This week's news on Microsoft on Android.
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The Android Plan: Why Google Will Mimic Microsoft To Conquer Apple
16 MayIBTimes.com - Industries
Google will reportedly work with up to five different manufacturers at once to offer a wide variety of Android devices, including both smartphones and tablets. The move is a big power play from Google in its efforts to surpass Apple, and it could absolutely work, mainly because it's worked before with Microsoft. -
Kantar: Windows Phone clawing back share thanks to Nokia, but Android still rules the roost
16 MayEngadget
It's seldom the case that we get to look at world smartphone market share on a national level, but Kantar WorldPanel has given a rare peek that might give Windows Phone fans some good news to crow about. Even though things haven't always gone well for the Microsoft camp, Nokia phones like the Lumia 800 sparked a minor Renaissance in some countries in the three months leading up to mid-April: Windows Phone was up to between three and four percent in France, Italy, the UK and the US. The Metro interface must also be sehr gut for Germans, which nearly doubled Windows Phone's local share to six percent in that short space of time.
Kantar is eager to point out that it's still mostly a tale of Android and iOS successes, though. Google took extra ground in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK and the US, while Apple was on a tear both on its native soil and in the UK. HTC's upbeat predictions may have played a significant part in Android's continued rise -- the One X cracked the British top 10 list despite having only been in shops for a few days. About the only underdog story not going well in early spring was RIM's, where the BlackBerry's share of the US was cut to a third of its year-ago glory at three percent.
Kantar: Windows Phone clawing back share thanks to Nokia, but Android still rules the roost originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 02:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Android Making Gains Overseas
15 MayWebProNews
Data from Kantar WorldPanel has shown that Google’s Android OS has been making gains in the first quarter in seven major markets, including Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States.
In Italy and Spain, Android popularity more than doubled year-over-year in both markets, at 49% and 72% respectively. Germany saw a 62% rise, roughly double. Apple’s iPhone made gains on Android in the U.S. and the UK over the same period, but lost users in Europe. Android still is king in the UK, with over a third of that country’s smartphone users adopting the platform.
Microsoft’s Windows Phone has doubled its share in Germany at 6 percent, and has risen to roughly a 3-4% market share in France, Italy, the UK and the U.S. Microsoft has also seen a boost in Windows Phone use in emerging markets, having released the platform in 23 new countries in February.
Android gains have prompted losses in Nokia’s Symbian and the Blackberry platforms. RIM’s market share in the U.S. has dropped from 16% to 12% in the last year. Though, RIM still garners more app downloads than both Android and iOS.
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Inside Microsoft’s New Azure Accelerator — Will Redmond Get The Startup Mojo?
15 MayTechCrunch
Back in March this year Microsoft launched its first ever “direct” startup accelerator, based out of Tel Aviv, Israel. That meant it would, for the first time, be an accelerator owner/operator. Dubbed the Windows Azure Accelerator (WAA) it looked, at least on first inspection, to be designed to push its Azure cloud computing platform. Perhaps this was some paper-thin marketing initiative? “Look everyone, startups are choosing to use Azure!” seemed to be the initial message.
Indeed, the move led to some confusion in the market. Microsoft already works with TechStars and all members of its Global Accelerator Network. It also has an ongoing BizSpark marketing programme to push Microsoft products, and numerous R&D centres around the globe. What on earth was going on? Was this going to be some sort of prison for startups, where they would be force-fed gruel and lashed like galley slaves if they didn’t use Azure? It turns out, no. But there is a back story to this move and a strong hint that this single move may, in the not too distant future, lead Microsoft back to its roots and re-inject that essential startup DNA back into the corporate giant.
I took a trip out to Tel Aviv to get under the skin of this new initiative, to meet the startups they are backing and work out why the hell Microsoft would be doing an accelerator.
But let’s look at the detail first.
