LiveSide - News blog : Windows Mobile

More WPC09 News: Windows Marketplace For Mobile And Azure Pricing/Release Date

Sunshine — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 15:19:36 GMT

Whilst we are playing with the Office 2010 Technical Preview, there is more news coming out of/to be announced at the Worldwide Partner Conference.

Windows Mobile Marketplace

The following will be announced regarding Windows Mobile Marketplace today:

1. Application Submission Opens on July 27th: Windows Marketplace will open for application submissions from 29 supported countries* July 27^th.
2. Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 Support: Windows Marketplace will be available for Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 by the end of 2009 (in addition to Windows Mobile 6.5 at launch in the fall).
3. Business Center: Windows Marketplace will feature a "Business Center" category for business applications.
4. Developer Contest: Microsoft will be disclosing the details of a Windows Marketplace developer contest on July 27.

Todd Brix, Senior Director for Mobile Platform Services Product Management at Microsoft, is on site at the Worldwide Partner Conference today talking to partners and presenting the Windows Marketplace strategy. He’ll also give a brief demonstration on the main stage Wednesday morning. Want to check it out now? He made a video for Channel 9 in which he covers the news and shows you a quick Marketplace demo.

* Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Previous articles about Windows Mobile Marketplace

Azure

Also (~~to be~~) announced today is the business model and release date of Azure:

The cloud operating system isn't launching in final form until Microsoft's November Professional Developer Conference, but the pricing announcement will be made at this week's Worldwide Partner Conference. According to CNET:

On a pure consumption basis, Microsoft said it will charge 12 cents per hour for computing, 15 cents per gigabyte for storage and 10 cents per 10,000 storage transactions. For network bandwidth, the software maker is charging between 10 cents and 15 cents per gigabyte.

The discount plan, dubbed the "development accelerator" comes in two forms and offers a 15 percent to 30 percent discount off the consumption charges. It requires a six-month commitment, with overage charges billed at the regular rates. After six months, the pricing reverts to the standard Azure rates.

Microsoft also announced pricing for its SQL Azure database, charging $9.99 for the basic Web edition, including up to a 1GB relational database and $99.99 for the Business Edition, which includes up to a 10GB database.

Update: the CNET article missed out on the .NET services pricing. We find that on Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog:

.NET Services
Messages: $0.15 per 100K message operations, including Service Bus messages and Access Control tokens
Bandwidth: $0.10 in/$0.15 out per gigabyte

Official announcement by Microsoft
Previous articles about Azure

If you want to follow the WPC, check out the website. Keynotes are streamed live there! Missed out? You can watch them on demand too.

Windows Mobile 6.5 DTK For Developers Released

Sunshine — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:59:25 GMT

Microsoft has released the Windows Mobile 6.5 ~~SDK~~ DTK for developers.

The Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit adds documentation, sample code, header and library files, emulator images and tools to Visual Studio that let you build applications for Windows Mobile 6.5. This document contains important information about this package. For general information about writing software for Windows Mobile, please see the Windows Mobile Developer Center. The Windows Mobile 6 SDK must also be installed in order to use any of the Windows Mobile 6.5 Gesture API or samples. Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit comes with Emulator Images.

A new set of APIs is being introduced that will enable application developers to take advantage of the new Windows Mobile 6.5 touch gesture framework. The gesture APIs allow an application to handle touch gesture input and provide a visually consistent experience with the rest of the device UI. Note that the gesture APIs are only available on the Windows Mobile Classic and Professional SKUs. The headers and libraries are installed in the Windows Mobile SDK\Pocket PC\ folder. Samples that make use of these APIs are installed into the Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit\Samples\ folder.

As mentioned above, this release also includes the Windows Mobile 6.5 emulators:

[pictures by Geoffrey Emery]

You can download the package from Microsoft here, so you can finally get to work on your Windows Mobile Widgets. Over on the Windows Mobile Blog, Jorge Peraza wrote a great tutorial on how to get started with widgets.

After you’ve created your widgets you can upload them to the Marketplace (registration currently only open to English language markets).

