that is one huge leap of faith for Delta!!

I will be concerned about flying in Delta.. I would expect them to have at least one emergency bag with all the essential manuals and map etc. Don't they know that Surface runs Microsoft OS? Which can crash anytime anywhere for any reason?? What if Pilot is looking for some critical information and Surface shows them blue screen r asks them to wait while they upgrade?

Having said that, I do agree that Microsoft Surface Pro is damn good replacement of PC. However, entire PC category is getting substituted by tablet category created by iPad.. But agreed that it is good win for Microsoft and clear message for them to spend more on tablet hardware and more importantly OS/ecosystem development.

Due to a very good friend, I happen to be using Surface tablet and I like it for basic PC type of activity. Microsoft's biggest asset is Office suite which makes Surface a very attractive combination from price/performance ratio. However, this logical attractiveness is still not strong enough to overcome love for iPad!!

All the best to Microsoft and Delta for their new adventure!!!

Surface 2 tablets fine fit for Delta

Airline set to buy 11,000 of the Microsoft devices

By Joshua Freed

Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — Delta Air Lines plans to buy 11,000 Microsoft Surface 2 tablets for its pilots to replace the heavy bundles of books and maps they haul around now.

Other airlines, including American and United, have been buying Apple’s iPad for that purpose.

Delta says the Surface tablets will save it $13 million per year in fuel and other costs. Right now, each pilot carries a 38-pound flight bag with manuals and maps.

Delta plans to test the tablets on its Boeing 757s and 767s, which are flown by the same group of pilots. The airline is hoping for Federal Aviation Administration approval next year to use the tablets throughout a flight, and it hopes to be using the devices on all of its other planes by the end of next year.

One reason Delta picked a Microsoft device was that it’s easier to give pilots separate sections for company and personal use, said Steve Dickson, Delta’s senior vice president for flight operations.

Pilots will be able to install personal software and keep their own items such as photos on the personal section of the devices, while another portion will be dedicated to Delta’s software, Dickson said.

“We trust them to manage that side of the device,” Dickson said.

Another reason for picking the Surface tablet is that Delta’s training software also runs on the same Windows operating system as the tablets, reducing the need to redo that software for another device, Dickson said.

Delta has already done a test program where pilots could bring their own devices, including iPads.

In August, Delta said its flight attendants will get Windows phones to process in-flight sales of food, better seats, and other items.

Microsoft announced last week that it is updating its tablet line, which includes the Surface 2s that Delta is buying. The Surface 2 is the cheaper of the two versions sold by Microsoft, retailing for $449 each. Dickson declined to say how much Delta is paying.

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MARK LENNIHAN/AP

Delta plans to buy 11,000 Microsoft Surface 2 tablets for its pilots to replace heavy bundles of books.

Two interesting news..

Finally iPad mini.. and price for Microsoft Surface  Tablet. As usual, it will be some kind of surprise on Apple side.. Nobody is expecting just a simple small mini version of iPad. There are rumors that it will have not only iPad mini will have Cellular Data but will also have cellular voice capability. It is easier to do that.. no biggie.. it will be competitor to Samsung Galaxy Note.. kind of.. Knowing Apple, if they can get some other interesting Voice + Data Plan to make it affordable.. so instead of iPad mini as purely Cell phone, it can be an extra cell phone possible with pay as you go/use.. I think it is easily doable considering Apple's clout. Hope something useful comes out.. not just min/micro version..

As far as Microsoft Surface is concerned.. looks like Microsoft is positioning it to enterprise customers with enterprise discounts which usually can be any where from 40-60%. Or some real fool/idiot is sitting in their pricing who is thinking that people will pay same price as iPad just because we are adding physical keyboard in cover of surface tablet. or... I am too dumb to understand great Microsoft strategy.. but whatever I know.. in my view this price will make surface DOA (dead on arrival). Even if it 10 times better than iPad.. perception is that iPad is gold standard and you can only raise price later on if your product was successful. Lot of people have tried it out.. Motorola I know tried with docking station kind of nonsense.. but nobody even remember Motorola's tablet's name..

TECHNOLOGY GIANTS THINK SMALL

Apple expected to lift curtain on iPad Mini

Oct. 23 event is set for San Jose’s California Theatre

By Jeremy C. Owens

jowens@mercurynews.com 

SAN JOSE — Apple sent out a media invite Tuesday to an event on Oct. 23, expected to be the introduction of a longrumored smaller iPad to compete with Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7. The invite, brightly colored with the top of an Apple logo, simply says “We’ve got a little more to show you” and invites media members to an event at the historic California Theatre in downtown San Jose. Apple last introduced a new product at the theater in 2005, when late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs showed off the company’s first video iPod and the debut of television shows on iTunes; the iPod U2 Special Edition was also introduced there in 2004.

