Category: Microsoft Windows

Months behind their competition, Verizon and Microsoft are finally working on the Lumia Cyan update for customers.  The news comes from Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore via his Twitter account where in two separate Tweets gives everyone an update on the update for Verizon customers.

In the first Tweet, Belfiore states that Lumia Cyan is coming to Verizon but it will be “farther off”

This isn’t great news for Verizon customers given that AT&T has Lumia Cyan and Windows Phone 8.1 out on their devices and T-Mobile will have it out on all of their devices shortly.    Still, I suppose it is progress.  It’s the second Tweet however that made me really scratch my head.

Microsoft has released an update to the Bing Rewards app for Windows Phone.  The update brings the app to a level of being an actual app.  The initial release from this summer was little more than a web wrapper for the Bing Rewards site and, as you can imagine, was met with a fair amount of skepticism.  This update should squelch some of those concerns.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Bing Rewards, it is a US-only program where you are awarded points for doing searching on Bing.  Those points in turn can be used to purchase of things like Microsoft Store or Xbox credits, Starbucks cards and the like.  The more you search the more points you get.  The Bing Rewards app lets you keep track of how you are progressing towards a point total or status level as well as shop to spend those earned points.

Bing Rewards – Free – Download Now

It has been a busy 24 hours for the OneDrive team at Microsoft.  After announcing unlimited OneDrive storage for Office 365 users yesterday, they also updated the OneDrive app for Windows Phone.  The update, version 4.4 for those keeping score, brings several new user experience improvements along with support for OneDrive for Business.  Now, like on other platforms, you can sign into both your personal and business OneDrive accounts from the app at the same time.

OneDrive for Windows Phone – Free – Download Now

Today was a busy day for San Francisco based Fitbit.  The company announced three new fitness activity trackers – the Charge, Charge HR and Surge – all of which will be their next generation of activity trackers.  All three look really impressive and will offer different levels of tracking based on your needs as a user and all three have multiple days of activity between charges which, particularly in the case of the Smartwatch-esque Surge, is important.

Along with this was the announcement from Fitbit and Microsoft of the new Windows Phone app which I highlighted earlier in a post.  That update brings a lot of improvements and enhancements, particularly around SensorCore and Cortana support.  It is the first one of those that is interesting in light of the recent decisions that Fitbit has made around iOS.  It also makes me think that Fitbit is making a bet that Windows Phone, as a platform, is going to take off.

Let me lay a little bit of foundation for those who haven’t kept up with the state of affairs in iOS from Apple.  With the release of iOS 8, Apple introduced Health Kit, an aggregation app if you will that allows you to pull information from the M7/8 motion processor built into the iPhone 5s/6/6 Plus.  It also allows for integration of information from 3rd party apps such as MyFitnessPal and Jawbone’s Up.  It’s this last part that is interesting as Fitbit stated multiple times in their user forums that they have no plans to integrate into Health Kit.  Why is that interesting?  Because during the keynote introducing Health Kit, Fitbit was the first shown.  It seemed, by association, that Fitbit would be tied to Health Kit.  In fact, the link to the user forums above were updated on October 8th with additional confirmation Health Kit integration, for now, won’t be happening.

So that makes the integration with Windows Phone and SensorCore very interesting because it effectively is saying no to iOS and yes to Windows Phone. 

When it comes to mobile devices, size very much matters.  It matters for what type of user you are, what you need from that device and what content you are going to consume on that device.  Nubo Software has put together a great mobile device infographic that covers everything from Smart Watches to family sized televisions – so you could argue that it isn’t necessarly all about mobile devices.  But the infographic is good as is the full story behind it that explains the logic behind it is quite good and well worth spending the time to read.

During the Microsoft earnings call yesterday, it became apparent that for Windows Phone, the earnings were a mixed bag.  However, if you dive in a little deeper it will start to  make sense what is going on with their earnings and why there is no need to jump on the panic button just yet as a Windows Phone user and fan.

First, let’s take a look at the good news.  In the last quarter which ended in September, Microsoft globally sold 9.3 million Lumia devices.  This up over 5% from the same quarter last year and clearly indicates things are going in the right direction.  A nearly complete refresh of the phone lineup, significant marketing and market expansion has all contributed to this growth and while we don’t know the specific numbers for specific markets, it is an indicator that Microsoft is making gains.

For Microsoft, this translated into $2.6 billion in revenue from Windows Phone.  That’s an impressive number and represents 11% of the total revenue the company generated last quarter of $23.2 billion.  This is very much a positive.

But let’s all take a dose of reality with this number.  Apple sold 10 million iPhone 6 units in its debut weekend.  There is a reason I call Windows Phone the Little OS That Could.  It is little, very little in the overall market as I’ve shared in the past.  There is along way to go, a lot of mind and market share to capture but things are pointing in the right direction.

Now let’s take a look at the bad news – at least on the surface.