Housed in the Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center, the Accelerator is part of the Center’s outreach program ThinkNext, a startup engagement program. Run a little like TechCrunch Disrupt, the ThinkNext Summit is an in-house, invitation-only Microsoft conference which has been running for 4 years featuring key MS people, but which also puts 20 startups on stage. It’s also taken under its wing the Microsoft “BizSpark One” program, which deals with about 50 companies out of a broader 45,000 BizSpark startups.
THE WINDOWS AZURE ACCELERATOR
The Windows Azure Accelerator itself is a four-month, biannual program for 10 startups. Featuring over 30 mentors from the industry (from CEOs to investors to marketing experts), startups also get all the usual free software offered through Microsoft BizSpark Plus.
At the end of the programme they get a demo day for investors in Israel and one in Silicon Valley in September.
Running the WAA day to day is Hannan Levy a former serial entrepreneur and cofounder of United Parents Online which has been covered on TechCrunch. A CTO for the Accelerator is due to be hired. The key point here is that Microsoft isn’t hiring from within its own borders, but bringing in entrepreneurs who can understand other entrepreneurs.
As with most accelerators, the startups get free office space, coaching, mentorship, legal assistance – the usual.
There will be a big focus on User Experience, something Israeli companies haven’t traditionally been strong in and – in something of a first for a Microsoft initiative – Agile and Lean Startup methodology will be promoted.
The specific Azure cloud use element is good for two years (worth up to $60,000) – so in some respects this is kind of an investment.
Now, you’d think the startups would be leaned on to use it. But in fact I saw zero evidence of this. Quite the contrary – when I visited I saw startups happily talking about their iOS or Android apps and working on Macs just as much as PCs.
The startups also get access to customers and advertising/design partners like the giant Y&R ad agency. In reality I spoke with the mentors from these companies and it’s a lot simpler and less corporate than it sounds – what they are getting in practical terms is the time of two key guys from those companies, and their ability to green light anything the startups need.
Mentor David Sable of Y&R says it’s about “giving the startups practical real-life understanding of what they need to sell and to understand what their clients will need.” At a WPP level Y&R is accountable for the entire Microsoft relationship so he calls it the WAA initiative a “strong partnership” which “is a huge value add for us” and adds “huge energy to my company”.
Yoram Tietz of E&Y explains: “Big companies have a problem with innovation. The position of E&Y is pro bono. E&Y was chosen as partners because they have a market reach into the Israeli tech market.”
The other mentors on the programme feature many well known names from the Israeli tech scene including Zohar Lvkovitz – Founder of Amobee; Guy Schory – head of new ventures, eBay; Moche Levin – managing general partner, DFJ Tel Aviv ; Shmulik Well – founder, SundaySky; Gil Peretz, a Neuro Linguistic Programming expert and Ali Diamnt, Former funder of Emblaze Systems, now in the Microsoft R&D centre.
SO WHAT”S THE DEAL?
More unusually the startups inside WAA get no money from Microsoft. But then again, no equity is taken either. So, free offices, free mentoring, access to lots of big potential partners. It’s all just a little too good to be true. What’s going on here?
WHAT DOES MICROSOFT GET OUT OF THIS?
It’s clear Microsoft wants to get something out of this relationship but, but it’s also, at this stage, happy to be vague about the outcomes.
The criteria for startups to join WAA is simple enough: they need to have a cloud component, a big vision for their product, they need to be “coachable / mentorable”, be a small team of less that 4 people and be capable of being nimble.
Amongst the startups I met, it was clear they were small, but hard working. After speaking to a few people I uncovered some typical startup behaviour – office hours amongst these guys usually work 11am to midnight, for instance.
In return for this social contract, Microsoft gets to plug into new ways of working and new trends in technology. Yes, it could get those in other places, like the Valley, but not in such an intimate setting. Indeed, if the startups in WAA choose NOT to use Microsoft technologies, then guess who gets to pump those guys for information directly about why not? Microsoft gets to work out how to fix these issues much simpler way than if they had to engage with startups outside of any Microsoft connection.