---

APPLE

Above is the e-mailed invitation sent to journalists Tuesday, advising them of Apple’s Oct. 23 event presumably to introduce the new iPad Mini.

---

A smaller and less expensive iPad would be a logical step by the Cupertino company to thwart sales of similar tablets by Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Rumors have focused on a screen size of about 7.85 inches diagonally for the so-called iPad Mini, notably smaller than the standard iPad’s 9.7-inch screen. Smaller devices are easier to carry in a purse or suit pocket and cost about $200, far more affordable than the latest version of the iPad, which starts at $499. An “iPad Mini” would allow Apple to protect its retail flank, experts have said, effectively corralling off that lower price point from its rivals. 

Analyst Shaw Wu with Sterne Agee told Bloomberg News last week that while “these competitors have a tough enough time competing against the 10-inch iPad,” a smaller, less expensive iPad Mini “will make the competition even tougher. It tells you how hard it is to beat Apple. These other companies have to either lose money or break even on these products.” 

Several news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News and Reuters, have reported this month that Apple has already begun production of the device. Other reports have said that Apple will also introduce a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, smaller than the current 15-inch model. 

Jobs famously denounced a smaller iPad model as late as 2010, when he said “One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70 percent of the benefits of a 10inch screen. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. … The reason we won’t make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit a lower price point, it’s because we think the screen is too small to express the software.” 

However, business needs seem to have trumped the thinking of Jobs. 

“Even though we all remember Steve Jobs saying you’d have to file down your fingers to use a 7-inch tablet, it sounds like it’s finally going to happen,” Needham analyst Charles Wolf told this newspaper earlier this month. “But while it’s been proven there’s a market for a smaller iPad, I think it’s the lower price point that Apple’s concerned with.” 

Apple stock, struggling since the launch of the iPhone 5 led to concerns of production delays, shot up Tuesday, gaining 2.4 percent to close at $649.79. Before Tuesday’s gains, Apple — the most valuable U.S. company in terms of market capitalization — had fallen 9.4 percent on Wall Street since the launch of its newest smartphone on Sept. 21. Staff writer Pat May contributed to this report. Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/mercbizbreak. 

======================
Enterprise version pricing? with 60 or 70% discount?

Microsoft Surface to start at $499 — same as iPad

By Salvador Rodriguez

Los Angeles Times

The long-awaited pricing of Microsoft’s Surface tablet has finally been revealed — four months after the product was first announced. Microsoft said Tuesday it was taking pre-orders for its tablet, which starts at $499 for the 32 GB model that runs Windows RT, a lighter version of Windows 8 built for tablets. Prices go up to $599 for a 32 GB model that includes a cover with a built-in keyboard, and up to $699 for a 64 GB version with the keyboard cover, according to the pricing page. Additionally, covers can be purchased separately starting at $119.99 for a touch keyboard cover, $129.99 for a type cover. The type cover includes real keys and is built for quicker typing, while the touch cover comes in five color options. 

---

DAMIAN DOVARGANES/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Microsoft’s Surface tablet is 9.3 millimeters thick.

---

The Redmond, Wash., company announced the pricing of the Surface on the same day that Apple sent invitations to an Oct. 23 event where it is widely expected to announce an iPad Mini tablet. 

When Microsoft revealed the Surface, the company promised it would sell the tablet at competitive prices, and the tech giant has delivered. By comparison, the 9.7-inch Apple iPad also starts at $499, albeit for a 16 GB model. A 32 GB model costs $599, and that’s without a cover or keyboard. 

The Surface features a 10.6-inch display with a 1,366-by-768 resolution. The tablet features two 720p HD cameras. The body is 9.3 millimeters thick and comes with a kickstand. The Surface also features two microphones and includes ports for microSD cards, USB and HD video out. 

The Surface will go on sale alongside Windows 8 on Oct. 26. 

Besides unveiling prices, Microsoft also uploaded its first commercial for the tablet to YouTube on Monday night. 

Bad news continues for Dell & HP

May be HP's exit from Tablet market was way to premature? I really can't come up with any really good strategy for HP and Dell to overcome this PC sales slump.. I guess, enterprise is only hope for them. Consumer market they need to focus on emerging markets where they are battered by Lenovo and Acer who have great hold there.. Still, both HP and Dell do hold some premium as compared to Lenovo and Acer in all markets. Though Lenovo is now a days more or less considered same or better than HP and Dell.

On high end there is Apple.. who is king on consumer side and now encroaching really fast into Enterprise with all the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) etc... are catching up.. Still, HP/Dell has some time before they loose this ultra premium enterprise market as well.

