Windows Mobile

As the lines between console and mobile continue to blur, Apple’s eyes remain fixated on conquering the living room experience. Its introduction of AirPlay Mirroring could be a key blow to console makers like Sony and Microsoft who are still trying to gain traction on the mobile frontier. The plethora of content on Apple’s App Store combined with portable devices could be the reason why Apple will be the first to deliver a seamless gaming experience. More after the jump.

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Nokia has teamed up with Polar Mobile Inc, a Canadian Mobile developer, to produce more than 300 media applications for Nokia smartphones within one year time frame. The Apps will be launch on Nokia’s Symbian smartphones, the upcoming N9 and Nokia’s Windows Mobiles for more than 300 top tier global media brands including Wired UK, Kompas, Advertising Age, Globe and Mail, Shanghai Daily and 7DAYS.

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Nokia is planning to launch its Windows Phone 7 handsets through China Mobile (China’s largest mobile phone carrier). China Mobile accounts for two-third of the country’s total mobile phone user base i.e. over 600 million users.  This looks like a desperate move from the struggling handset maker to support his falling sales and hold off against fierce competition from Android devices and iPhone in China. It is expected that the initial launch will take place later this year and mass shipments will happen in 2012.

Nokia is struggling to hold its position as the top selling handset manufacturer in China with growing sales of Android and Apple’s iPhone devices. According to the financial report for the second quarter, Nokia is experiencing a downward trend in its sales. Nokia’s sales have fallen by 55% in china and 32% globally from the previous quarter. Competition and pricing tactics from the rivals have played a vital role in the downward trend. Further the distributors are also sitting on higher inventory levels for Nokia products, resulting in fewer new purchases.

Nokia is expecting to consolidate its position with the launch of smartphones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 operating system. C.K. Lu, an analyst with research firm Gartner said:

Nokia’s strategy is to use Windows Phone to position its smartphones as higher-end devices. But if you want the mass market, you have to drive down the price. I think this Windows Phone 7 will help them, but I don’t think it will have a big effect.

According to Lu, Nokia’s Windows Phone 7 devices are estimated to cost around $300, with main emphasis on the high-end market. However, Android handsets have already reached the low-end market and cost 1,000 yuan (US$157). With Android devices already available in just half the price and Google planning to directly place itself into the handset business with Motorola Mobility, Nokia’s plans to capture the smartphone market looks to be doomed. Only time can tell, lets wait and see.

Good (an enterprise solutions vendor) released data about activiations of their product on various mobile platforms for the period of March to December 2010.

Surge of iOS, Android in the Enterprise Continues, as iPad Leads Growth: Detailed in Good Technology’s Q4 2010 Data Report

TUAW noted the iOS spike was caused by the introduction of the iPad.

Good Technology Q4 2010 mobile device report shows huge iPad growth in the enterprise

What’s more interesting, however, is the apparent total collapse of both Windows Mobile (superceded by Windows Phone 7 in October) and Symbian (Nokia) over the same period. Windows Mobile, in particular, dropped from a near 10% of Good’s product activiations to zero by the end of the year. Good does not have a product for the newer Windows Phone 7. Still it is interesting to note that drop and surmise the Android (to a lesser extend) and iOS/iPad (to a greater extend) replaced Windows Mobile in the enterprise ecosystem that Good sells into.

If you own a phone that runs Symbian or Windows Mobile, and you plan to replace it with a phone that runs Android, you might want to consider the SPB Migration Tool. The combination of application and service will migrate contacts, text messages, call history, and bookmarks to a phone running Android 2.1 or newer. Source phones must be running either Symbian S60 3rd edition or later, or Windows Mobile 5 or later.

SPB Migration Tool provides two ways to migrate data, a web migration or storage card migration. Web migration involves installing an app on the source phone, which securely transfers data to SPB’s servers, where an app running on the target phone retrieves the data to populate on the target phone.

Storage card migration requires that the source and target phones support the same type of storage card. You first prep the storage card on the Android phone, which installs an app on the card that you then run on the source phone. The app then captures the data on the source phone, after which you insert the card into the target phone, run the app again, and restore the data onto the target phone.

The entire migration process is guided by the web site migratetoandroid.com, which you can check out for more information about how the process works. One drawback is that the app costs $9.95, which I think is bit expensive for a one time use application and service, but you can determine whether the data on your old phone is valuable enough to transfer with this tool.

Microsoft has apparently become the Rodney Dangerfield of computing. I say this because even its former voice of social media is wowwed by an iPhone app that does something Microsoft Windows Mobile could do five or more years ago. Robert Scoble (Scobleizer) wrote:

Exclusive first look: The voice app that makes iTunes voice controllable

The currently unreleased iPhone app “Voice DJ” can use speech commands to control iTunes music play. It understands commands like:

Play song name
Play artist name
Play song name by artist name
Play artist name song name
Play album name
Play playlist name
Add song name to the playlist
Add artist name to the playlist
Add album name to the playlist

Here’s the funny thing. I remember doing just that years ago – at least as far back as 2005 and perhaps even before that using Microsoft Voice Command on a Pocket PC or Pocket PC Phone Edition device. Here’s the online documentation for Voice Command’s music playback on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices.