It’s true that Microsoft wants to encourage more entrepreneurs to build their cloud-based applications using Windows Azure – but the reality is subtler than that. As I worked my way through the people involved it became clear that they have big plans for the place. And it’s not really just about Azure – it’s about connecting with the startup vibe and informing wider strategy.
Perhaps that’s better done outside of the stuffy confines of Redmond, in a venue spitting distance from Tel Aviv’s gorgeous beaches. But this is no holiday camp.
BUT WHY ISRAEL?
The background to this is instructive. Microsoft has been in Israel since 1991. It created the first R&D centre outside the US in Tel Aviv. Microsoft’s R&D Center houses 550 engineers. And while there are now 45 R&D centres globally, only three are considered “Strategic” ones. They are located in India, China, and Israel. While the former two are – how can I put this? – cheaper to run, Microsoft maintains its R&D centre in comparatively expensive Israel.
The reasons have been expounded up so many time they are barely worth repeating, but for the record: Despite its small 8 million population, Israel has the third latest VC spending in the world according to the OECD and is third only to Silicon Valley and New York in total numbers (not per capita). It’s number four in the world in patents after Taiwan, China, Japan and the US (even though many patents in the US were originally developed in Israel, according to the WEF Global Competitive Report 2011-12). Israel has the largest number of tech startups traded on the NASDAQ. It has 4 of the top 30 computer science universities in the world. Of course, it goes without saying that the reasons for this tech proficiency are obvious: it’s a country with few natural resources, surrounded by enemies and on a constant state of near-war footing. Unfortunately, there’s nothing like a cold war to accelerate innovation and the heady mix of Israeli culture and national army service ends up producing a lot of technically proficient people, as was documented at length in the book Startup Nation.
WHERE DID THE WAA COME FROM?
As Zack Weisfeld, Senior Director of Strategy and Business Development at Microsoft’s Israel Development Center, tells me, it was out of this startup-driven R&D centre, plus the ThinkNext programe, that they came up with the idea of the accelerator. (Weisfeld is a startup veteran who was at Modu and M-systems, acquired by SanDisk in 2006 for $1.6 billion).
They were no longer talking about just innovation, but “innovation excellence” and “fast productisation.” Out of this R&D culture came the die of “rainmaking” – literally seeding the clouds. Clearly there was a missing link to achieve this: they needed the mojo of startups. And thus came the idea of the Azure Accelerator, says Weisfeld.
Gradually people inside Microsoft listened to these siren voices. They needed more than R&D – they needed new blood. They needed the special energy bright by startups, and an accelerator was born.
They also realised startups want more interaction with large corporates in a more collegiate atmosphere.
Admittedly the stock markets might disagree with him but, as Weisfeld told me: “It’s not about Windows versus iOS versus Android or whatever. It’s more complicated than that. It’s not about selling more Microsoft Office licenses.
“It’s really about working across all platforms. Azure is not the main target of the accelerator – it’s about being more connected to startups, trends, ways of working,” he says. Eventually this helps impact MS in other ways. Using Azure is genuinely not mandatory, he says. “Working with startups gives Microsoft a better chance to compete in the future.”
“People forget Microsoft is still a huge tech company and innovator. It suffers from a bad reputation in some ways, but this initiative shows it can work with startups.”
As Weisfeld says, Microsoft getting access to fast-moving, agile startups “makes us better”.
NEXT UP – THE XBOX ACCELERATOR
The Windows Azure Accelerator is just the first of, perhaps, many more. Weisfeld says that while WAA is the first, others are likely to follow globally.
More interestingly, the next one will be in the same building as the Azure Accelerator and will focus on the Xbox.
Yes, Microsoft already has a ‘Kinect Accelerator‘,which is a venture run with TechStars in Seattle. But TechStars takes its usual 6% equity stake.