What will be impact of this on other Giants like Intel and Microsoft.. Microsoft is trying to catch up big time in Tablet OS and market. If they are able to get some share of this pie.. they will be able to survive.. Best hope for Microsoft is Enterprise.. even though most of the executives and even middle management folks have iPad.. there are still many enterprises who are still totally into Managed Device mode and could give some chance to Microsoft to try out their tablet.. it better be good otherwise MS is gone..

Intel is still in better position.. They are benefiting from MAC Book Strategy.. Though, not sure, how long Apple with stick with them before going back to their own processor.. Also, Intel is trying hard to get into ARM type/equivalent processors.. they are left behind.. but this hardware market is so dynamic and without any customer loyalty.. Intel should be able to swing back into Tablet processors.. Though margin would be in pressure.. unless, they acquire some other market leader..

for now.. enjoy your PC/Laptop while it lasts!! On second thought.. they do look nice.. at least when they are new ;-) and as long as  you don't keep macbook next to them ;-)

COMPUTERS

PC sales tumble 6 to 11 percent in Q2

Personal computer sales in the U.S. sagged in the spring as shifting technology trends, upcoming product releases and a shaky economy dampened demand for the machines on the market. Separate reports released Wednesday by Gartner and IDC estimated the second-quarter decline ranged from 6 percent to 11 percent compared with the same time last year. Gartner provided the lower of the two figures in the research firms’ quarterly analysis of PC shipments.

Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the biggest PC makers in the U.S. market, suffered the sharpest drops.

Worldwide PC shipments held up better in the April-to-June period, dipping by just 0.1 percent from last year.

Consumers and businesses have been buying fewer PCs amid the growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers such as the iPad. 

Not a good sign for Tech in medium term

Both Applied and KLA-Tencor has reported lower order or forecast. Usually, their forecast is prediction for Intel and many other chip makers almost 12-18 month advance and in a way 18-24 month for Software companies like Microsoft.. Agreed, a lot could change between now and in next 12-24 months but still.. I would be really worried.. Unless, it is minor aberration for just this quarter I would be really worried and would go short after 6 months from now or after holiday season..

I hope that they give better forecast and report next quarter..  

Chip-gear maker Applied lowers forecast for full year

Reuters

Santa Clara chip-gear maker Applied Materials slashed its fullyear targets due to a sudden drop in orders in its biggest market toward the end of the current quarter, underscoring fears of a downturn in global technology spending.

The company, which generates more than half its total revenue from its Silicon Systems Group business — the unit that caters to chipmakers and foundries — was hit by an extraordinary cutback in orders amid weak spending and floundering PC sales.

“Even though we anticipated there would be some seasonal pullback, we really didn’t expect anything on this order of magnitude,” Chief Financial Officer George Davis said Tuesday.

CEO Mike Splinter said foundry operators — including manufacturers such as TSMC that make chips under contract for many companies, as well as industry bellwethers such as Intel that fabricate their own chips — pulled back toward the end of the third quarter.

Davis said the company has seen as much as a $500 million pullback in orders since the beginning of June by foundry customers who build chips for other companies, as chipmakers delay spending in a weak economy.

The company said full-year profitability would be down by about 15 cents to 20 cents a share, compared with previous estimates.

KLA says orders to decline in quarter

Milpitas-based KLA-Tencor, a maker of equipment used to make semiconductors, said it expects orders in the current quarter to decline as makers of memory chips hold off on boosting production. KLA-Tencor fell 0.3 percent, or 13 cents a share, to finish at $45.49 Tuesday. 

Discounted MacBooks!!

Is it a good news or not? Though discounts are still very small and still keep MacBooks almost twice as expensive as similarly CONFIGURED Windows machine.. but then you need to compare Apple to Apple only.. This is definitely good news for consumers.. 


In general, MacBook's experience is all together different. Best part is that they don't slow down with age as in the case of Windows. Then on top of it, graphics rendering is amazing.. In general, I have observed that developer tools also perform much better on Mac as compared to Windows machine.  Boot up time or standby energy consumption is superb.. Windows 7 is also catching up but still no where near to Mac OS-X.


I do see lot more MacBooks in Starbucks and office places.. So it is proliferating which is one of the greatest news for Apple Inc. as Laptops and Desktops are highest margin products for them. Hope that with increased sales, Apple will work on pricing and make their products more affordable.

Cheers!!!

APPLE

Latest MacBooks available at discount

Best Buy, Amazon drop prices less than a month after devices debuted

By Salvador Rodriguez

Los Angeles Times

Best Buy and Amazon are discounting the latest MacBooks despite the Apple computers being on the market for less than a month.

The two retailers are offering discounts on their websites across the board on all 10 computers Apple announced at its Worldwide Developers Conference last month.

