Microsoft’s top executives Bates and Reller to leave

It hasn’t been long since Satya Nadella took up his job as CEO of Microsoft and now, we have rumors that two of the company’s executives are leaving the company. According to reports from Recode, the company’s EVP of business development and evangelism Tony Bates and EVP of marketing Tami Reller are leaving the company.

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Microsoft partners with 9 more manufacturers for more Windows Phones

One of the main reasons that Windows Phones haven’t sold as much as Android smartphones is because of the lack of manufacturers. At launch, Microsoft had only a handful of manufacturers and as Windows Phone grew, the number of manufacturers shrunk and at one point, Microsoft bought out Nokia, which was probably the only company making Windows Phones.

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Dual SIM support coming soon to Windows Phone

dual-sim-windows-phone

Get ready for Dual SIM Windows Phones people ! At Mobile World Congress 2014 here in Barcelona, Microsoft announced that it is adding support for Dual-SIM functionality in Windows Phone with an upcoming update. This is heavily requested feature amongst users especially in India and China.Dual SIM smartphones are extremely popular in India and that is one of the main reasons that Windows Phone has failed to catch up with the ever expanding Android smartphone market. With support for Dual SIM cards, Microsoft can now compete with Google in the mid-range dual SIM smartphone market. One example of a hugely successful Dual SIM device is the Motorola MotoG which went on sale in India recently.

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Microsoft’s SkyDrive is now OneDrive

Microsoft was involved in a Trademark fight over the name “SkyDrive” and it lost. So, they had to rebrand it and from now on, Microsoft’s SkyDrive will be called as “Microsoft OneDrive”. Microsoft’s OneDrive is one among the many cloud storage options offered by big companies of the Internet – Google offers Google Drive, Dropbox, Box and many others.

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Microsoft reportedly discussing support for Android apps on Windows Phone and Windows

android-apps-windows-windows-phone

Microsoft is in discussions to add support for Android apps in Windows and Windows Phone, according to a report from TheVerge. Sources have told TheVerge that Microsoft is serious about bringing Android apps to both its platforms, but the discussions are still ongoing and nothing is concrete yet. The ongoing talks currently point to adding Android apps in the Windows Phone and Windows Stores, according to the report, which will inadvertently boost the app numbers, something that Microsoft really needs. Windows Phone and Windows have been second thoughts for any new developer looking at developing an app, and at most of the times, there are not enough resources to dedicate for a third platform, so will Android apps support on Windows and Windows Phone make sense?

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Stephen Elop will lead Microsoft’s Expanded Devices team, working on Xbox, Surface and Nokia

nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-asha-501 copy

Stephen Elop, the ex-CEO from Nokia, will be heading the expanded devices team at Microsoft, as per reports. Previously rumoured to be in the running for the top job at Microsoft, Stephen Elop now gets to lead the newly formed team, like previously agreed upon. This is pretty obvious now, as Microsoft just announced its newest CEO, Satya Nadella, who takes over the position from Steve Ballmer. Elop stepped down from his role as the CEO of Nokia immediately after the announcement of Nokia-Microsoft acquisition, to avoid a conflict of interests.

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Microsoft invests $15mn in Foursquare, enters deal for licensing data

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Foursquare, the popular location-based social network, has just received a 15 million dollar investment from Microsoft. This equity investment from the Redmond company comes after a successful $35mn round of VC funding for the New York based Startup in December last year, reports the Wall Street Journal. Along with this fresh investment, Microsoft has also entered into a multi-year deal with Foursquare for licensing its vast location-based data. This will apparently be put to use in its Search Engine Bing, and naturally in Windows Phone too, as an extension. Foursquare has a massive point of interest database that’s heavily crowd sourced with tips, check ins, comments and so forth, hence we think this deal is a biggie for Microsoft.

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It’s official, Satya Nadella is the new Microsoft CEO

satya-nadella-microsoft-ceo-1

Just as several reports had predicted, Satya Nadella is officially the new Microsoft CEO, succeeding Steve Ballmer as the tech giant’s third Chief Executive Officer. Having led several Microsoft divisions including the wealthy Enterprise and Cloud business, Satya Nadella becomes the insider CEO, after several reports of an outsider being considered as the next CEO. Bill Gates also announced that he will leaving the board Chairman position, leaving way for John Thompson to take over that post, which is seen as a move to appease investors of radically lesser influence from the Gates-Ballmer era. While we scour for more publicly available information, here’s an introductory video directly from Microsoft –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8JwNZBJ_wI

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Satya Nadella all set to be the new Microsoft CEO according to reports

satya-nadella-microsoft-ceo

The end to a long CEO search is getting near, as reports are piling up from the other side of the planet that Satya Nadella, a senior VP who heads the enterprise and cloud business at Microsoft, is all set to become the new third CEO, after his predecessors Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. It’s been a long while since Ballmer announced his retirement from the CEO position, with pressure from investors mounting as Microsoft fumbled its mobile and tablet strategy, the two fastest growing consumer electronics markets. However, under the same leadership, Microsoft became a company with a diversified portfolio, with hit consumer products like Xbox and the fast growing enterprise products like Office 365, a key initiative by Satya Nadella. This might be one of the biggest reasons why the Board members are narrowing down on Nadella to be the next CEO, he is the moneymaker in Microsoft’s wealthy still-growing division.

