Microsoft lower on Nokia report (AFP)

NEW YORK (AFP) – Microsoft shares were down nearly two percent on Wall Street on Wednesday amid an unconfirmed report that the US software giant had agreed to purchase Nokia's mobile business for $19 billion.

Microsoft shares were 1.92 percent lower at $24.53 in early afternoon trading in a market that was down overall.

The website Boy Genius, or BGR.com, reported on Wednesday that according to industry insider Eldar Murtazin, Microsoft has struck a deal to purchase Nokia's mobile phone business for $19 billion, a claim dismissed by a Nokia spokesperson.

"Eldar's rumors are getting obviously less accurate with every passing moment," the Nokia spokesperson told the site.

Asked about the report by AFP, a Microsoft spokesman said "Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation."

Nokia shares fell 17.5 percent on Tuesday after the world's top mobile phone maker sharply downgraded its second quarter outlook. They were down another 10 percent at one point on Wednesday, falling to their lowest level since 1998.

While it remains the world leader, Nokia has in recent years seen its global market share dwindle amid tougher competition in the high-end smartphone sector.

In September, Nokia hired former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop to be chief executive of the Finnish company. In February, Nokia announced it was abandoning its smartphone platform to adopt Microsoft's mobile operating system.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Microsoft CEO ouster sought (Investor's Business Daily)

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn called on Steve Ballmer to quit, saying he's stuck in the past and is holding back Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT - News). But the software giant's board, which includes founder and Chairman Bill Gates, backs Ballmer, a source told Reuters. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL - News) and IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) have topped Microsoft's market cap and its search and mobile tech efforts have struggled. Shares rose 1.9%.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Microsoft unveils Windows Phone update 'Mango' (AFP)

NEW YORK (AFP) – Microsoft unveiled the latest version of its mobile phone software and new handset partners on Tuesday as it seeks to claw back market share from Apple and Google.

The Redmond, Washington-based personal computer software powerhouse said the update to its Windows Phone operating system, code-named "Mango," features over 500 new features and faster browsing with Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).

Microsoft said Mango will be available for free to existing Windows Phone 7 customers and will ship on new phones this fall from Samsung, LG and HTC and new partners Acer, Fujitsu and ZTE.

Microsoft said it is also working on a Mango handset in its labs with new partner Nokia, the Finnish mobile phone titan which announced in February it would begin using Microsoft's platform as its smartphone operating system.

Mango comes seven months after the release of the first smartphones running Windows Phone 7, which were well received by industry analysts but failed to catch on with the public.

When Mango-powered phones do eventually hit stores this fall they'll likely be facing competition from a new iPhone from Apple and the latest versions of handsets running Google's Android software.

"Today is a bit of a preemptive strike by Microsoft," said Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg.

"From the technology point of view it looks very, very good," Gartenberg told AFP. "But it's not solely about the technology. It's about who can educate and evangelize the customer better."

Gartenberg and Forrester analyst Charles Golvin said Microsoft's smartphone rivals already offer a lot of the features introduced on Tuesday.

"The Mango update contains a mixture of new capabilities that provide some differentiation for Microsoft's platform, but many of the touted additions are merely keeping pace with the competition," Golvin said.

"These improvements continue to reinforce the viability of the platform, as does the Nokia deal," he said. "However it will be challenging for their manufacturer and operator partners to differentiate their Windows Phone 7 products based solely on these improvements."

Andy Lees, president of Microsoft's Mobile Communications, who presented Mango to reporters at a preview event in New York, said the objective is to "make smartphones smarter and easier for people to do more."

Mango can show multiple email accounts in a linked inbox and is also capable of displaying the thread of a conversation -- whether it be by text, Facebook chat or Windows Live Messenger -- in a single window.

"(Mango) organizes information around the person or group people want to interact with, not the app they have to use," Microsoft said.

Mango emphasizes social networking by integrating Twitter and LinkedIn feeds and features the latest innovations from Microsoft's search engine Bing.

A Bing search for a movie, for example, will show movie times and theater locations and the option to connect to a Fandango application to purchase a ticket.