Although the two companies have similar discounts for all of the models, Best Buy beats Amazon, notably on the Retina models, in some instances.

Amazon takes off only $5 from the two Retina models, yet Best Buy knocks off $140 from the $2,799 Retina and $110 from the $2,199 model. But Retina models at Best Buy are back-ordered and could take a month to ship.

Best Buy also has a better deal on the $1,499 MacBook Air, taking off $75 while Amazon discounts only $5. However, each retailer has the same discount on the three other MacBook Airs, with $60 off the lower-end 13-inch Air, $55 off the higher-end 11-inch Air and $50 off the $999 11-inch Air.

On the new, non-Retina Mac-Book Pro, the two companies have the same discounts. Both take off $60 from the cheaper 13-inch and $75 from the other 13-inch. They also mark off $90 from the lowerend 15-inch and $110 from the more expensive 15-inch.

Consumers who have been thinking of getting any of these Macs may want to jump on these deals before they go away; there hasn’t been a date given for when that could be.

But students can consider the Apple Store, where they can save as much as $200 on the Retinas with the Apple education discount. That deal ends in mid-September.

Microsoft going Social..

Seems okay step to me. Microsoft seems to be doing okay on strategy and execution. Interesting thing will be on how well they assimilate these different components in their core office and share point suits.

Enterprise Social Networking is a big area and in my view still very much under developed. All these Enterprise Collaboration Management (ECM) vendors are trying their best to copy and mimic Facebook while navigating with myriad rules and complexities of enterprise relationships within and outside of company and partners. They all seems to be okay but still need more ease of use and more importantly transfer of ownership of content and pages from one individual to another as people move on to different places and roles. I think rationalization of this without any complex administration is going to be key for success of any of these ECMs. Rest all things can be easily copied from FB.

Biggest threat to these guys is again their biggest gorilla Facebook.. Right now, FB is on fringe of ECM. It will be interesting when and if ever they get into ECM.

Lastly, good job Yammer guys.. Keep on bringing more money and do proud to Silicon Valley!!!

Cheers!!




Yammer CEO David Sacks, left, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shake hands after officially announcing Monday that Microsoft will acquire Yammer for $1.2 billion cash.

MICROSOFT’S $1.2 BILLION ACQUISITION

Yammer deal lifts eyebrows

Analyst says software giant’s foray into social realm too late; others say it aids other products

By Peter Delevett

pdelevett@mercurynews.com 

Confirming rumors that had been swirling for weeks, Microsoft on Monday said it will buy San Francisco social-networking startup Yammer for $1.2 billion in cash.

Yammer, founded in 2008, lets business customers set up private, Facebook-style networks among employees and clients. It boasts 5 million users from such companies as Deloitte, 7-Eleven and Ford, CEO David Sacks said Monday.“We had a vision for how social networking could fundamentally change the way people work,” said Sacks, the former chief operating officer of PayPal. He will continue to lead Yammer as it joins Microsoft’s Office division, which also includes SharePoint and Skype. Sacks said linking up with such “household name” business applications will help Yammer grow even more rapidly.

But Microsoft is still lagging rivals such as Salesforce and Oracle, which already have made big-money moves into the social-networking realm. 

San Francisco-based Salesforce offers a socialnetworking tool called Chatter and this month bought cloud-based socialmedia company Buddy Media for nearly $700 million. Redwood City’s Oracle recently snapped up two software companies in the social-media sector, Vitrue and Collective Intellect, as part of its push into cloud computing. 

“Microsoft is too late to the social party,” Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry wrote in an email Monday. “Imitation is not a strategy.” 

Still, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Monday said he was intrigued to learn more about Yammer’s “freemium” sales model, which relies on individual users inside a company to adopt the product at no cost, then gives that company’s IT department an option to pay for more advanced security and support after a critical mass of users has developed. 

“They were pretty unique in the viral adoption model,” Ballmer said of Yammer. 

Constellation Research co-founder Ray Wang said Monday that Yammer’s ability to convert about 19 percent of its free users to paid customers is at least double the industry average. He generally praised the deal, while adding that Microsoft’s own failure to develop new products has forced it to become more reliant on acquisitions. 

Tony Zingale — CEO of Yammer rival Jive Software, which went public last year — predicted that Yammer will struggle to remain innovative as part of the Redmond, Wash., behemoth. “At Microsoft, ‘move really fast’ is not in their vocabulary,” he quipped. 

Zingale said Palo Altobased Jive is already making plans to woo away Yammer customers, and he predicted Salesforce will do the same. 

On the other hand, Zingale said, the deal “once and for all validates that the social enterprise software space is here to stay. When somebody like Microsoft says they’ve got to have it, I think we’re heading for a very vibrant market.” 

