Windows Phone

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.

I was happy to see this tweet appear in the official T-Mobile USA Twitter stream yesterday. It provided a link to this T-Mobile forum HTC HD7 Knowledge Base item abou the update process.

HOW TO: Update the HTC HD7 to the Latest Software Version

The long awaited “NoDo” (no doughnuts) update process consists of two parts: Notification on the HTC HD7 and performing the actual update on a Windows PC running the Zune software.

The HTC HD7 is, as I’ve often noted here, my primary voice phone. So, I spent all day and night yesterday waiting for the update notification to appear. Alas, it did not. Here’s the reason why: The first thing the how-to article notes is: Beginning March 29, 2010, HD7 users will start to receive a a pop notification on their HTC HD7 device This means that yesterday, March 29, was the start of the rolling update process. It may take days or weeks for every HD7 user to receive the notification.

Having waited for several months for the Android OS 2.3 update appear on my Nexus One, I am all too familiar with this agonizingly slow platform update process. My advice? Be patient. It will appear on your HD7 someday. However, it may not be today and it definitely was not yesterday for me.

IDC released a fascinating forecast for mobile platform marketshares in 2011 and 2015.

IDC Forecasts Worldwide Smartphone Market to Grow by Nearly 50% in 2011

Producing this sort of forecast is frought with danger. Five years (technically less than that) is a long time in the tech world. For example, there wasn’t any iOS (Apple) market five years ago. Today IDC is forecasting this then unknown platform will have 15.7% marketshare (3rd behind Android and Symbian). I placed IDC’s data in an column chart for easier interpretation.

Some of IDC’s forecasts are not surprising:

- Android will continue to dominate the mobile market with 45% of market share in 2015
- Symbian will disappear with a 0.2% share (effectively zero)
- iOS (iPhone) will be flat going from a 15.7% marketshare in 2011 to 15.3% in 2015.

There are, however, a pair of surprises:

- BlackBerry will dip only slightly from 14.9% to 13.7%. My feeling is that unless RIM can turn things around, their marketshare will be significantly lower than it is today
- Windows Phone (or whatever it is called in 2015) will rise from 5.5% marketshare in 2011 to 28% in 2015. This will place it in a distant but strong second place in the market behind Android. Despite my personal fondness for Windows Phone (the HTC HD7 is my primary phone), I find this difficult to believe.

Here’s an interesting pair of AT&T related news.

AT&T Welcomes Spring with New Smartphone Prices (AT&T Press Release)

AT&T lowered the prices of a variety of smartphones Samsung Captivate (Android), BlackBerry Torch, Samsung Focus (Windows Phone), and LG Quantum (Windows Phone) are all priced at $49.99 with a two-year contract. The BlackBerry Curve 3G is priced all the way down to $29.99. Note that these are all 3G phones.

Meanwhile, ars technica reports that:

AT&T admits to slowing down the Motorola Atrix and HTC Inspire (ars technica)

This explains why we’ve been seeing reports of slower than 3G data speeds on these two Android-based 4G capable phones. It is fascinating to note that the slow data rates is apparently due to a firmware modification that AT&T now says it will “fix”.

Harry Fairhead discussed the email that Nokia VP Purnima Kochikar sent to developers and concluded what many of us have believed since the Nokia/Microsoft announcement: Nokia’s support of Symbian in their phones will fade away over some indeterminate period of time.

Nokia confirms that Symbian phones will just fade away

Harry notes that Purnima Kochikar said that there are Symbian based products in the pipeline for 2011 and 2012. This is the same time period that Nokia plans to roll out its Windows Phone devices. Will Symbian based phone completely exit from Nokia’s product line after the Windows Phone smartphones become available? That certainly seems to be the case.

ZDNet writers James Kendrick and Ed Bott had a bit of a back and forth today regarding who is to blame for the Windows Phone update fiasco. If you aren’t aware, Windows Phone 7 users have been expecting to receive an update beginning in early February, and to date few, if any have received the updates. The main feature the update provides is copy and paste, which many people can probably live without, so the problem isn’t with not getting a feature users just must have, but instead the problem is with expectations Microsoft set that they are not meeting.

Ed Bott wrote that the real Windows Phone problem is with AT&T and not Microsoft. Bott is reacting to Microsoft’s table that shows all of the AT&T phones in a testing status, which means that the ball is in AT&T’s court to complete their work so that Microsoft can schedule the deployment of the update. In his blog response to Bott’s blog post Kendrick says the blame lies with Microsoft for allowing AT&T to adversely affect the update process. James goes on to contrast what Microsoft has done to Apple’s deal with AT&T where Apple retained control over the entire update process.