Microsoft provided a display of the speed of Web browser IE9 by comparing the time it took to load a Web page on a Mango device, on a BlackBerry from Research In Motion, on an iPhone 4 and on an Android device from HTC.

Unsurprisingly, Mango won.

As Microsoft seeks to increase its market share, the company said Mango will support additional languages including Chinese, Dutch, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese and Russian.

According to Gartner, Android will power nearly half of the smartphones worldwide by the end of next year with a 49.2 percent market share.

The market share for the iPhone's was forecast to remain relatively stable at 18.9 percent in 2012.

Windows will account for 5.6 percent of the smartphone market at the end of 2011 but will rise to 10.8 percent in 2012, according to Gartner.

Microsoft shares closed virtually unchanged on Wall Street on Tuesday at $24.15.

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Microsoft to update Windows Phone software (AP)

NEW YORK – Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday that it plans a major upgrade to its Windows Phone software this fall, ahead of the launch of the first Nokia phones to use it.

The revamped software contains a new, faster Web browser and allows users to switch quickly between applications, using a "card" display similar to the one in Hewlett-Packard Co.'s webOS software, which it bought along with Palm Inc.

Microsoft said the software, codenamed "Mango," will be available as a downloadable update for all Windows Phones sold until then.

Finland's Nokia Corp., the world's biggest maker of phones, announced in February that it would adopt Windows Phone and toss out its current smartphone software. Microsoft is paying it billions of dollars to do so, as it's trying to buy into a market now dominated by Apple Inc. and Google Inc.'s Android software.

Microsoft launched Windows Phone in November, but it ran only 1.6 percent of the smartphones sold worldwide in the first quarter, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

"Mango" contains more than 500 changes, Microsoft said, including integration of Facebook Chat into conversations that can also include text messages from the same person. Overall, the update is aimed at reducing the reliance on separate third-party apps and baking in as much as possible of their functionality in the operating system.

Ovum analyst Tony Cripps said the new update looks worthwhile, but may not be enough, considering the opposition.

"Microsoft needs to do better if it is to persuade the market that it has the most user friendly — and desirable — mobile platform in the market today," Cripps said.

Microsoft said three more manufacturers would make Windows phones: Acer of Taiwan, Fujitsu of Japan and ZTE of China. ZTE is little-known outside China, but is the world's sixth-largest phone maker, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

___

Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Strong PlayBook Sales Threaten Tablet-Less Microsoft (NewsFactor)

RBC said Wednesday that Research In Motion appears to have sold approximately 250,000 PlayBook tablets in the first month of availability, with the BlackBerry maker on track to sell 500,000 PlayBooks by the end of the current quarter. If the financial firm's estimates are accurate, it would suggest that RIM has been successful in leveraging the widespread enterprise presence of its BlackBerry smartphones -- and to a higher degree that anyone expected.

The RBC forecast is also surprising given the mixed reviews the PlayBook received last month, in part because the Playbook is expressly designed to function in tandem with a BlackBerry handset. If RIM's dual-device strategy is succeeding, it raises questions about the extent to which Microsoft can recover the mobile-market share it lost in recent years without launching its own tablet platform.

Gartner analysts strongly believe there is a tight link between smartphones and tablets in the minds of users. "They want a similar experience, a tight ecosystem and applications and content that run across devices," explained Gartner Research Vice President Carolina Milanesi. So Microsoft and Nokia "need a tablet strategy sooner rather than later," she said.

A Strategic Mistake

Microsoft's current focus is on bringing enterprise-class capabilities to its next-generation Windows Phone 7 mobile platform, and a tablet platform is not expected anytime soon. But Milanesi believes that waiting for Windows 8 may be a strategic mistake.

It may be too late for Microsoft "to catch up with competitors and allow Windows Phone 7 to grow -- not just in the enterprise but also in the consumer space in the high end, where users will be looking for that link," Milanesi explained. "As with any new products, I think we should wait and see what RIM does next quarter. Even Motorola sold a similar amount of Xoom [tablets] to start."

However, other wireless analysts believe Microsoft still has time to establish a strong tablet presence.

"Right now, in terms of sheer volume, between the two device types smartphones easily have the lion's share of the installed mobile-device base," noted Lisa Pierce, an independent wireless analyst with the Strategic Networks Group. "Tablets are complementary to smartphones, not competitive," as opposed to the "growing degree of cannibalization between tablets and notebooks/laptops."