Edit: Changed SDK to DTK
Reason: The Windows Mobile Developer Toolkit (DTK) is not a Software Development Kit (SDK) as you will still need to install Microsoft Visual Studio® 2008 and the Windows Mobile 6 SDK prior to running the toolkit installer. This is explained in SDK, DTK, DRK: WTF?! over on the Windows Mobile Blog. Thanks Alber1690 :)

Windows Mobile Facebook Application Update

Sunshine — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:52:33 GMT

The recently released Facebook Application for Windows Mobile already got an update. The team heard there were users having problems with installation, so they addressed this in a new version of the app. The update fixes hanging errors and most importantly it should help anyone who got a “cannot install due to insufficient privileges” error.
More screenshots over at LiveSino.Net

Before you install the new application, please uninstall the old application and make sure that facebook.vol and fbmail.vol are deleted from the root directory of your Windows Mobile phone.

Ready to get this new version? The new .cab file is available at at the download center or from your phone.

Windows Mobile Marketplace Registration Now Open!

Sunshine — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:06:49 GMT

Windows Mobile Marketplace, announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by Steve Ballmer, is opening the doors for developers as promised. The Windows Mobile Team announced it on their blog as follows:

In the latest update to http://developer.windowsmobile.com, developers can now Register to participate in Windows Marketplace for Mobile. This marks another milestone in providing Windows Mobile Developers a clear path to develop, test, certify and distribute their Windows Mobile applications via the Windows® Marketplace for Mobile.

Microsoft plans to charge developers $99 a year, plus $99 per application, to submit applications to Windows Marketplace for Mobile, though this year, developers are being allowed to submit up to five applications free of charge for that $99 yearly fee. Developers will receive 70% of the net price of the application (not including taxes) that Microsoft collects when your application is purchased.

So what are the steps for developers?

· REGISTER NOW. Developers can submit their complete profile information and take the first step in registration.

· Follow the Windows Mobile Developer team on Twitter @wmdev, Facebook and YouTube.

· Keep up to date via the Windows Mobile Team blog.

· And, stay informed with the latest development tools on the Windows Mobile Developer Center on MSDN.

And, if after reading the FAQ, you still have questions for the team you can comment on their post. According to the comments there are some problems with the registration, like the payment step repeatedly failing and international users being blocked. Apparently you may only sign up if you are in the US, as the credit card address entry automatically fills in "USA" as country which you cannot alter. However there is no mention at all of the registering only being open to US residents on either the blog or the FAQ! Hopefully these issues will be solved soon.

Previously (at CTIA) Microsoft announced that they have already signed up 27 big name-partners for their mobile Marketplace, including Facebook, Sling, EA, AP and CNBC. Want to know what the Windows Mobile Marketplace will look like? Head on over to Geoffrey Emery's for some screenshots, or to Long Zheng’s for the promotional video.

Microsoft releases official Facebook for Windows Mobile app

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:42:13 GMT

Just out is the official Facebook for Windows Mobile app, available for installation on Windows Mobile 6 phones. Features include:

Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list.

Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook.

Send messages or call people in your Friends list.

Manage your profile and post anytime, anywhere.

Windows Mobile #2 Smartphone OS in US: ComScore

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:56:29 GMT

You might not tell it from listening to all the buzz about the iPhone, but according to numbers from a February 2009 comScore survey of US smartphone users over the age of 13, Windows Mobile is the #2 OS in the US, with 27% share at 6.8 million current users. The numbers, published May 5th by mobile developer website FierceDeveloper.com, show that RIM (Blackberry) holds the number one position, with iPhone trailing Windows Mobile, and Palm and Android bringing up the rear. FierceDeveloper.com published each individual OS on a separate page, but another site, WMPowerUser.com, was nice enough to put them all together into a chart:

Android	Symbian	PalmOS	iPhone	WM	RIM
427914	888532	2398755	5258504	6807554	9668977
2%	3%	9%	21%	27%	38%

We checked with comScore, who only release a small portion of their surveys as press releases, just to make sure these numbers came from them. We don’t often get to see comparisons like these, and sometimes, especially since seemingly everyone in the Silicon Valley press has an iPhone, we forget what the market really looks like. It will be interesting to see how these numbers play out after the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 later this year, and then Windows 7 sometime in 2010.

Tellme coming soon to Windows Mobile 6.5

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 06:49:46 GMT

Microsoft bought Tellme back in March of 2007, and released an app for Blackberry last year, so we’ve been expecting to hear the news that came out today, that Tellme will be available for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones this fall.

