. The decision by the world's third-largest handset manufacturer to select Microsoft as the operating system for its smartphones was one of the most puzzling announcements to come out of the confab.
Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's man in charge of mobile, has a favorite word when he talks about Windows Phone 7: "holistic." The company's mobile infrastructure underwent a sea change to make an operating system based on what users want, which required retooling its entire phone manufacturing and design strategy.
Microsoft is scheduled to announce its first line of Windows Phone 7 products in a New York press conference next week.
Some smartphone owners running Windows software say they're getting messages from the future.
Microsoft Windows continues to dominate the PC market with a 90 percent market-share stronghold, but when it comes to smartphones, Microsoft is getting beat up worse than a mustachioed villain in a Jackie Chan movie.
The e-reader market is diversifying, and people who want devices to display digital books now have several choices: Amazon's Kindle, Sony's Reader and, as of last week, Barnes & Noble's Nook.
After months of talking about Windows Mobile 6.5, Microsoft is announcing on Tuesday that the first crop of phones to carry the Windows Phone brand are ready to hit the market.
Microsoft is hoping that a new crop of phones this fall will help the company in its quest to stay relevant in the cell phone market.
Microsoft has made some stumbles in the mobile world, but a strategy shift made more than a year ago will soon pay dividends, the company's top Windows Mobile executive said in an interview with CNET News.
Who could forget the scene from Tsui Hark's 1997 B-movie "Double Team," where an imprisoned Jean-Claude Van Damme scrapes the skin off his index finger, attaches it to an impromptu mechanical contraption and booby-traps it to hit the scanner at precisely the scheduled time each morning, so that his captors don't notice his escape?
When it comes to touch-screen phones, there are those who dig them and those who want to bury them.
Google is a company convinced of its own brilliance and its clear vision of the future. Being a hotbed of Mensa members will do that to you. As will stumbling early onto an obscenely lucrative business model. The same thing happened to a company called Microsoft.
Some of the biggest, most established names in mobile technology are jostling to associate themselves with a company with virtually no track record in the wireless world.
Microsoft's is stepping up its quixotic, seven-year quest to become as ubiquitous on mobile phones as it is on desktops.
The latest receivers for your car move with you in a whole new way. All the key features for easy navigation—touch-screen controls, spoken directions, and street maps for the entire lower 48—come packaged in pocket-size models that easily transfer between cars or slide into a suitcase. But the best add superior ergonomics and features that really take them (and you) the extra mile.
In this day and age, buying a standalone GPS device isn't the only way to get navigation help.
The newest generation of do-it-all handsets proves that a serious productivity tool needn't be a hulking package. Today's top-of-the-line devices feature Bluetooth, expandable memory, and quad-band...
They're smaller, more user-friendly, and more addictive than ever. Fortune's guide for those who don't get a company freebie.
MAGELLAN EXPLORIST XL $400; www.magellangps.com [3 stars]
Business 2.0: Favoritesupdated: Fri Sep 29 2006 16:53:00
Mouse Calls Sony Vaio Mouse Talk VN-CX1; $80; www.sonystyle.com
Fortune: License to thrill?updated: Mon Jul 10 2006 00:01:00
There's a scene in the movie Goldfinger in which James Bond, assessing the passenger-ejection seat in his sleek new Aston Martin sports car, says to the gadget master known as Q, "You must be jokin...
NOKIA 9300 COMMUNICATOR $460; www.nokia.com 3 stars
Fortune: License to thrill?updated: Thu Jun 22 2006 12:47:00
There's a scene in the movie "Goldfinger" when James Bond, assessing the passenger ejection seat in his sleek and sexy new Aston Martin sports car, says to the gadget master known as Q, "You must be joking." To which Q replies, "I never joke about my work, 007."
SAN FRANCISCO (Business 2.0 Magazine) - For millions of users, voice over Internet protocol, or VOIP, is lowering phone bills for calls they make from their PC or land-line phone. But soon VOIP could cut cell-phone bills, too -- most of all for international users.
Money Magazine: 3 Tipsupdated: Wed Mar 01 2006 00:01:00
TIP 1 Let's make a deal Bidding wars are so 2004. Home buyers are regaining the upper hand in some spots. The new rules for negotiating:
Fortune: On The Radarupdated: Mon Feb 27 2006 13:28:00
Gates' Next Conquest: Your Hip Pocket
Rather than spend up to $60 on the latest computer game and study a 200-page manual to learn how to play it -- a growing number of desktop gamers prefer inexpensive and easy-to-play "casual games."
Rivals Palm and Microsoft have finally converged. The Palm Treo 700w Smartphone, introduced by Bill Gates in early January, is the first Palm device based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system software instead of Palm's own Palm OS.
Fortune: Windows Shoppingupdated: Wed Jan 11 2006 10:09:00
Rivals Palm and Microsoft have finally converged. The Palm Treo 700w Smartphone, introduced by Bill Gates in early January, is the first Palm device based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating sy...
Drinking from a fire hose. Holding back the tide. Herding fish. Whatever your metaphor of choice, it's easy to get washed away amongst the thousands of gadgets at the annual International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES.
The next big thing in car electronics isn't big at all--which is why some analysts think it's going to be a huge hit. After limited success selling operating systems with complex navigation technol...
Microsoft has released a new version of its mobile phone software that Chairman Bill Gates says will help the company gain market share in the years ahead.
CNN anchor Richard Quest in London spoke to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates in Los Angeles on Tuesday, following the release of a new version of Windows Mobile software. Following is a transcript of part of their conversation.
There are PDAs that are also cell phones, like the new BlackBerry I've just gushed about. And there are cell phones that act as PDAs. This year, Gates & Co. plan to unveil just such a device: a new...
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