Playing Music by Using Voice Command

Some Voice Command speech commands include:

Play Anything
Play Music Play Media
Play Album Play Artist Play Genre
Play album Play artist Play genre Play album by artist
Next Track
Previous Track
Play
Pause
Stop
Turn Shuffle On
Turn Shuffle Off
What Song Is This What Track Is This

The Microsoft Windows Phone Marketplace is growing at a nice rate, and appears to have grown to over 3500 apps, according to the website WP7Applist.com. The size of a smartphone’s app store is an indicator of developer adoption of the smarthphone platform, and while a store may have many redundant and functionally simple apps, a large app catalog also means there is a higher chance the app that you want is available.

If you own a Windows Phone you might want to bookmark the WP7Applist web site, as it provides a very nice way to browse through the Marketplace from a desktop web browser. Another bonus is that the site provides RSS feeds for all new apps, new free apps, and new paid apps, which for me is a great way to learn about new apps as I rely heavily on Google Reader.

WP7Applist apparently gathers information from the Marketplace to present it on it’s own web site, and it uses Microsoft Tag to simplify the process of installing apps on the phone. Tag is Microsoft’s version of QR codes, which Android users are familiar with using to direct their phones to apps in the Android Market. You need to install the free Microsoft Tag app on your phone, then after it is installed you simply take a picture of the graphic provided on the WP7Applist web site. The Tag app on the phone opens a URL in Internet Explorer, which utimately gets you to the app in the Marketplace, where you can then install it. The process of going from picture to app in the Marketplace is not as seamless as on Android.

Time for me to change my recommendation of which online file storage service is the best for smartphone users. Back in April I wrote an overview of the online file storage services that work with smartphones, and my recommendation in it had two parts. If you want free file storage the best option was Dropbox, which provided 2 GB of free storage that at the time was the most amongst the services. In that post I also said that if you need more than 2 GB of storage then SugarSync was the best option because for $49.99 per year it provides 30 GB of storage, which was the cheapest of the for-pay storage options.

Two weeks ago Box.net announced that they were providing 5 GB of storage for free, making it the king of the hill for free online storage. At the time I said I would personally stick with Dropbox because of its file synchronization capability that makes it easy to move files from desktop computers to Dropbox’s servers.

Well, today SugarSync upset the apple cart by announcing that they too are now providing 5 GB of free storage and the free account includes support for automatic file synchronization between desktops and SugarSync’s servers. SugarSync has free mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Symbian phones. In my opinion SugarSync still is the best service if you need more than 5 GB of storage because it retains their 30 GB/$49.99 per year plan, and at the moment I have to declare SugarSync the best online file storage service overall for smartphone users.

Changes in the online file storage arena are happening quickly, so I expect that Dropbox will at least meet if not exceed SugarSync’s upgraded service, and for the moment I don’t plan on making the switch from Dropbox to SugarSync. If Dropbox and SugarSync end up providing the same 5 GB of free storage a choice between the two will require a closer look at the features of each. One benefit that SugarSync provides over Dropbox is that it enables you to select folders that already exist on your PC to sync to their servers, while Dropbox has it’s own specific file structure. For example, you could configure SugarSync to sync the My Documents folder on your PC, while you cannot do so with Dropbox. On the other hand, I’ve observed that iPad app developers who work with online file storage services have been primarily using Dropbox and Google Docs so if you are an iPad user you may want to confirm that the apps you want to use work with SugarSync.

Windows Mobile may have a near non-existent mindshare among most of the phone buying population. But, it seems to have cornered the market in secure and ruggedized phones. Check out this Windows Mobile 6.1 (yes, 6.1 not 6.5 and definitely not Windows Phone 7) powered:

Getac PS236 (Steatite Rugged)

It features:
- Rugged case
- E-compass and altimeter
- High sensitivity GPS
- WiFi
- Bluetooth
- 3 megapixel auto-focus camera
- 800×480 pixels on a 3.5-inch LCD display
- 5600 mAh all-day battery (10 hours)
- USB and RS-232 serial port (rare these days)
- Optional HSDPA 3G

T-Mobile USA was the first mobile carrier to sell a Windows CE based phone in the U.S. a decade ago. The Pocket PC Phone Edition was the first touch screen phone I had seen and was quite the wonder-device of its time. Quite frankly, it changed the way I thought about phones and forever spoiled me. I could never look at feature phones the same way again after using it for just a few days. After hearing that CDMA carriers (Sprint and Verizon) would not be part of the Window Phone 7 launch, I wondered if AT&T would be the only U.S. launch partner. However, T-Mobile will once again participate in a Microsoft phone launch.

Confirmed: Windows Phone 7 launches October 11th in New York City, and T-Mobile’s on board (Engadget)

Microsoft’s October 11 launch event agenda includes this item:

3:30 – 4:30 – T-Mobile reps will be present for device showing and their service offering discussion / Microsoft developer architect will demonstrate Windows Phone 7 applications