According to a post on CNET, on The Download Blog, Tellme will be made available tomorrow (Wednesday April 29) to manufacturers to include on their WM 6.5 phones, and then on phones, in the Windows Mobile Marketplace, and directly from Tellme this fall with the release of 6.5.

Tellme will use Live Search exclusively to start, according to CNET, and will use GPS or cell tower triangulation to localize searches. You can learn more on the Tellme website

The Future Of Zune, Windows Mobile & More

RyanRCRea — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 01:48:17 GMT

It’s that time of year again, every Spring & Fall the Microsoft rumors start flying (Hey, Apple can’t have all the rumors to themselves).

With so many great products in the pipeline its no wonder people are excited. Most people are expecting Windows 7, Windows Mobile 6.5, Updates to Zune & Windows Live Wave 4 all to make an appearance before the end of the year. Numerous sources at Microsoft have also confirmed to us two upcoming updates for Zune. The smaller “Spring” update and the much more comprehensive “Fall” update Which according to the gossip around Redmond will be more like a mid to late summer update.

Windows Mobile 6.5 & 7

As you already know Windows Mobile 6.5 will be arriving sometime this summer, and its a worthy stepping stone from 6.1 to 7. I’ve installed a very early beta version on a HTC Touch-Pro which you can see here. Windows Mobile 7 however promises to be the release that takes Win-Mo to the next level. With deep Zune integration and much more. There have been a lot “leaked” screenshots of the upcoming OS over the past few weeks. With even Microsoft itself teasing something or another on their “Software + Services” Web site. According to a source deep inside Microsoft, all of these “Screenshots” are ether fake, mock-ups or really really old.The source goes on to say, that Windows Mobile 7’s UI is much more radical and new-thinking then any of the screenshots that have leaked yet.

Zune

Zune has always been a touchy subject, Microsoft keeps telling us that Zune is doing well. The media and most blogs rail on the Zune like there is no tomorrow. Blogs had a field day earlier this year when Microsoft quietly broke the Zune team into two pieces. With the device team being absorbed by Windows Mobile team and the software team joining up with the entertainment and devices group. Unlike most splits, this one had good ramifications. For one thing it deeply embedded the Zune team within the Windows Mobile Dev. Team. Our source tells us that purchasers of the New Zune will see the benefit’s of this marriage 1st. Basically when the 3rd or 4th (depending on how you count generations) generation launches this late summer or fall. You will be getting a sneak peak at some of Windows Mobile 7’s features a year early. Of course this will not be the only update, The Zune team is working hard on bringing some completely new services to the Zune platform. These are services that will really set the Zune apart, trust me when I say that . One of these future updates will fill a gap in the Zune marketplace that has been a sticky spot for even for Apple & the iPod.

Are you excited yet? I know I am. Keep checking back right here on Liveside for all the latest updates. You can also follow me on Twitter for even more Microsoft news

Sneak Peek at Windows 7 Mobile & Zune?

RyanRCRea — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 14:43:00 GMT

Windows Mobile 6.5 is not even here yet, but that is not stopping Microsoft from teasing 7 so far.

In the video below, titled “software + services”. We see someone using a OS that we believe to be a mock up of Windows Mobile 7. We also see him using a music app, that looks suspiciously like Zune. Complete with Zune’s “twist” interface.

Watch the video at the link below and decide for yourself,

http://www.microsoft.com/softwareplusservices/Default.aspx

WMPoweruser also grabbed some screenshots from the video

An introduction

RyanRCRea — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:24:00 GMT

Hello LiveSide!

My name is Ryan RC Rea, I’m the newest blogger here at Liveside

I will be covering Zune & Windows Mobile, as well the rest of Windows Live. I’m as excited as you are about future of Windows Live, Windows , Windows Mobile & Microsoft's entertainment Devices\Services. I hope you enjoy my posts.

There is a lot of cool stuff in the pipeline for the next few months, stay tuned right here for all of the latest.

For now I’ll leave you with a video of Windows Mobile 6.5 running on Sprint HTC Touch Pro. Provided by another site I write for (www.phonedog.com)

I’m running Win-Mo 6.5 as my primary mobile OS, The Phone in the video below is my completely stock Touch Pro running a early beta ROM of 6.5

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Zune coming to Windows Mobile, but not until WM7: report

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 18:41:08 GMT

WMPowerUser is reporting today that they’ve heard that Zune is coming to Windows Mobile, but not in 6.5. According to them, Zune for Windows Mobile won’t be coming until Windows 7, but that it will be a “pretty full implementation of it”.

