Internet Explorer Down, But Primed for Rebound

By Tony Bradley, PCWorld

Microsoft is capitalizing on a recent Android malware scam by giving away free Windows Phones to five Android users with the worst malware horror stories. Ben Rudolph, Microsoft's Windows Phone evangelist, announced the contest on Twitter using the hashtag #droidrage. Microsoft followed Rudolph's lead and publicized the contest on its official Twitter feed.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has used free phones to win people over to its mobile platform. In August, the software giant offered free Windows Phones to webOS developers after Hewlett-Packard announced it was discontinuing its webOS device lineup. HP recently announced it would make webOS an open source project and may release a new webOS tablet in 2013.

RuFraud

Google recently removed 22 malicious apps purporting to be legitimate versions of popular programs such as Cut The Rope and Angry Birds. The apps were packaged with malware that would send fake text messages to premium-rate SMS numbers, costing the user around $5 per SMS.

The so-called RuFraud scam targeted European users and did not affect Android phones in North America. Lookout Security, the firm that first brought the scam to Google's attention, says it has since discovered another five RuFraud apps in the Android Market, bringing the total app count to 27.

Droid Rage in 140 characters or less

Microsoft is capitalizing on a recent Android malware scam by giving away free Windows Phones to five Android users with the worst malware horror stories. Ben Rudolph, Microsoft's Windows Phone evangelist, announced the contest on Twitter using the hashtag #droidrage. Microsoft followed Rudolph's lead and publicized the contest on its official Twitter feed.

This isn't the first time Microsoft has used free phones to win people over to its mobile platform. In August, the software giant offered free Windows Phones to webOS developers after Hewlett-Packard announced it was discontinuing its webOS device lineup. HP recently announced it would make webOS an open source project and may release a new webOS tablet in 2013.

RuFraud

Google recently removed 22 malicious apps purporting to be legitimate versions of popular programs such as Cut The Rope and Angry Birds. The apps were packaged with malware that would send fake text messages to premium-rate SMS numbers, costing the user around $5 per SMS.

The so-called RuFraud scam targeted European users and did not affect Android phones in North America. Lookout Security, the firm that first brought the scam to Google's attention, says it has since discovered another five RuFraud apps in the Android Market, bringing the total app count to 27.

Droid Rage in 140 characters or less

Despite Apple's assertions to the contrary, made during its iPhone 4S event on Tuesday (which we still can't understand, by the way), most market research (really, all of the ones we've seen) assert that Android is far ahead of iOS both globally and in the U.S. The latest comScore report is no different.

comScore's August 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share report is in, and the trend continues, with Android continuing to grow its smartphone market share, up from 38.1 percent in May, to 43.7 percent. iOS continues to grow, as well, but at a far slower place than Android. While Android grew 5.6 percent from May to August, iOS only rose 0.7 percent, from 26.6 percent to 27.3 percent.

Indeed, that means that Android's market share lead over iOS grew from 11.5 percent to 16.4 percent. Indeed, that means that Android's market share lead over iOS grew from 11.5 percent to 16.4 percent. That means that Android's lead has grown by 42.6 percent.

Still, it's not iOS that's taking the brunt of injury from Android's increasing market share. Instead, it's RIM's BlackBerry OS, which dropped from 24.7 percent in May to 19.7 percent in August. At the same time, Microsoft's market share dropped slightly, from 5.8 percent to 5.7 percent, despite the fact that a year ago there was no Windows Phone. Symbian dropped from 2.1 to 1.8 percent.

On a per-OEM basis, and remembering that the manufacturer numbers provided by comScore include all mobile phones, not just smartphones, Samsung continues to top the chart, with 25.3 percent of the market up from 24.8 percent in May. LG Electronics was second with 21 percent, Google's recently acquired Motorola unit was third at 14 percent (but down 1.1 percent), Apple was fourth at 9.8 percent, up 1.1 percent, and RIM was fifth at 7.1 percent, down 1 percent.

Microsoft has begun deployment of Windows Phone 7.5 (or "Mango"), while Google is set to unveil Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), and within days Apple will release iOS 5, and just a few days later, the iPhone 4S. RIM, as we know, is hoping to phase in QNX to its smarphones --- quickly enough to stem its hemorrhaging customer base.

We'll see if any of these "changes" will make a difference in the next comScore report, but we expect the trends we see to continue.

Sorry, Apple, but your iPhone and iPad simply can't compare, in terms of sales records, with the Kinect. The Guinness Book of World Records confirmed on March 9 that the Kinect for the Xbox 360 is the Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device, ever.

In its first sixty days, the motion-based controller, which has been modified for plenty of other uses than controlling the Xbox 360, sold a total of 8 million units (for an average of 133,333 units per day), from Nov. 4, 2010 to Jan. 3, 2011.

That's not all: Microsoft also issued a press release on March 9. The Kinect has already surpass 10 million units sold, including time after the first sixty days. At the same time, Microsoft announced that more than 10 million standalone Kinect games have been sold worldwide to date. Read that carefully; it's standalone games, not including the game included with the Kinect.