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Android runs on 79% of 2013 smartphones, Windows Phone posts fastest growth

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It’s the numbers season, with various analysis groups releasing their take on the smartphone market for the whole year of 2013. We saw the IDC report recently that the Smartphone market has crossed the 1 billion threshold. In that lineup, we have Canalys reporting that Android dominated 2013 with almost 80% of that whole Smartphone market in 2013, and amongst them, Windows Phone posted the fastest growth, with a 69% rise YoY between the three major platforms. Both Android’s meteoric rise to the top and Windows Phone’s slow rise from the bottom are pretty much known quantities now, but some of the numbers are interesting. The second biggest platform, Apple’s iOS, has almost stagnated with only 7% growth by losing marketshare, whereas Android is steadily growing at 54%, a good 10% above the market growth percentage. This technically means that Android will reach its maximum in about 2 or 3 years if it and the market retains the growth pattern. Yes, it can happen only at the expense of gobbling up other platform’s shares but it begs this question. Will we we start to see saturation in the Smartphone market soon?

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Bing rewards goes live for iOS and Android, Windows Phone curiously left out

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Bing Rewards is a program that Microsoft started, to encourage use of its search engine, so that it could dole out rewards for doing so. It was a desperate, yet successful attempt, as people started using it for gaining credits that could be redeemed at Amazon, Fandango or even get you an Xbox console, just through using the rarely used search engine. Till now, the rewards program was exclusively on the desktop, where one could sign in to Bing and use it to gain rewards, but finally, it is now coming down to mobile, through the Bing mobile apps for iOS and Android. Nope, Windows Phone support is apparently “coming soon”, and we might have reasons why. That aside, the Bing rewards feature will give you certains “tasks” to finish, like a game, and once you finish it, you’ll be rewarded with credits of varying amounts depending on the task.

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Microsoft’s SkyDrive will be called OneDrive

one-drive-sky-drive-microsoft-rename

After a trademark infringement lawsuit, won by the Sky broadcasting corporation in the UK, Microsoft was tasked with changing its consumer facing cloud service “SkyDrive” to something else. Today the company has revealed that SkyDrive will be called “OneDrive”, and that it will start rolling out the changes gradually. Technically, the product remains the same but the name, which is usually a constant, receives a change. This is not the first time Microsoft has been forced to rename its products, as we had witnessed earlier how the company was forced not to use “metro” for its whole design language it developed. That said, the OneDrive blog has posted a video that showcases the new vision that Microsoft wants to portray for its new product –

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4NsPPUDjyU

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Tell me voice assistant aka Cortana rumoured to launch on Windows Phone this April

bing-tellme-cortana-windows-phone-siri

Long rumoured voice assistant, codenamed “Cortana”, is all set to make its beta appearance on Windows Phone, starting April 2014, according to a very credible source – @msftnerd. The Siri-like feature is reportedly voiced by Jen Taylor, who actually did the voice acting for Cortana, an AI character in the hit game-series “Halo”. The voice assistant, which might carry the name “Bing Tell me”, will launch for developers, in beta, in April, which coincides with the Build 2014 Developer event by Microsoft. “Build” is where Microsoft plans to unveil information about the next release of Windows, codenamed Threshold.

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Microsoft Surface 3 to be powered by Tegra K1 processor

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Nvidia spilled the beans on its brand new Tegra K1 processor earlier this week at CES and it looks like the new fangled chipset will form the core of the next gen Surface RT tablet. Nvidia’s new chip dubbed the Tegra K1 sports 192 Kepler cores and has a new CPU as well. The K1 chip will ship in two variants. Either with a quad core ARM A15 CPU or a dual core 64 bit Project Denver CPU, the specifics of the latter are still somewhat murky. Continue reading “Microsoft Surface 3 to be powered by Tegra K1 processor”

Windows Phone outshipped iPhone in 24 emerging markets, according to Microsoft

Nokia-Lumia-520-2We’ve been hearing how the Nokia Lumia 520 has been the best selling Windows Phone of all time, but if Microsoft’s recent words are to be believed, Windows Phone, as a platform, is now outshipping iPhone in 24 markets. Before you jump to conclusions, the iPhone is not doomed, because it’s the emerging markets where the 3rd ecosystem is cementing its place, most likely behind Android in the first place. This is a decent achievement for the platform, but tells us more about Nokia rather than Windows Phone, because these markets are clearly influenced by their legacy supply chain, and hence the obvious sales. Microsoft recently floated this fact with TechRadar claiming that it is the fastest growing mobile platform right now.

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