The last two months in the tech world have been abnormal to say the least. Steve Jobs resigned, Google bought Motorola, Microsoft showed off Windows 8 and now uses ARM, Google now uses Intel, the AT&T and T-Mobile merger is on the brink of falling apart, HP stopped making mobile products after spending over $1 billion dollars last year to start making mobile products, and Microsoft took a page out of 2013 in the Apple product roadmap, announcing an OS that works on desktops and tablets.
Out of all these stories, Windows 8 may indirectly have the most impact over the next five years.
In June, Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its Windows operating system: Windows 8. This version of Windows will introduce touchscreen technology into the Windows user interface (UI), including desktop and laptop computers. Touchscreens have become popular in smartphones and tablets, primarily due to Apple's iOS. But does it make sense to reach out and touch your desktop computer screen in order to navigate or browse? In June, Microsoft was giving a resounding YES to that question. Now, it's more like a nervous MAYBE.
Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky attempted to explain today how the new touchscreen UI - which he dubbed the "Metro style" - will co-exist with the old style point-and-click Windows UI. The two interfaces are night and day. The touchscreen one is relatively simple and app-centric, the traditional one is complex and file-centric. He ended up hedging his bets, which is what Microsoft is now doing in its design goals for Windows 8.
Skype, the Internet telephony company that is itself currently being acquired by Microsoft, has announced that it will itself acquire GroupMe, a group messaging startup.
Created at a hackathon last year, GroupMe is one of a handful of apps that enable people to have multi-person chats via their mobile devices. Group messaging has become a bit of a phenomenon this year, as a number of solutions have sprung up offering services that enable private group chat conversations from users' phones.
The next version of Microsoft's Windows operating system will include an app store and offer a consistent experience across desktops, tablets and smartphones.
Windows 8 is being developed in two flavors: one for desktop computers and one for tablets and phones, with consistencies across both versions. This brings Windows closer to the model that Apple has adopted with its Mac OS X operating system, the desktop version of which has slowly been adopting similarities with the experience iOS offers on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. Think Windows 7 meets Windows Phone 7.
There is a middle ground in Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility that is not just about just patents. It is not all about Google controlling its own original equipment manufacturer. Nor is it about solely defending the future of the Android ecosystem. This is about Google's standing in the mobile industry, the greater technology environment and its bottom line.
Google had very healthy second quarter earnings. Yet, it missed Wall Street expectations and the stock has taken a hit. Advertising accounted for 96% of Google's revenues, with near 66% of that on Google's own sites. Overall, Google's revenues were $6.82 billion. Google's investment in Android "is not material to the company" meaning that Google spends little on Android yet gets a decent return on its investment. Yet, there is a powder keg of money under Android and Google is seeing next to none of it in proportion to the ecosystem. So, Google needs to protect the future of Android for the value of mobile search it can advertise against. There are untold billions that Google could tap if it was more vertically integrated. Enter Motorola.
Three months after announcing its acquisition of Skype, Microsoft's plans for the Internet telephony service are beginning to become clear.
One of the first orders of business will be the creation of a Windows Mobile version of Skype, Neil Stevens, the company's vice president and general manager of products and marketing, told Forbes recently.
The death spiral of Nokia's smartphone brands continues. Symbian, which once was a global powerhouse for smartphone adoption, will no longer be sold in North America. This comes on the heels of the news that the MeeGo-based Nokia N9, considered to be its most powerful and user-friendly phone to date, will also not be available in the United States.
There was really no reason for Nokia to keep Symbian around in North America. It had never reached any type of critical market or mind share and devices were rare on the shelves of the four major U.S. carriers. Yet, there is something to be said for Nokia's dominating brand getting phased out. It never had a great user interface, although it had a healthy app store with Ovi, with thousands of developers worldwide making Symbian apps. Yet, with Nokia prepping for a large scale launch of Windows Phone 7, there is no room left in the North American market for Symbian or MeeGo.
The general manager of the Windows Phone project at Microsoft is leaving the company to start a new business. Charlie Kindel had been at Microsoft for 21 years and has headed up the transition from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone. Kindel's departure is not a warning sign that not all is well with Redmond's mobile division. However, in his departure email posted on his personal blog, Kindel said, "To the Windows Phone team: I may stop using some Microsoft products now that I'm out of here. But not Windows Phone. The BEST product Microsoft has ever built. Do not let up!"
Kindel leaves Microsoft a few months before it releases the newest version of Windows Phone, "Mango," and before the first iteration of a Nokia Windows Phone comes out, which is expected later this year.
Today at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft announced a contest to produce advanced security technology to protect Windows computers. The grand prize for the Microsoft Blue Hat Prize is $200,000. $50,000 will go to the runner-up and an MSDN Universal subscription (worth about $10,000) to the third place winner. Microsoft is taking a step above the "bug bounty" program offered by Google, Mozilla and Facebook and incentivizing developers to not just patch holes in Windows, but to put security technology ahead of the curve of the constant threat of attacks.
Microsoft will be accepting submissions until April 1, 2012 and the contest will be judged by Microsoft engineers. A winner will be announced at next year's Black Hat conference. The goal of the contest is to get developers to focus more on the big picture as opposed to individual bugs or issues. Is the lure $200,000 enough for developers throw themselves head first into Microsoft's challenge?
We're reviewing the first half of 2011 and in particular 5 trends that have helped shape the year so far. Earlier this week we looked at online privacy and group messaging. Today we get a bit geeky and review the continuing growth of HTML5.
HTML5 is the next version of HTML, the markup language that all web pages are written in. HTML5 is more interactive than the current version of HTML - it offers similar functionality to Flash technology - and is also much more suited to mobile devices. HTML5 was one of our top trends of 2010, after getting major support from Google and promising startups like Clicker. This year we've seen Microsoft jump on the HTML5 bandwagon, with strong integration into its IE browser and Windows OS (not without controversy). Also we've seen increasing talk in the developer community that HTML5 may be the elusive 'write once, run anywhere' code for the Web.
