July, 2014

Cortana expands, Windows Phone plays “catch up”

Late last night (Pacific Daylight time – mid-Wednesday morning in China), Microsoft announced the expansion of Cortana to two new markets in beta, China and the UK, as well as the alpha release of the personal digital assistant for Windows …

The Microsoft built Windows Phone era is about to begin – can it save Windows Phone?

This has been an interesting year so far for Windows Phone. In some ways, it’s been quite disappointing, as Microsoft’s mobile ecosystem has failed to gain ground in the marketplace (enough so that Microsoft executives are now talking about “making …

One OS or three, Windows still doesn’t add up

Microsoft released its 4th quarter earnings yesterday, and despite a big hit from the Nokia acquisition, the news was generally good. Microsoft’s cloud services (Azure, Office 365, and the like) are starting to take off, traditional server side …

Xbox an entertainment platform? So much for that idea

More fallout from Microsoft layoffs announcements came later in the day yesterday, this time with the news that Xbox Entertainment Studios (XES) would be closing. The Studios, headed by ex-CBS exec Nancy Tellem, who was hired in September 2012 …

Microsoft is cutting 18,000 jobs this year, realigning phones business – is it enough?

Today, as expected, Microsoft announced significant job cuts as it moves into the new fiscal year and continues to integrate Nokia’s phones businesses into the company. The majority of those cuts, some 12,000 over the next 12 months (with 13,000 …

The coming Microsoft job cuts: more than just numbers

According to a news report coming out of Bloomberg, Microsoft could be announcing its most significant job cuts since 2009, and that announcement could be coming as soon as this week. Although the cuts are widely expected to focus …

Nadella outlines changes coming to Microsoft in email to employees

It’s easy to take today’s email by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as not much more than a high level, buzzword filled, overly long communique from a CEO to his some 100,000 employees. In it, Nadella re-describes Microsoft’s core mission, refining …

Goodbye Street & Trips – Now, about Bing Maps…

Today, Microsoft quietly announced that both MapPoint, and its consumer facing subset Streets & Trips (the “#1 best-selling travel and map software for 13 years straight), would be coming to end of life as of the end of this …

Xbox Music opens 3rd party APIs, offers affiliate program

Microsoft first announced the Xbox Music API program at Build, earlier this year, and today, according to a blog post on the new “Xbox Music for Developers” blog, that program has now moved out of its pilot program and the …

What’s the future of Windows Phone?

A post over at the Boy Genius Report this week has stirred up a bit of a tempest in a teapot, as according to BGR, Windows Phone has “failed spectacularly” to gain market share, and a “death knell” has been …