Karl Keirstead, an analyst with BMO Capital Markets who follows Jive’s stock, agreed with that assessment, noting that Jive’s shares have risen about 18 percent in the two weeks since rumors of Microsoft’s interest in Yammer surfaced. (Jive closed trading Monday slightly down at $19.75, while Microsoft finished at $29.86 — a decline of 2.7 percent.) Keirstead — whose firm helped underwrite Jive’s December IPO — estimated Yammer’s yearly revenue at about $25 million to $30 million, which would mean Microsoft paid a multiple of 50 times revenue for the company. Yammer had reportedly amassed $142 million in venture capital from Draper Fisher Jurvetson, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and former Facebook vice president Chamath Palihapitiya , among others. 

With Jive recently trading at 10 to 12 times revenue, and with hefty numbers being shelled out for Yammer and Buddy Media, Keirstead predicted it won’t be long until another big suitor such as SAP makes a bid for Jive. “It just feels like there’s an M&A frenzy around anything that says social enterprise,” he said. 

Microsoft did not say when it expects the deal to close. 

While Ballmer predicted his army of sales reps could boost the number of Yammer customers who agree to pay for the product, Keirstead thinks the merger might ultimately be less about bolstering Yammer as a stand-alone product and more about integrating its features into Share-Point. The cloud-based enterprise offering includes email, file sharing and the Microsoft Office suite of applications. 

“Microsoft, in an effort to protect its SharePoint franchise, needs to make it more social and do so fast,” Keirstead said. The $1.2 billion layout for a company with modest revenues, he added, is “a little bit of a defensive move.” 

Staff writer Jeremy C. 

Owens contributed to this report. Contact Peter Delevett at 408-271-3638. 

Is it time to buy MSFT?

Seems that our friends in upstate Washington are working hard to get back to track of lost glory. Off the late I started liking their products and more importantly their strategy and innovation they are working on.. all these news seems to be good for all the consumers both retail and enterprise. As long as they don't fumble Windows8 as they did Vista, they should be golden.

Across the board I am hearing good news.. on cloud side I heard that their new hypervisor (Hyper-V) product is really good and finally it is ready to compete with VMware.. Their Cloud drive seems to be great. Windows8 looks promising.. Windows Mobile phone with Nokia is doing well.. So if everything falls back properly, they should be back to good growth after long time..


MICROSOFT

Office said to be coming to Android, iPad devices

By Michelle Maltais

Los Angeles Times

It looks as if fall could be a very busy season for Microsoft. The software maker appears poised to release Office for iPad and Android tablets and an Outlook Web app for iOS this fall, according to reports.

Although officially Microsoft has no comment, reports have surfaced that the full suite of Office apps will have a November release, according to website BGR. And the app is said to look almost identical to the leaked images from a few months ago, according to BGR’s source. The source also claimed the app’s loading screen read “Office for iOS,” suggesting iPhone and iPod Touch could have the software in their future as well. The App Store may see yet another Microsoft offering ahead of it. An Outlook app known as “OWA Mobile Client for iOS” is reportedly in the works for devices running iOS 5 or later, according to AppleInsider.

Microsoft is currently planning for both Outlook Web App and the new Lync to debut on the iOS App Store before the end of October, a person familiar with the upcoming software revealed. Both will be native iOS applications that render Web content with the same tiled Metro user interface style that can be found on Windows Phone.

Can Samsung takeover Apple in Smartphone Segment as well?

Samsung is already number one in overall cellphone market share. First time they overtook Nokia in World's largest Cell phone manufacturer. Nokia is trying a comeback and it would be interesting to see in next couple of quarters, how this will shape overall cellphone market. Along with Nokia & Samsung, it is Microsoft as well, whose future is at stake. Cell phones are already accounting for close to 50% of revenues of companies like Samsung and Apple.

As of now, Samsung is clear winner in overall Cellphone market. However, they face uphill battle with Apple's flagship iPhone. It will be difficult to compete with iPhone in terms of overall value and satisfaction. Unless, Apple goof's up big time in coming years, which they can as Steve Job's is not around and I am already feeling that new management is more focussed directly on share prices instead of customer satisfaction, usability and attention to details. We have to accept that nothing is permanent and current iPhone's dominance will go down sooner or later.

At the same time, Samsung is coming up with really great phones with really cool and great features and trying to compete hard with iPhone. However, in my view they need to focus more on some really great selected features and make them really easy and standardize across the board. They also need highlight and focus where Apple restrict's iPhone... and moreover, build some really cool and easy to use ecosystem. Bring some standardization across the devices so accessories can be useful. One feature which I really envy from Android phones is simplicity to play HD videos (1080p) directly to HDTV using HDMI cable.. But still, it has clumsy UI, especially as compared to iPhone. They need to work on reduction in number of clicks needed to accomplish things..