WMPowerUser has a bit more:

Unfortunately for the over the air part of the service Microsoft intends to have the operators very much involved, meaning when music tracks are downloaded via 3G we may end up paying twice as much as if the track was downloaded over WIFI. The Operators will also be involved in billing, with the ability of tracks to be charged directly to your phone bill rather than your credit card.

Of course this also opens up the attractive possibility of cheap music subscriptions being offered as part of your data package when you buy a Windows Mobile 7 Smartphone.

Windows Mobile 6.5 RTM speculation heats up

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:55:00 GMT

Mobile phone site Uberphones is reporting that Windows Mobile 6.5 is now available for Microsoft FTEs (full time equivalents), and both they and Neowin are taking that to mean that a Windows Mobile 6.5 release won’t be far behind, on track for a 3rd Qtr release. A screenshot of a notice to Microsoft employees appears on the Uberphones site:

(Hey Loke, what, no twitters on this?)

Some brave souls have already taken to “test” leaked versions of Windows Mobile 6.5 on their own, although a popular website was issued takedown notices for the downloads last week (a quick look at XDA today shows what appear to be new versions of the software available for download, however).

In any event, Microsoft seems to be gearing up for a Windows Mobile push, releasing a marketing video and even starting their own YouTube channel:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Oh and btw since we’ve been getting interested in all this talk about Zune + Windows Mobile, did anyone else notice that Zune guy from the Magenta Lane Girl from Mars video is in the Start your Windows Phone video too?

Windows Marketplace For Mobile Developer Strategy Announced!

Sunshine — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:02:49 GMT

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Steve Ballmer announced Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Not much said back then, but now we have some more information. Microsoft announced the developer strategy for the next generation of Windows® Phones (Windows Mobile 6.5) yesterday.

The Windows Mobile Team blog explains this in greater detail:

What is the revenue and distribution opportunity for developers?

Developers will earn 70% of the revenue generated from sales of their applications.

Applications can be priced and sold in 29 markets using targeted pricing strategies to maximize revenues. This is a great opportunity to tap into a broad international customer base.

Applications can also be distributed through the Marketplace for free.

Tell me more about how to participate…

In the spring, we will release the registration process for you to sign up. Application submissions will be accepted beginning this summer.

Developers will be able to submit up to 5 applications to the Marketplace for the annual registration price of $99. Each additional application within the annual period will have a cost of $99.

For students enrolled in the DreamSpark program, the registration fee will be waived.

How do I get my applications into the Marketplace?

We want developers to focus on their core competency of developing innovative applications. At the same time we will work with developers to ensure that their applications run optimally on Windows phones. We will accomplish this by running a rigorous certification and testing process before applications go to market.

Developers will be able to see detailed feedback during and after the certification process of their applications on the Windows Marketplace for Mobile developer portal.

What do I need to get started?

You can utilize familiar tools and technologies like Visual Studio and the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 to build great applications.

Get the Windows Mobile 6 SDK and everything you need to get started at http://developer.windowsmobile.com

Besides these details the team also posted an interview with Marketplace Product Manager Inigo Lopez. You can watch that on their blog post or on YouTube.

Windows Mobile Team Blog
Windows Mobile Developers

See, we told you Windows Live was globally important!

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 05:46:00 GMT

One more for today, to round out our Windows Mobile/Windows Live coverage, this one thanks to a tweet from Loke Uei via Eileen Brown

(Please visit the site to view this media)

;)

Watch Steve Ballmer’s press conference from the Mobile World Congress live!

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:11:00 GMT

Monday February 16th at 3pm Central European Time (GMT +1), Steve Ballmer will conduct a press conference broadcast live via webcast from the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and you can watch it here:

(Here's the current Central European Time)

We’re interested to see what will actually be announced at MWC, we already know about My Phone, and word was out today about another mobile tech preview called Recite, that allows you to store audio notes on (limited, for now) mobile devices and then search those notes, again via audio. Will we hear more about Zune Mobile? Will we see Windows Mobile 6.5 (which is already out in leaked form)? Should be an interesting press conference, to be sure.