This Microsoft-run version will be quite different. This Xbox accelerator will sit next to the Azure Accelerator and right next door to the R&D centre. This makes plenty of sense – the special technology associated with Kinnect comes out of Israeli ‘Machine Vision’ engineering, and guess where Machine Vision is a speciality? Yep, the Israeli Armed forces.
CAN THE WAA IDEA SCALE?
What stuck out eventually about the WAA startups I spoke to was that they were all from Israel. Technically speaking, that needn’t be the case, and I was told the WAA had had applications from 10 countries globally. However, practically speaking, startups don’t get funding to come and live and work in Israel. That meant the gene pool was going to limited to startups from Israel, or even just Tel Aviv.
On the plus side, I was told that in the future the WAA “will be happy” to house startups from other counties, and even “regionally”, so long as they could fund their 4 months in Tel Aviv. Personally, I took this as code for ‘other countries in the Middle East’ – quite some leap of faith for an Israeli initiative. I was also told to “watch this space” on that front.
For here’s the rub. For a global organisation like Microsoft, should we not ask the question: is Microsoft’s first direct accelerator too focused on one country? Surely it ought to be the case that for a huge organisation like Microsoft to start a brand new accelerator then it should be one to all comers not just to Israeli start ups?
It’s a delicate question which is perhaps best understood in the context of Israel’s powerhouse technology centre – one which almost rivals Silicon Valley in hard-core technology and innovation.
The signs are though, that despite it’s all-Israeli makeup – Microsoft’s first ever direct accelerator is likely to be the first of many, as we’ve seen above with the Xbox initiative.
CORPORATE ACCELERATORS – THE NEW NEW THING
The WAA is clearly part of a wider trend. OK, you haven’t seen Apple or Facebook open accelerators, and nor are you likely to. But while Google hasn’t opened a direct accelerator it is certainly dipping its toes into the water. It recently started Campus London, a large building in London’s high tech cluster in the East of the city which houses accelerators and co-working spaces. Meanwhile, Telefonica is rolling out its Wayra incubators globally, while Deutsche Telekom announced its hub:arum incubator for Berlin this month.
But in truth it feels like the more corporate the company culture, the more need there is for this kind of initiative.
NEW MOJO FOR MICROSOFT?
Ultimately, though, I think what we are looking at here in Israel is a kind of prototype accelerator, the model for which will inform Microsoft’s roll out of similar initiatives.
It’s interesting that one of the key missions Microsoft’s R&D center is to look at social networking and monetization – that means social startups need to be part of the equation. And social startups are clearly in this first tranche at WAA.
Perhaps all this activity will inform Microsoft’s future direction as a company. Or perhaps some corporate drone will dismiss it as a flight of fancy, and they should just concentrate on selling more Office and Azure products.
Only time and – many more startups – will tell.
THE STARTUPS AT WINDOWS AZURE ACCELERATOR
Durados
Durados is developing a cloud database application generator without coding. It basically generates templates for any kind of cloud app, like workflow or CRM. It’s aiming to launch on Microsoft’s Azure and Google Apps Marketplaces.
Founders: Itay Herskovits, Relly RivlinEvento
Evento is creating a Facebook application initially which makes it easier of events to go viral on social networks and address the problem that about 40% of event tickets go unsold due to lack of exposure. They are targeting sports, entertainment, music, and culture events run by SMEs. You get a lot more management options than the Facebook event application including live maps of stadiums and theatres where you can book a seat. They take a cut of the ticket booking, which is taken from marketing budget not the ticket sale. The system also finds your friends and places you near them in the venue. It’s designed to rewards people with virtual or real goods to incentivize people to spread the event socially. Closest competitor is Ticketmaster’s “Seat New Me” just on the web, but it’s not social. Launching around August with a sports team in the UK.
