Windows Phone 7

Editor’s Note: RCR Wireless News goes all in for “Throwback Thursdays,” tapping into our archives to resuscitate the top headlines from the past. Fire up the time machine, put on …

Bing, Microsoft’s play in the search market, has been with us for just over two years now. Although the division continues to lose money, Microsoft’s seemingly infinite marketing budget has seen their service steadily encroaching on arch-rival Google’s territory.

Former king of the smartphone heap Nokia yesterday announced their newest flagship device, the N9. The new handset is powered by MeeGo, the mobile operating system that Nokia and Intel teamed up to produce in response to the increasing dominance of Android and iOS.

Nokia Corp., who all-but invented the mobile phone market back in the halcyon days of the early-90s, look set to be dropping not one but two places down to a distant third in terms of smartphone manufacturing volume by the end of this year, if a new report from research firm Nomura is to be believed.

Analyst firms are often accused of pulling figures from various places; the sky, their rear ends – basically anywhere but reality – and with the latest numbers from IDC its not difficult to see why.

Speaking at the Inspire Conference today in London, Rovio “Mighty Eagle” Peter Vesterbacka gave the audience at update on how the ubiquitous mobile game is doing, as well as the Finnish companies plans for the future

AccessU, a unique conference focused on universal design and drawing expert trainers from around the world, recently celebrated its tenth year, with a special focus on mobile applications.
The conference is produced by Knowbility, Inc., an Austin-headquartered non-profit and recognized national leader for providing equal access to technology for people with disabilities.

Analyst firm Gartner today released their latest worldwide handset sales figures, including numbers for the first quarter of 2011 from all the big manufacturers. The headlines are that total handset sales have risen 19% year-on-year, with smartphones continuing to accelerate, seeing 85% growth since the same period in 2010.

Nokia has been losing two things at alarming rates recently – market share and employees. In what is the third round of redundancies in recent memory, Nokia has announced it will be cutting loose 4,000 employees from its operations in the UK, Demark and Finland.

There’s no need for Symbian developers to go nok, nok nokia-ing on heaven’s door just yet, because Samsung plans to lure them over to a Bada life.

Industry analytics outfit ComScore Inc. has released their latest figures for mobile operating system market share, covering the fourth quarter of 2010. The quarter is always the biggest period of the year for any retailer, covering Black Friday and the festive season. So how did the major operating systems do?

Nokia Corp.’s announcement it would be dropping MeeGo and going Windows Phone 7 caused quite a “kerfuffle” inside Intel Corp., admitted Peter Biddle, general manager of Intel’s AppUp products and services.

How embarrassing for poor old Microsoft. First they were late to the whole smartphone party, and now Windows Phone 7’s first firmware update since the OS’s launch has obviously gone awry, as users of Samsung’s Omnia 7 have been taking to the internet in droves to complain of apparently bricked devices.

Nokia Corp.’s announcement last week of a “strategic partnership” with Microsoft Corp. was certainly big news, but it also raised a few eyebrows. Some asked if new CEO Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft man, had chosen Windows Phone 7 not because he thought it was best for the company, but because he is still in bed with Ballmer & Co.

At today’s big Nokia / Microsoft announcement, Nokia’s ballsy new CEO Stephen Elop dished some details about the Finnish phone maker’s plans with regard to the OS future handsets will be running. Obviously, Window Phone 7 featured heavily, however more interesting were the plans for Nokia’s own platforms.

While the Internet is rife with rumor surrounding what embattled Nokia Corp. plans to do next, cross platform app store GetJar has thrown its hat in the ring with the opinion Nokia should go Android and not Windows Phone 7.

It looks as though an unlikely partnership may be in the offing – Nokia Corp., whose smart phone efforts have been flagging in recent years due to the weakness of their Symbian operating system, may be looking to introduce Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Phone 7 to their range of high-end devices.

Will Android manage to knock RIM and Apple from the smartphone throne?

A little birdie tweets that AT&T may be betting big on Microsoft’s soon-to-launch Windows Phone 7 (WP7) putting itself down for an order of eight million units.

Renowned Windows Mobile ROM maker and modder ‘Conflipper’ has released a list claiming to be codenames of upcoming or planned Windows Phone 7 devices from HTC.

Microsoft employees, look under your chairs… yes, that’s right, you will all be going home with a brand new Windows Phone 7 device, yes, all 90,000 of you!

It’s been a long time in coming, but finally Microsoft has seen fit to bestow a “technical preview” of its Windows Phone 7 operating system to the unwashed developer masses.

Microsoft appears to have grown itself a sense of humor, with the firm’s COO Kevin Turner declaring in a speech at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference that Apple’s iPhone 4 “might be their Vista,” owing to the plethora of problems the device faces.