Fresh off its first-ever quarterly profit, Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Devices division will try to build on its progress this week at the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, Spain -- even bringing out Chief Executive Steve Ballmer for his first appearance at the big industry show.
The division, which makes Windows Mobile software for smart phones and other mobile devices, remains well behind rival Symbian in market share but has seen the number of mobile phone operators offering devices with its software rise from 68 to 102 in the past year.
Microsoft will soon announce a partnership with British Telecom Group and Virgin Mobile to launch a mobile TV service in the United Kingdom, a source close to Microsoft confirmed.
For the past several months BT has been building a network to broadcast digital TV over mobile phone networks. BT said in January that it plans to offer the network, called BT Movio, to mobile carriers that want to offer TV service to their customers.
The first mobile operator to use the BT network to deliver TV service is Virgin Mobile. The two companies conducted a trial last year for four months with roughly 1000 users in London. Virgin Mobile plans to launch the service sometime this summer. Users can expect to get at least five TV stations as part of the initial roll-out, along with a number of radio channels.
Microsoft on Feb. 13 announced partnerships with several wireless carriers to deliver push e-mail capability for mobile devices, a move which is designed to compete with Research in Motion's BlackBerry platform.
Microsoft's announcement could not be timed better, coming in the midst of a lawsuit that threatens to shut down BlackBerry service in the United States.
But industry observers say Microsoft's offering may not be advanced enough for corporate customers.
Wireless carriers Cingular Wireless, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone on Feb. 13 all announced a free Feature Pack upgrade that enables push e-mail for customers who have devices that run Microsoft's Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system.
Microsoft's release of a security fix for a preview version of Windows Vista last month didn't exactly help its assertion that the upcoming revamp of the PC operating system will be more resilient to online threats.
But Jim Allchin, the longtime Windows chief, warns against rushing to judgment. In fact, Allchin cites the situation as a sign of how things have improved: The vulnerability, he says, would have been found prior to Windows Vista's final release, through an internal review that was already under way at the time of its discovery by someone outside the company.
While the release of Microsoft's next-generation Windows operating system is still months away, Microsoft execs already are projecting strong sales. Here's why they are so bullish.
Microsoft executives already are counting their Vista chickens before the next-generation Windows release has hatched.
On Wednesday a Microsoft vice president detailed for attendees of Merrill Lynch's IT Services & Software Conference Microsoft's reasons for its high expectations for Vista, the release of Windows client due to ship in the latter half of this year.
Microsoft said Sunday that its long-awaited push e-mail capability for mobile devices is finally headed into the market.
Although Microsoft is offering push e-mail abilities later than some mobile specialists, such as Research In Motion and Good Technology, the company says the numbers are still on its side. Although there are a billion mobile phones and 400 million Outlook e-mail users worldwide, only about 10 million people are getting their corporate e-mail delivered to their phones.
"We look at the universe out there and we know there is just a huge, huge opportunity yet to be met," Microsoft Vice President Suzan DelBene said in a telephone interview on Friday.
Minority high school students from the Seattle region made the most of their audience with Bill Gates on Friday -- including one question so incisive that many in the Microsoft chairman's own industry would like to know the answer.
"Is Microsoft going to develop a handheld, you know, MP3 player, to combat iPod?" asked Schyler Mishra, 19, a senior at Seattle's John Marshall High School, referring to Apple Computer's dominant music device.
Gates, appearing at the company's annual Minority Student Day, had already complimented Apple, Google and other rivals during his speech, while also touting Xbox 360 and other Microsoft products. He smiled at the question and proceeded to give the students a lesson in the art of the indirect answer.
Microsoft has appointed former MSNBC chief John Nicol to infuse the company's MSN portal with more multimedia content and make it more appealing to online advertisers. But with MSN rapidly being overshadowed by the company's Web-based services branded under the name "Live," some analysts are scratching their heads as to what exactly lies ahead for the MSN portal.
Speaking to the IDG News Service on Thursday, Nicol said he has four key goals he expects to achieve this year. The first is to add more video to the site and to allow users to make and add their own video to its channels such as Travel, Lifestyle and Real Estate. Allowing users to create their own content for MSN is "something we've lagged behind in," Nicol said.
It's a good gig if you can get it. RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser recently collected a handsome $1.45 million bonus, and will get an identical bonus in January 2006. You're probably wondering what amazing business feat Glaser performed in order to be so richly rewarded. Turns out he was rewarded by the company's board for his "excellent leadership and outstanding efforts relating to the Microsoft antitrust case." Put another way, RealNetworks decided that instead of fighting Microsoft's technology in the open market, it would simply sue the software giant and wait for the settlement to roll in, which it did to the tune of $761 million from Microsoft. In response, RealNetworks withdrew its support for the EU's antitrust suit against Microsoft. You know, I was just criticizing Yahoo, but I have to wonder if this isn't somehow just as bad. I'll need to mull that one over for a bit. That said, if anyone wants to give me $1.45 million, I'm pretty much for sale.
Microsoft said Wednesday that the European Commission had refused its plea to see documents it claims are necessary to defend itself against antitrust charges.
"We're very disappointed. The access to these documents is really fundamental," Microsoft associate general counsel Horatio Gutierrez said.
"It sets a very negative precedent for others."
EU spokesman Jonathan Todd said a hearing officer, Karen Williams, had decided that correspondence between the commission and an independent monitor were "irrelevant for Microsoft's right of defense."