I agree with James that the fault lies with Microsoft, but I think that there is little Microsoft can do to fix the problem beyond directly selling a mobile phone in a manner similar to how Google sells the Nexus S. The simple fact of the matter is in a U.S. market where people buy the majority of mobile phones on contract from carriers, Microsoft needs the carriers more than the carriers need Microsoft.

Given Apple’s dominance of the smartphone market, and the rise of Android, I doubt any of the carriers were pounding down Microsoft’s door to start selling Windows Phone 7. In fact, I expect the reality was very much the opposite. Microsoft simply does not have any leverage to negotiate with the carriers to compel them to follow Microsoft’s wishes. This reality of how mobile phones are bought in the U.S., and the power the carriers have, is the reason why I think Microsoft has a very low chance of having success in the U.S. smartphone market.

If Microsoft were asking for my opinion when they were planning the Windows Phone launch, I would have recommended a much more scaled back approach. Pick one CDMA carrier, probably Verizon, to launch one very good handset. Pick one other GSM handset and directly sell it, unlocked, either for T-Mobile or AT&T’s network at a price below $500. Maybe by scaling back the launch to focus on providing the best phones with the best service, they might have a chance to gain some market share. Instead, Microsoft is doing what it has always done, and is expecting a different result from when they did it before.

Windows Phone 7′s long awaited NoDo update is finally showing up on a unbranded phones. My take on this is summed up in the item I wrote just yesterday.

NoDo Update for Windows Phone Slinking Out: But Odds of You Getting It? Slim to None

Microsoft’s Eric Hautala must be hearing comments like mine a lot because hours later, he wrote:

“Copy and paste” update status

He points out a new Microsoft webpage that provides update status information by location, vendor and model.

Where’s my phone update?

You can see the table it generated for U.S. Windows Phones to the left. The Dell Venue Pro and HTC HD7, both sold by T-Mobile in the U.S., will get the updates first according to the status table. Both the February (updater update) and March (NoDo) updates are shown as still in “testing” for other phones available in the U.S.

One of the features I really like in Windows Phone 7 is the Live Tiles feature that provides dynamic information display. I recently replaced The Weather Channel with WeatherBug as my weather live tile because The Weather Channel did not seem to update the information often and was usually incorrect when did. According to the official Windows Phone Blog, I will have a third weather app and, I hope, Live Tile alternative soon.

New phones, new apps, and an app-iversary

It notes that AccuWeather is launching its Windows Phone 7 app soon (Q2 2011).

AccuWeather Brings World Class Weather to Windows Phone 7 Users (AccuWeather.com press release)

The app features listed in the press release are:

- Accurate and localized forecasts for all global locations. Updated every hour, forecasts include the most detailed hourly forecasts for the next twenty-four hours, plus day and night weather forecasts and information for the next ten days.
- Panoramic views with easy swiping between stored locations.
- Severe WeatherAlarms for all global locations.
- Severe Weather Alerts for the U.S. – visible from all screens.
- Multiple weather displays, including animated radar and satellite maps, interactive Bing Maps, and current, broadcast-quality weather videos with many available in both English and Spanish.
- Special lifestyle forecasts, such as conditions for specific sports and other outdoor activities.

WinRumors reports:

Windows Phone 7 NoDo update now available

But, don’t worry U.S. based Windows Phone users. The odds of you seeing this update are slim to none. Here’s why. As WinRumors goes on to report: Microsoft is slowly distributing the update to a number of unbranded devices worldwide and owners should see the update notification shortly. Carrier branded devices are a whole different story. I believe there’s a small typo in the first sentence. But, the message itself is clear. Those of us with Windows Phone devices sold through carriers are not included in this first update wave.

So, sit back, enjoy your Windows Phone for what it is and has been since it shipped in November (in the U.S.). It still a good voice phone and a decent smartphone. Waiting for NoDo is beginning to feel like the three month wait for Gingerbread to appear on my Nexus One.

Even a Windows Phone fan like me can’t help but see the irony in this new pair of phones heading to AT&T.

LG Thrill 4G with 3D display, HTC HD7S Windows Phone headed to AT&T

On one hand we have the LG Thrill 4G Android-powered (OS 2.2 not 2.3) phone with a glasses-free 3D display and 3D camera. On the other hand we have the HTC HD7S powered by Windows Phone 7 which will ship with the NoDo update that adds the long awaited copy/paste feature. Which one will generate more interest? I wonder

That said, I’d glad to see another 3D camera option available for the U.S. consumer.