The great thing about being a Wall Street analyst is few people ever go back to check and see if the bold predictions you made months or even years ahead of time actually come true.
Still, a report released by IHS in the wake of Microsoft's earnings announcement last week is worth a closer look.
Fast Company is reporting that Instagram is working with Microsoft to develop a version of the popular photography app for Windows Phone.
Critics love Windows Phone, but it still has a relatively low market share, which left most people to assume Instagram would next aim to conquer Android. The photography application was named the iPhone's app of the year by Apple and now has more than 15 million users.
His face looks like the 3D movie version of some happy-go-lucky cartoon character, so for some, concocting a Charles Addams-like killer caption for Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is irresistible. On Friday the 13th, of all days, the Bloomberg Businessweek cover (for those of you who still read magazines) will feature Ballmer's face along with its own idea of a "Caption This" contest entry, literally plastered in pink all over him.
Perhaps unintentionally, the presentation comes off like a political statement, maybe as phrased by a Microsoft shareholder.
When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone five years ago, it was a happy day for the Apple faithful. Less so for the folks at Palm, whose employer became a ticking time bomb. In one move, Apple leapfrogged its rivals in hardware and software and changed the mobile industry forever. And Palm -- a touch computing pioneer that lost its way -- was toast.
That's just one example of how quickly a company's fates can change in today's fast-moving tech industry. Every company -- even those as seemingly strong today as Apple and Google -- have clear risks and weaknesses. The iPad could drive Microsoft's decline. The government could smother Google's growth efforts. And a mobile player that doesn't even exist could be the one that takes down Facebook.
A year ago Nokia was talking about hurling itself off a burning platform into a cold and dark ocean. The world wondered if the largest cellphone maker on Earth was committing suicide by phasing out Symbian smartphones and ditching the MeeGo operating system. Nokia, the company that brought many consumers their first cellphones, was crumbling in front of our very eyes.
It was like watching an old friend kill himself through years of alcoholism. Eventually, the bad decisions just start to pile up. But, like many alcoholics, somebody was there to throw a lifeline into that freezing, murky sea. Nokia grabbed onto Microsoft's life preserver and hung on for all it was worth. A year later? Nokia has the one thing that all technology companies crave: the buzz of the masses. People are saying positive things about Nokia again. That is an amazing thing.
We all knew it was coming the minute we laid eyes on the Kinect. The wireless, motion-based controller for the XBox 360 was designed for gaming but its potential uses for other human-machine interactions were immediately obvious. We saw it in the way the device let users flow through film selections in the Netflix UI using only their hands. The Kinect's potential also wasn't lost on hackers and tinkerers, who wasted no time making the device do all kinds of things outside of the scope of the XBox.
Lastnight, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer officially announced the next step for the Kinect: your PC. A version of the device for Windows will be available in a few weeks for $249. The company says that the higher price point is necessary because unlike the XBox version, Kinect for Windows won't be subsidized by things like game purchases and XBox Live memberships.
Microsoft announced enhancements to its Bing Maps, including a change to the algorithm that allows the service to process directions requests twice as fast and help drivers avoid traffic.
Those changes, along with a newly-awarded patent for a feature that allows Bing Maps to route pedestrians away from unsafe neighborhoods, suggest Mcirosoft is driving to surpass Google Maps, which has dominated the space since surpassing MapQuest in site traffic and queries in 2008.
A low-profile Silicon Valley startup beat Microsoft in delivering an application that allows users to access MS Office documents on their iPads.
CloudOn launched its eponymous iPad app Tuesday. Working in conjunction with DropBox, CloudOn lets users access and create MS Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents on their tablets. Unlike CitirixReceiver and other desktop access apps, CloudOn is designed to work specifically and only with Office.
Microsoft originally said it would try to take on Apple's iWork suite of productivity applications by developing an iPad app when the original device was first introduced. By the time it was launched in 2010, however, Microsoft had changed its mind. In November, citing unnamed sources, The Daily reported that Microsoft planned to launch an iPad Office app in the first half of 2012.
Microsoft is testing a targeted social network called So.cl (pronounced "social") on three college campuses.
So.cl is currently only available to students interested in social media at the University of Washington, Syracuse University, and New York University. The network is built off of Bing's API and, as described by Microsoft, works as "a research experiment for students focused on combining web browsing, search, and social networking for the purposes of learning."
The move is telling in that Microsoft is choosing not to go head-to-head with the big three of Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus in social networking and is instead taking an approach that targets a very specific niche. Other companies like Yammer and SalesForce have also given up on creating big, all-encompassing social networks and are instead focusing on niche and enterprise markets.
Dear Web developers: Microsoft knows how many hours of your life have been wasted trying to troubleshoot designs and functionality for Internet Explorer 6, and they're sorry. They promise they're never going to do that to you again.
To ensure such nightmares are never relived, the company will start rolling out automatic upgrades to Internet Explorer across Windows 7, Vista and XP, the company announced in a blog post today. Rather than relying on users to update the browser themselves or requiring you to trick your parents into updating theirs around the holidays, Windows will update to the latest compatible version of IE on its own.