I haven't played too much on Samsung phones except to my stone age Blackjack long time back. Which was really clumsy phone based on Windows CE (or whatever it was called) and voice quality was so bad that I took a vow to never use Samsung phone. Only feature which I used to like was tethering of it which used to give me great internet connectivity to my laptop. However, with iPhone, 99% of time you don't need tethering, you can literally do everything on it, despite its lower screen size. I hope my nephew who works in Samsung is reading this and will soon send me some great samsung phone to try so I can write better review ;-)

Hope to see real good competition in coming days.. which should result in really cool phones for all of us. I hope, Motorola/Google will also churn out great phones in coming days.. so will Nokia with their MS collaboration... future seems to be great!!!


Samsung cellphones beat out Nokia’s

By Andrea Chang

Los Angeles Times

Samsung in the first quarterbecametheworld’s largest cellphone brand for the first time, overtaking longtime market leader Nokia. In the smartphone segment, Samsung remained in second place behind Apple, according to market research firm IHS iSuppli.

The South Korean electronics giant shipped 92 million cellphones worldwide in the first quarter, compared with 83 million for Nokia. While Samsung’s shipments declined by 13 percent from the fourth quarter of 2011, Nokia’s dropped by 27 percent.

In the smartphone segment, Apple shipped 35 million units in the first quarter compared with 32 million for Samsung. Apple’s smartphone shipments declined 5 percent from the fourth quarter, compared with 11 percent for Samsung. First-quarter declines in the shipments of smartphones and cellphones reflect normal seasonal patterns, in which sales decrease after the peak holiday period in the fourthquarter. “With cellphones now accounting for more than 40 percent of Samsung’s overall revenue, it’s clear that the company’s continued investments in smartphone hardware and software R&D are paying off,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst of wireless communications at IHS. Lam noted that Samsung’s performance was even more impressive because its latest Galaxy S III handset has yet to be launched, with shipments set to start in May. “This indicates Samsung is likely to make further progress in market share in 2012,” he said.

Now Windows / Nokia Phone..

Has any one tried it out. I was big fan of Nokia Cell phones. Just Phone part.. I used to love it. There were the best.. In past, they were best phones when it comes to voice quality or working even in poor signal area. I rarely had any call drops on it. As compared to iPhone or even previously, those flashy Sony Ericson or even my Samsung Blackjack (anyone even remembers it :-) ).

I rarely see Nokia phones here in US. They are still very much popular in India and may be rest of the world. In US, due to dominance of Cell Providers, Nokia had almost zero market share. For some reasons, they failed to come up with any agreement with them. May be they were happy with non-US market.

Now with Microsoft alliance, I am guessing they are coming back. Nokia is known to be best in terms of hardware. However, we will have to see how there machines works or marry with crappy Microsoft OS. It will be interesting to watch and track how do they perform. I guess, future and reputation of two once upon a time best companies is at stake. I hope that they will come up with better cell phone and more importantly better overall experience for users and customers. Now a days, more important thing is overall experience and ecosystem around it. All thanks to Apple iPhone, customers are more demanding and levels are set much higher.

I guess, MS and Nokia should also come up with some thing like iPod touch type. With Skype in their bag, they can easily come up with good competitor for non cell phone type of devices to extend product range similar to iPhone, iPod-touch and even iPad. They can freely and aggressively sell and try it out. There is still ample of diet for good tablets. Especially for MS, if they can some how link their tablet to Desktop/Laptop.. May be MS tablet can introspect your desktop and bring applications and media on tablet automatically either on memory or may be thru their cloud. There could be great synergy for them. MS is still defacto leader in desktop area. If they help users migrate and ease pain by keeping data/application/media in sync they still might have some good story and can still successfully get good pie of the market.

AT&T to sell $100 Nokia phone

Rival to iPhone and Android devices will have LTE speed

By Scott Moritz

Bloomberg News

AT&T plans to start selling a Nokia smartphone with Microsoft software for half of what it charges for the iPhone, as the device’s makers seek to break Apple and Google’s dominance of the U.S. market. The Lumia 900, which runs on AT&T’s network using faster, so-called longterm- evolution technology, will start selling for $99.99 on April 8, the second-largest U.S. wireless carrier said Monday in a statement. The latest iPhone and newest handsets running Google’s Android software typically start at $199.

Nokia is counting on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software to reignite sales in the U.S., where the iPhone, Android makers such as Samsung Electronics and Research In Motion’s Black-Berry control 92 percent of the market. Microsoft is trying to increase its share of the mobile software market to expand beyond the slowergrowing personal-computer market.