Founders: Ophir Zardok, Harel ShemerEverCloud
This Cloud Services Broker (CSB), offers enterprises the ability to dynamically expand on-premise enterprise applications, such as Microsoft Exchange and File Servers, to public Clouds. The multi-tiered SaaS platform maintains communications with the
private Cloud via a proprietary protocol.
Founders: Yuval Rapaport-Rom, Gadi RapaportMediSafe
People who consume medication often forget taking their medication or over-medicate, especially if they are elderly. (In the US, over 30,000 people annually die as a result). Scan the Barcode on the medicine packet, and then MediSafe syncs someone’s medication routine with other members of the family. So when your daughter forgets to take her medicine at school, you receive an alert about it. She has to ‘check-in’ that she’s taken the medicine otherwise the Android app alerts the parents. Of course, this works for anyone.
Founders: Omri (Bob) Shor, Rotem ShorVidit
Vidit is a cool technology for collect videos taken by many people at a single event. Using a video synchronization algorithm it synchronizes and edits all clips into one. The result can be a rock concert from hundreds of angles in the crowd. The user that uploaded the video appears in the final video incentivising them to create more. A feature also allows you to pick which angle you like best. I’ve seen it and it sort of blows you away.
Founders: Eldad Bercovici, Elad GarianyAppsFlyer
A Mobile Apps Marketing platform that helps App-Developers, Brands and Adagencies to track and optimize their user’s acquisition funnel. In plain English, this is a analytics for mobile app advertising networks for an app publisher to work out which networks they are getting their best responses from.
Founders: Oren Kaniel, Reshef MannTwtrland
Founded by four brothers and with 500k monthly users, Twtrland analyses Twitter profiles for influence on topics. Check out your profile and you may be surprised.
Founders: Eytan Avigdor, Noam Avigdor, Guy Avigdor, Lavi AvigdorRotaryView
RotaryView lets you take 2D photos of an object and turn them into a 360° / 3D image. This helps online vendors grow more quickly. You just shoot and upload the photos.
Founders: Gev Rotem, Ofir Shefer, Gal RotemStevie – Stealth mode company
WebTalk – Stealth modeDisclosure: Travel costs to Israel were met by Microsoft
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Xamarin Ships New Designer for Android Apps
14 MayeWeek
Xamarin has delivered, Xamarin Designer for Android, a new tool for designing Android apps within Microsoft's Visual Studio or the Xamarin IDE. - Xamarin, a provider of software development tools for building cross-platform apps, announced the availability of Xamarin Designer for Android.The Xamarin Designer for Android provides a drag-and-drop visual environment to create native user interfaces for Android apps from within Microsofts Visua... -
Documents To Go: Terrific Office App For Android
14 MayInformationWeek
Documents To Go is a workhorse app on my Android tablet. I use it for note taking during meetings as well as reviewing text documents and spreadsheets. It can open and edit Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files without conversion and is faster and more flexible than the free Google Docs for Android app.
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Why Microsoft Is Being Left in the Dust
11 MayMashable!
Alex Goldfayn’s new book is called Evangelist Marketing: What Apple Amazon and Netflix Understand About Their Customers (That Your Company Probably Doesn’t). He is CEO of the Evangelist Marketing Institute, a marketing consultancy with clients that include T-Mobile, TiVo, and Logitech. Follow him @alexgoldfayn.
There are now a number of companies — Apple, Google, Amazon, and others — that have Microsoft in their rear-view mirrors, disappearing quickly on the horizon in a cloud of dust.
That kick of dust in the company’s face is being emitted by Apple’s iPhone and iPad, Amazon’s Kindle, and Google’s search and cloud domination. Microsoft’s own wild lunges into various technology segments are also contributing considerably to it being left behind. Take the company’s recent acquisition of 18% of the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader for $605 million in cash and future guarantees. This was a move to compete with Amazon, but can it really compete?
If you want to know why Microsoft’s share price has been flat for 11 years while Apple, Amazon, and Google shares have soared, this is why. Microsoft is not innovating aggressively. It is not leading categories or blazing trails. No, it’s acquiring aggressively as a shortcut to innovation. That isn’t working. Its own history suggests as much.