Read Microsoft's press release below.

Microsoft Announces 10 Million Kinect Sensors and more than 10 Million Kinect Games Sold to Date

LONDON –9 March 2011

Following one of the biggest launches in consumer electronics history, Kinect for Xbox 360 continued its momentum in 2011 reaching 10 million Kinect sensors sold worldwide to date. Not only were sensor sales an overwhelming success, but Kinect drove significant game sales with more than 10 million standalone Kinect games sold worldwide to date.

Guinness World Records: Kinect for Xbox 360 is Fastest Selling Consumer Electronics Device

In a nod to the recent sales success of Kinect, Guinness World Records has officially named Kinect for Xbox 360 the fastest selling consumer electronics device.

In mid-January, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the Kinect motion-capture gaming controller would come to the PC, officially that is, "at the right time." Microsoft appears to have decided that the right time is Spring 2011.

In an official blog post on Monday, Feb. 21, Microsoft said that the Kinect SDK for Windows will be available then. Microsoft's post acknowledged that the community that has arisen since the introduction of the Kinect has demonstrated the "depth of imagination possible when people have access to ground-breaking technology."

It will be a non-commercial Kinect for Windows SDK, but a commercial version will be released "later." The non-commercial version will be free. Microsoft chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie and interactive entertainment business (IEB) president Don Mattrick announced the planned SDK this morning.

Here's what Microsoft said, in part:

The community that has blossomed since the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360 in November shows the breadth of invention and depth of imagination possible when people have access to ground-breaking technology. Already, researchers, academics and enthusiasts are thinking through what’s next in natural and intuitive technology. For example, in January I mentioned Craig’s talk at the Cleveland Clinic, where he highlighted students at the University of Washington’s Biorobotics Lab using Kinect with a commercially available PHANTOM Omni Haptic Device to explore how robotic surgery could be enhanced by incorporating the sense of feel.

The Kinect for Windows SDK is being developed and released by Microsoft Research (MSR) in collaboration with IEB. It will be available this spring as a free download, and will give academic researchers and enthusiasts access to key pieces of the Kinect system—such as the audio technology, system application programming interfaces and direct control of the Kinect sensor itself.

Supporting this community and enabling creativity around natural user interfaces (NUI) is important to us, and our hope is that this SDK will ignite further creativity in an already vibrant ecosystem of enthusiasts. We are very excited by this announcement. Not only does it showcase our investment in this important technology trend, but it ensures that people have the tools they desire to revolutionize how people interact with technology.

At first Microsoft seemed to take a dim view of what it called "hacking" the Kinect. It's interesting how quickly the company changed its mind.

ARM processors, which are currently manufactured made by such companies as Texas Instruments, Samsung, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm, power most smartphones and tablets such as the iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. Given that, and for the first time, Microsoft is planning to release a version of Windows that will run on ARM.

The anonymous sources told Bloomberg that Microsoft will use the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to showcase the new ARM version of Windows. CES runs from January 6-9, 2011, and numerous vendors will announce hardware and software products at the show.

In July, Microsoft announced that it had received an architectural license from ARM. That license would allow Microsoft, if it wanted, to design its own ARM chip. Of course, that's not what's happening here, but Zune, for example, runs Windows CE on top of an NVIDIA ARM CPU.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported that although Microsoft will demo the new Windows version, the product is not expected to hit the market for two years.

Although Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will, as usual, kick off CES the night of Jan. 5 with a keynote speech, Microsoft has scheduled a press conference that afternoon prior to Ballmer's keynote address. That's a distinct departure from past years.

Despite their Windows Phone platform, and perhaps because of their prior Windows Mobile platform, Microsoft is not seen as a "player" in mobile. It's clear, however, that mobile is the wave of the future. One source told the WSJ that Microsoft is "desperate to show they're in the game."

Microsoft's Windows XP mode for Windows 7 was seen as a way to "convince" businesses to adopt Windows 7. It virtually guaranteed that if you couldn't run it in 7, you could run it in XP mode. Problem was, it came ill-designed for such a task.

After all, it was intended to allow businesses to upgrade their systems to Windows 7 while not worrying about compatibility with older apps. At the same time, however, it required that the systems it was run on have hardware virtualization capability. That requirement confused many.

In addition, why would you require a technology that older systems at many businesses running Windows XP simply did not have? Microsoft "got it," and on Thursday announced that it has removed that requirement.

Of course, Windows XP Mode will leverage virtualization technology such as Intel VT or AMD-V if available. At the same time, Microsoft continues to require that users of Windows XP Mode have the most expensive versions of Windows 7: Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise editions. Of course, millions of consumers have switched from XP to Windows 7 Home Premium. For those, there is no option.

Microsoft probably views Windows XP Mode as most valuable to businesses, and those customers would probably opt for Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise. John Q. Public, and perhaps small businesses as well, however, are left out in the cold.