Displaying items by tag: Windows

"The future belongs to Android" says the director of Samsung, J.K. Shin in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, in which he complained that the market demand for tablets with Microsoft's Windows 8 and RT are very poor, and it apparently applies to mobile phones with WindowsPhone operating system as well.

It seems that the Nokia Lumia 920 is selling like crazy in China. Although it has been said that  the number of available devices based on Microsoft operating systems is relatively small, still orders for Windows Phones are not a normal occurance. That is until the Lumia 920.

Nokia is developing a tablet based on an ARM processor and Windows RT, according plans of the Finnish manufacturer. The device should be launched in early 2013, and will have a screen with a diagonal of 10.1 inches. This device should complement their Windows Phone line up and let them compete in a wider market (with companies like HTC and Samsung who will be making both devices as well).

These days the game makers at Rubicon have joined many disgruntled developers that are less than happy with the new Windows. Rubicon is saying they have spent more than $16,000 in porting their games to Windows 8, but then posted sales of only $84. However, that's not the situation with all software developers that have tried the new OS. One example is a company called Extended Results, which in a blog post stated that their business application PUSHBI going great.

Microsoft proudly unveiled Surface tablets during the launch of the new Windows, even though many said that the release of devices with a completely different processor architecture (ARM) was a very risky move. Although the team from Redmond repeatedly declared that they are satisfied with its initial sales, the two figures released so far appear at odds; Microsoft’s figure of 4 million tablets planned for the 4th quarter is now reduced to 2 million. Now a brokerage firm, Detwiler Fenton, that allocates brokerage ranks, said that Microsoft should be happy if they manage to sell 1 million tablets by the end of the year. Detwiler says that Microsoft has sold between 500 and 600 thousand units so far.

About a day ago we brought you good news about Steam sales and today we bring you more; especially if you are a Linux user. Valve has announced on their official website that they will drastically increase the number of beta testers for the Ubuntu Linux version of Steam's client. So far there are about 1000 Linux users that testing the platform which was launched with 12 Steam titles and the Big Picture mode, running on Ubuntu 12.04.

If Microsoft was hoping for Windows 8 to pour out of the stores like water they might be in for a big surprise. According to initial retail store estimates the sales of Windows 8, while better than Windows 7 during the same time frame, are not as good as Microsoft would have liked. Most analysts are showing stores meeting expectation in Windows 8 OS and hardware sales, but nothing extraordinary. What makes this very interesting is that many devices are out of stock including Microsoft’s ARM –Based Surface tablet. From a logistical standpoint this would not appear to make much sense unless these products were not seeded heavily.

The Windows 8 online store is growing bigger every day and so far they have reached a promising milestone. With all the Windows 8 devices coming out, it was just a matter of time before the apps accumulated; now they have 13,000 applications in their application store. In the past 8 days there was almost three thousand applications added, this means that it grew at a rate of 362 applications per day.

In San Francisco, a little after 10 o'clock local time, Microsoft began formally presenting Windows Phone 8. This is Microsoft’s new operating system for mobile devices which is a direct successor of Windows Phone 7, but also the link between Windows 8, Windows RT computers, and handheld devices. Although for now only three device manufacturers have reaffirmed their support for the new mobile OS (Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 820, HTC Windows Phone 8x and 8S and Samsung Galaxy S Ativ), for Microsoft this is the most important event of the year after they launched Windows 8 and their Surface RT tablets. In addition to the big three mentioned earlier, it is expected that Huawei will launch smartphones with WP8, presumably the Ascend W1 model, designed for the lower segment of the smartphone market. ZTE also plans to release their model next year.

If Microsoft was expecting a mass of people running out to buy Windows 8 devices or to suddenly feel the need to update their machines to Windows 8 they were let down after the launch. Although Microsoft and their partners were playing up Windows 8 and the new class of “touch first” products they failed to capture the markets imagination. Instead, like the Zune HD they have a nice array of positive reviews, but little sales to show for it. We spoke with a few retailers who have stated that Windows 8 interest was flat this weekend. Instead they had questions about if older Windows 7 based devices were going to go on sale soon now that new models were out.