Microsoft Has Not Capitalized on its Partnerships and Acquisitions
Last year, Microsoft announced a broad strategic partnership with Nokia, presumably to use Windows operating systems and software on Nokia’s smartphones. This was 15 months ago. But last week, a report found that Apple and Samsung generated 99 percent of the profits in the mobile phone category. Nokia, which once enjoyed more than half of all mobile phone profits, made zero.
In 2009, Microsoft acquired a 10-year license to use Yahoo’s core search technology, which later became the Bing search engine. Today, Google’s search market share is a dominant 66%, with Microsoft’s Bing a very distant second at 15%. After spending billions building and marketing Bing, Microsoft is barely visible in Google’s rear-view mirror.
Finally, what of Microsoft’s Skype acquisition a year ago? It’s too early to tell, but here’s a fact worth noting: The Wall Street Journal reports that 85% of Microsoft’s revenue comes from Windows and Office software. The rest of it? Barely a blip.
And so, Microsoft is proving, like many have before it, that acquiring companies outside your core competencies are recipes for failure. Remember when Cisco purchased the Flip video camera, at the time one of the most popular consumer electronics products on the planet? How did that work out? In 2010, HP bought Palm for $1.2 billion, but we haven’t seen any industry-altering smartphones from HP.
Conversely, consider Apple’s acquisition of Siri: a technology that immediately and profoundly complimented and enhanced its iPhone. It fit obviously and very successfully.
Microsoft Does Not Need to Compete with Amazon
Another major problem with Microsoft’s acquisition of the Nook is that there is simply no need for it to compete with Amazon. This is like Best Buy focusing all of its efforts on its ecommerce site while neglecting its one major competitive advantage: its brick-and-mortar stores. This is also like Research in Motion spending a year building its atrociously received tablet, the PlayBook, while neglecting its core competency of Blackberry smartphones.
Microsoft dominates the competition in computer operating systems and software. Computers are dying, right? And yet, in May 2012, there is no Microsoft Office for tablets and smartphones. Millions of iPads and Android tablets are being adopted in corporate environments, and most of those customers would be happy to spend $70 on Microsoft Office for each device. Except, it does not exist.
I can only guess why: because with its many categories, acquisitions and partnerships, Microsoft is physically incapable of putting its full focus behind converting its desktop products to mobile devices.
Microsoft is Going Wide, Not Deep
Which brings me to the third and final big problem with Microsoft’s Nook play. It is keeping with the strategy of going as wide as possible. Microsoft is not, and cannot be, all things to all people. In fact, no company can.
Here’s the truth: The wider you go, the more priorities you focus on, the less chance you have to be successful. But when you go deep, you can dominate. (See Apple, and Amazon.) When you go deep, you can continue perfecting. You become the world’s expert on a certain specialty. Apple is seen as the world’s expert on smartphones and tablets. Amazon is the accepted leader in online shopping and electronic reading. It’s because these two companies relentlessly focus on their strengths, saying no to nearly everything else. No. That’s a word Microsoft should consider trying out before it gets left in the dust permanently.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, JasonDoiy
More About: apple, contributor, features, Google, microsoft, trending
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Google and Microsoft–the parallels
10 MayThe Equity Kicker
GigaOM yesterday published an article about How Google is growing up into a real IT company, which talks about how the world’s favourite search engine has switched from releasing lots of ‘science project’ applications like Google Wave and Google Knol, and Google Questions to a fewer number of well thought through and solidly engineered products like Google Drive, and BigQuery.
There are lots of good reasons why Google is making this shift, the most important and obvious of which is the need to focus on a smaller number of things and make them work. The second most important, is maybe less obvious, and that is a desire to strengthen the enterprise side of their business, and this is what made me think about Microsoft.