“The pricing is aggressive,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at research firm Current Analysis in Teaneck, N.J. “They are hoping to use price to get people to buy a product with an operating system they aren’t familiar with.”

To get the $99.99 price, customers need to sign a twoyear contract with AT&T. The Dallas-based carrier will also sell the phone without a contract for $449.99, said Steven Schwadron, an AT&T spokesman.

Those price points suggest that AT&T is subsidizing each Lumia by about $350. That compares with a $450 subsidy for the cheapest version iPhone 4S, which sells for $199 with a contract and $649 without one.Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft executive, started rebuilding the Espoo, Finland-based company’s smartphone strategy around the Windows Phone operating system last year. Nokia had previously focused on its own MeeGo and Symbian operating systems.

Nokia and Microsoft have said they are willing to spend money to fuel sales. Microsoft said last year it would pay Nokia $1 billion to develop and promote Windows phones. Elop said in October that marketing spending on the Lumia series would be triple the money spent on previous product sales promotions.

Will you upgrade to Windows 8

Good review of upcoming Windows 8 in our local news paper by Troy Wolverton. I am yet to try it out and this article does incites me to check out MSDN and see if I can get handle on the copy of Windows 8 and upgrade one of the machine. I will try to do that and let update you all soon.

Let us talk about Troy's feedback objectively. First mistake or flaw in his testing was that he upgraded several years old Dell machine. In my view all the newer OS should only be used on latest machines. Whenever new OS comes out, it assumes that baseline for average machines has gotten better and they are designed to leverage advancements in Computing and Memory Power. I never had great experience with any of the latest OS on older machines. That includes not only Windows but also MAC and iPhone as well.

One more thing, I am personally really happy with Windows7. It was great OS after long time after XP from Windows. It was literally flawless and worked liked charm. I don't have any intentions of upgrading current Windows machines from Windows 7 to Windows 8.

Now coming back to Windows 8. Seems like MS is pushing hard for Tablets. Which is obvious as they totally missed that boat and want to come back to it. MS wants to unify user experience of Desktop and Touch Sensitive device experience of the users. Which will be great thing for common users. Metro seems to be nice concept and looks great. There has to be some kind of learning curve to get used to it but at the same time most of the current users don't have to upgrade from Windows 7.

Whatever being said about Microsoft, we still need to credit them with proliferation of computing in 90s and early 2000s. They simplified PC and made it cheap enough for every common man to have and take advantage of PCs.

Let me know your views about this review. I will also update you soon about it :-)

For PC users, Microsoft’s new version of operating system is a major misstep

The venerable PC is at a crossroads.

Sales growth has slowed to a crawl. And consumers and developers are increasingly turning their time and attention to smartphones and tablets.

Pressured by that trend, Microsoft is updating Windows to make PCs work more like smartphones and to bring Windows to a whole new class of devices: iPad-like touch-screen tablets. Last month, the company launched what it calls a “consumer preview” of Windows 8, the next version of its flagship operating system. The preview is not a final version — that isn’t expected until at least this fall — but it’s close.

I’ve been playing around with the Windows 8 preview for several weeks. I loaded it onto a several-year old Dell laptop, in part because that’s what I had available and in part to see what users of traditional PCs can expect from the new software. I hope to eventually test out the software on a tablet.

My conclusion: For PC users, Windows 8 is a major misstep.

Perhaps its biggest problem is that it has two separate and largely incompatible parts. It feels like Microsoft took a nice dress and attached it to an equally fine pantsuit and tried to pass it off as one garment. It just doesn’t work.

The two pieces are a new interface called “Metro” and the old, traditional desktop inherited from past versions of the software.

The desktop interface looks and works much as it did in Windows 7, except that you won’t find a Start button or Start menu, both of which have been core features of the software since Windows 95 debuted about 17 years ago. And you no longer see the desktop when you start-up Windows. 

Instead, you see the new Metro interface, which Microsoft developed originally for its Windows Phone 7 smartphone operating system. The interface is comprised of a series of application squares or “tiles” arrayed on a flat background. 

The app tiles are more than just static program icons; they can display snippets of updated information, such as your next appointment or the current temperature. 

When you launch an application designed for the Metro interface, it runs fullscreen by default, not inside a window. You can split the screen between two applications, but that’s it. Unlike with the desktop, you can’t see more than two applications at a time on a single screen. I actually like the Metro interface on Windows Phone 7 devices. But on a traditional PC, it’s a poor fit. 

Metro was originally designed to be used with a finger on a touch screen, not with a mouse or trackpad. 

In order to see a particular app tile on the Metro start screen, for example, you may have to scroll left or right. 

