Microsoft's Mobile Communication Division renamed to Windows Phone division

Eagle eyed Mary Jo Foley noticed a small yet significant in the bio page of Andy Lees who is the president of Windows Mobile Division. Apparently, he is now the president of Windows phone division. No, this isn't a separate division, Windows mobile division has been renamed by Windows phone division. In a response, Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the change and more importantly mentioned that " there’s no change in the unit’s responsibilities or charter ".

This doesn't come as a surprise. We are already quite aware that Microsoft wants to get rid of the Windows mobile tagline and move on to Windows Phone, which still needs a lot of work. I have seen plenty of people call WP7 OS as Windows 7 mobile or Windows Mobile 7 and Windows Mobile was such a disaster that Microsoft wants to erase it from people's memory for good. Windows mobile marketplace will stop accepting new applications next month i.e. end of Windows Mobile developer ecosystem, if there was any. Also native cloud based sync services are being discontinued along with Web marketplace for Windows Mobile in coming months (reported here), which will be replaced by Skydrive and Windows Phone web marketplace in coming months. It's clear  Windows Phone is the future. Renaming isn't much of a surprise but significant because it's clearly the end of Windows Mobile OS era atleast internally at Microsoft. 

By Rahul Mathur

Web marketplace and My Phone service for Windows Mobile shutting down

In a series of rathar expected events, Microsoft just emailed owners of Windows Mobile that Windows Mobileweb marketplace and MyPhone, cloud backup service will soon be shutting down.

 Windows Marketplace for Mobile website will be discontinued starting 15th July. The temporarily discontinued URL will be updated with Windows Phone applications and related content which makes sense. Windows Mobile marketplace is also expectedto shut down completely soon, marketplace submission will end on 15th July which means a static marketplace. My Phone service on the other hand is a crucial cloud back up service, will stop taking backups post 7th August and completely shut down two months later. Now if you been solely relying on this service, fear not - Microsoft has got you covered:

On 7 August, 2011, the Microsoft My Phone service will stop synchronising data between My Phone-configured Windows Mobile 6.x phones and the My Phone service: User data will stop being backed up to the My Phone service. On this date, Microsoft will begin automatic migration of certain data types from the My Phone service to Windows Live SkyDrive.

Well, like I mentioned before - soon Windows Mobile marketplace will be completely in coming months gone thus becoming useless for Windows Mobile owners. Will they make the upgrade to Windows Phone? That's debatable because not many Windows Mobile loyalists love Windows Phone in it's current state but Mango has impressed one and all. End of  the road indeed for Windows Mobile.

via My Microsoft Life

By Rahul Mathur

Get The Windows Phone 7 UI For Windows Mobile Using TodayXLive

Even though the world is shifting to modern mobile operating systems, it seems that dev interest in Microsoft's old Windows Mobile has not died yet. Filipe Oliveira has developed a Today screen plugin which provides you with a Metro UI like skin. It supports Windows Mobile 5 and 6.x and works with all screen resolutions. The free app is currently in beta with an ongoing thread at XDA to report bugs and provide suggestions.

Feedback on the thread tells that the plugin is very light and uses about 3-4 MB of memory, and some bugs on the non-english versions of the plugin have already been fixed. A user guide and background wallpapers have been requested, and future versions will have the flashing avatars on the people hub tile. Quoting from the official site :

Main Features :

XLive items:

-Shortcut

-Shortcut notification

-Shortcut notification ex

-Digital clock

-Calendar

Screens:

-Task manager

-Device lock

-Device settings

Smooth kinetic scrolling

"WP7 Dark" as default theme

25 accent colors

Vibration feedback

Override Taskbar

You can view a lot of screenshots and download the plugin here.

[Source]

By Akshay Bakshi

According to Gartner, Microsoft sold more Windows Mobile devices in Q1 than WP7 devices

Gartner published a report today displaying the sales figure for various mobile Operating Systems. According to the figures, Android is dominating the market right now ahead of Symbian, iOS and other operating systems. What comes as a surprise is the addition of sales figure for Windows Phone 7 devices. Microsoft has not released actual sales figure yet. They sure did say that they shipped 2 million units, but those weren't the number of handsets bought by consumers, which was cleared up later.

The sales figure are below :

If you notice the image above, you will see a saddening figure. What it really means is that there is a significant drop ( from 6.8% in 2010 to 3.6 % in 2011) in interest in Microsoft's mobile operating system. According to the report, Microsoft sold $ 3.6 million devices running their Operating system but Windows mobile 6.x outsold Windows Phone 7, which comes in as a surprise. Out of the 3.6 million devices sold only 1.6 million of em were devices running WP7, a slow start indeed for Microsoft. What's more surprising is that there are people out there buying a WinMo device!

More from the report : Windows Phone saw only modest sales that reached 1.6 million units in the first quarter of 2011, as devices launched at the end of 2010 failed to grow in consumer preference and CSPs continued to focus on Android. In the long term, Nokia's support will accelerate Windows Phone's momentum. I'd like to see this report again next year to see how things have changed with Nokia partnership, when Nokia joins the Windows Phone 7 bandwagon. Remember, Gartner predicted Windows Phone 7 to be placed no.2 in the market share behind Android by 2015. So, let's wait and see how it plays out. via Engadget | Source Gartner

By Rahul Mathur

End of the road for Windows Mobile 6.x, no marketplace submission after 15th July

Wow. Looks like, this is it. Developers, as stated by a user on MSDN forums, are getting email from Microsoft stating that they will not accept any new application submission for Windows Mobile 6.x platform after 15th of July, 2011. You can continue to download / purchase applications after the specified date but you cannot submit a new application after 15th July.

Looks like Microsoft is planning to shift their focus completely on the Windows Phone dev. community, which is the right thing. I guess most of Windows Mobile 6.x developer has/is worked/working on an application for Windows Phone 7 so it's not a big problem for developers as it is for device owners running Win Mo 6.x. Windows Mobile OS never really took off, it didn't have anything innovative to offer thus never created any momentum with consumers resulting in developers losing interest and migrating to develop on other exciting platforms. But with Windows Phone, Microsoft has a lot to offer and the developer community is going pretty strong. Another reason to switch from Windows Mobile to Windows Phone OS. The platform might by officially support - less  ( it seems Microsoft would just isolate it later this year, if things go at this pace). So the wise choice is to move on to another OS if you are a Win Mo 6.x user.

via WMPoweruser

By Rahul Mathur