As I see it the parallels are:
- Both started with a fantastic monopoly business – Microsoft Windows and Google Search
- Both expanded successfully into adjacent areas which leveraged and protected their monopolies – Microsoft Office and Google’s Android
- Both ran into trouble with regulators for abusing their monopoly position to advance their other products – Microsoft with IE and MediaPlayer and Google for using individual’s search data in their other products
- Both were blindsided by a major market evolution which undermines their core franchise – Microsoft by the internet (espescially Google) and Google by social (especially Facebook)
- Both have sought to reduce their dependence on their threatened monopolies by moving into the enterprise
Google has probably been 6-7 years behind Microsoft in each of these steps and 6-7 years ago Microsoft looked about as strong as Google does today. Hopefully Google will hold its current position more effectively than Microsoft was able to.
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Google planning Game Center competitor for Android
10 MaySlashGear
Apple fans have enjoyed the Game Center in iOS for about a year and a half, and it’s only cemented Apple’s lead on Android in the mobile gaming market. According to Business Insider, Google is planning to even the score with its own centralized gaming network for Android some time soon. The source is anonymous, so take the news with a grain of salt, but it would certainly be a boon to Android’s game developers.
There are already a number of social gaming platforms for Android, the most popular of which is OpenFeint. All of them (including Apple’s Game Center, to be fair) build on the features first introduced by Microsoft in its Xbox Live online platform, with handles, multiplayer chat and achievements. But since social gaming on Android is currently decentralized, it’s nowhere near as popular as it is on iOS. The most visible examples tend to be achievements and the like posted to Twitter and Facebook.
Google is working hard at integrating its Android and media interests – the revamped Google Play Store combines Android apps, music, movies and books, at least in the US. Adding a more robust gaming network makes a lot of sense, considering that about a quarter of the tens of billions of apps downloaded from the Android Market and Google Plus Store thus far have been games. If Google indeed intends to create a gaming network this year, we’d be more likely to see it at Google IO in June than anywhere else.
Story Timeline
Google planning Game Center competitor for Android is written by Michael Crider & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved. -
Microsoft courting Facebook for Windows Phone says insider
10 MaySlashGear
Microsoft is considering courting Facebook to use Windows Phone as the basis of the oft-rumored Facebook Phone, according to insider whispers, using the fact that it isn’t Google as a key selling point. Although recent leaks have suggested Facebook intends to use a significantly reworked version of Android as the basis for its own-brand handset, Business Insider‘s source claims Microsoft believes development is not yet so far advanced as to prevent it from scooping the social site’s business with a well-played Windows Phone push.
According to the source, Microsoft intends to play up the simple fact that it’s not Google as a key reason why Facebook should opt for Windows Phone not Android. While on the face of it that may seem childish, the fact that Google has a rival social network – in the shape of Google+ – whereas Microsoft has generally sat out of the social scene could play in its favor.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is also tipped to be emphasizing heavily its track record in building devices and its existing OEM relationships, as well as Windows Phone’s existing distribution channels. That’s also one of the reasons Facebook’s rumored first attempt at a social phone failed, because Zuckerberg & Co. underestimated quite how difficult piecing all the elements together could be. Rumors last month suggested Facebook was working with HTC – which makes both Windows Phone and Android devices – on a device for release in Q3 2012.
For Microsoft, it would be a big name using its smartphone OS – though it would be heavily rebranded and skinned, it’s suggested, such as “The Facebook Phone, powered by Windows” – and a shortcut into a system that could enable NFC mobile payments. Neither Microsoft nor Facebook would comment on the rumors, and with only one source it’s worth being skeptical still.
Exactly when this power play might happen is unclear; the insider says Microsoft is content to hang around until Facebook “gets serious” about mobile. With an IPO fast approaching, and Facebook struggling to monetize its mobile users, that time could arrive sooner rather than later.
Story Timeline
[via WPCentral]
Microsoft courting Facebook for Windows Phone says insider is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 - 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