That’s not a problem if you can simply swipe left or right on a touch screen, but it’s not such an easy or quick thing to do if you’ve got to use a trackpad or mouse to click on a scroll bar. I’d much rather use the old-fashioned Start menu. Another problem with Metro is that, at least for now, most of the Windows applications people use are desktop-style programs. 

That makes the Metro interface an unnecessary barrier to those applications. I’d like to have my computer just boot up directly into the desktop interface. But Windows 8 forces everyone to begin on the Metro start screen. 

So I found myself frequently flipping back and forth between Metro and the desktop, a process that can be disorienting. Because programs for the two interfaces look and work differently, switching between them is like running two different operating systems on the same computer. 

The Metro interface is so radically different that much of what users have come to know about Windows for the past 17 years doesn’t apply. And the new interface doesn’t help them much in figuring out the new steps they need to take to accomplish old tasks. 

Take a simple example: closing programs. Since Windows 95, users have typically just clicked on the “x” in the upper right hand corner of the program’s window to close it. For those who prefer to use the menu bar, you can usually click on “File” and then “Exit.” 

But with Metro-style apps, you won’t find a closeprogram “x.” You won’t even find a menu bar. Instead, to close a program you have to move your pointer to the top edge of the screen, click and hold until the app screen becomes a thumbnail and then drag that thumbnail image to the bottom of the screen. And you have to do all this without any clues: there’s nothing to “grab” at the top edge of the screen and the interface gives you no indication of what you should do with the thumbnail once you’ve grabbed it. 

That’s merely one of many commands that are not only different but also hidden by the Metro interface. 

Windows 8 is not all bad. 

It has some great features and incorporates some good ideas. 

One of its qualities is speed. It generally starts up, resumes from sleep and shuts down faster than Windows 7. Also, it automatically will synchronize settings — Web bookmarks, desktop images, cursor blink rate and the like — and even apps across multiple computers. 

Another cool thing about Windows 8 is the way it works with Web-based services and social networks. With the Metro-style Photos application, you can view pictures you’ve stored on your local machine on Microsoft’s cloud-based SkyDrive service and on websites such as Flickr and Facebook. 

Similarly, you can save a document to your hard drive or to SkyDrive. 

Microsoft officials say users will be able to add on to these services as new Metro apps become available, and that they eventually may be able to pull up photos from Picasa or save documents to DropBox, all from the same dialog box. 

But neat features such as these are more than outweighed by the fundamental problems with Windows 8. 

Microsoft obviously wants to drag the PC into a new era, but the result is an operating system that’s much harder to use than the old fashioned one. 

Contact Troy Wolverton at 408-840-4285 or twolverton@mercurynews.com. Follow him at www.mercurynews.com/ troy-wolverton or Twitter. 

com/troywolv. 




MICROSOFT 

Michael Angiulo, left, and Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft tout the new features of Windows 8 at the company’s Build conference in September in Anaheim. The new version of its operating system is expected to be released this fall. 

Is it a Suicide note from Microsoft or something else..

Microsoft's recent acquisition of Skype for $8.5 billion..

Most people are saying that it is overpriced and will meet same history as eBay... hmmm.. I agree.. I don't think MS will gain anything in terms of user base.. they already have very strong user base and on hotmail and MSN messenger, which they didn't leveraged properly.. but it is still a potent force and people still use it a lot for IM needs. I still can't understand why they have to pay $8.5 billion for this kind of service.. Even if there current MSN messenger service doesn't have IP phone feature.. they can develop it and get it ready may be for few hundred million dollars considering Microsoft's size. To make it popular.. make it very easy to use.. may be embed it in browser (oops.. I meant Internet Explorer).. and then subsidize calls to US and many other countries.. may be few hundred million dollars a month.. run it for couple of years at the most and then make it paid service.. I am sure they will still spend less than one fourth of what they are paying right now upfront.. and not even sure if it will make sense to them.. I think it is somewhat like AOL situation, where they simply didn't understood on what to do with the generated cash..

Now coming back on upside..

What could be upside.. I think biggest upside could be in Targeted Advertising side if they are able to execute properly..  If they are able to link Bing with Skype on audio/video channel and start scanning conversations for keywords and based on user profile start sending good meaningful targeted advertisements.. 
This is one thing which should be able to generate immediate revenue stream for them and help them compete Google.. Once Skype becomes even more pervasive in all MS apps like IE, Office or even xbox there upside is pretty good. however, they are going to face tough competition from Google in this area who is leading charge with Android where MS failed miserably..

So, time will tell if it was intelligent or desperate decision by MS.. As of now it looks little expensive.. but then couple of billion dollars are just change for MS and last priority for MS at this time.. they have much bigger things to worry about..