Time To Catch Up

What Microsoft needs to do is really bring the full weight of the PC ecosystem into the tablet world, noted Al Hilwa, director of applications software development at IDC. "That can be done with the right changes to Windows and its programming model to make sure that it accommodates touch apps better," Hilwa said. "We are really in the early stages [and] I don't blame Microsoft for taking its time to get [its mobile-platform] formula right."

Pierce also believes Microsoft still has plenty of time to launch a worthy mobile OS rival that can compete with the tablet platforms launched by Apple and RIM. "In the future, I fully expect Microsoft will release a platform for tablets that has business features, with a very high degree of interworking between Mango and the future tablet platform," Pierce said.

Still, Apple continues to command the lion's share of tablet sales and is expected to blow away the competition this year and beyond. Piper Jaffray, for example, is currently pegging Apple's sales "at seven million iPads in the June 2011 quarter and 31.7 million in calendar year 2011."

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.

Microsoft: One in 14 Downloads Is Malicious (PC World)

The next time a website says to download new software to view a movie or fix a problem, think twice. There's a pretty good chance that the program is malicious.

In fact, about one out of every 14 programs downloaded by Windows users turns out to be malicious, Microsoft said Tuesday. And even though Microsoft has a feature in its Internet Explorer browser designed to steer users away from unknown and potentially untrustworthy software, about 5 percent of users ignore the warnings and download malicious Trojan horse programs anyway.

Five years ago, it was pretty easy for criminals to sneak their code onto computers. There were plenty of browser bugs, and many users weren't very good at patching. But since then, the cat-and-mouse game of Internet security has evolved: Browsers have become more secure, and software makers can quickly and automatically push out patches when there's a known problem.

So increasingly, instead of hacking the browsers themselves, the bad guys try to hack the people using them. It's called social engineering, and it's a big problem these days. "The attackers have figured out that it's not that hard to get users to download Trojans," said Alex Stamos, a founding partner with Isec Partners, a security consultancy that's often called in to clean up the mess after companies have been hacked.

Social engineering is how the Koobface virus spreads on Facebook. Users get a message from a friend telling them to go and view a video. When they click on the link, they're then told that they need to download some sort of video playing software in order to watch. That software is actually a malicious program.

Social-engineering hackers also try to infect victims by hacking into Web pages and popping up fake antivirus warnings designed to look like messages from the operating system. Download these and you're infected. The criminals also use spam to send Trojans, and they will trick search engines into linking to malicious websites that look like they have interesting stories or video about hot news such as the royal wedding or the death of Osama bin Laden.

"The attackers are very opportunistic, and they latch onto any event that might be used to lure people," said Joshua Talbot, a manager with Symantec Security Response. When Symantec tracked the 50 most common malicious programs last year, it found that 56 percent of all attacks included Trojan horse programs.

In enterprises, a social-engineering technique called spearphishing is a serious problem. In spearphishing, the criminals take the time to figure out who they're attacking, and then they create a specially crafted program or a maliciously encoded document that the victim is likely to want to open -- materials from a conference they've attended or a planning document from an organization that they do business with.

With its new SmartScreen Filter Application Reputation screening, introduced in IE 9, Internet Explorer provides a first line of defense against Trojan horse programs, including Trojans sent in spearphishing attacks.

IE also warns users when they're being tricked into visiting malicious websites, another way that social-engineering hackers can infect computer users. In the past two years, IE's SmartScreen has blocked more than 1.5 billion Web and download attacks, according to Jeb Haber, program manager lead for SmartScreen.

Haber agreed that better browser protection is pushing the criminals into social engineering, especially over the past two years. "You're just seeing an explosion in direct attacks on users with social engineering," he said. "We were really surprised by the volumes. The volumes have been crazy."

When the SmartScreen warning pops up to tell users that they're about to run a potentially harmful program, the odds are between 25 percent and 70 percent that the program will actually be malicious, Haber said. A typical user will only see a couple of these warnings each year, so it's best to take them very seriously.

Robert McMillan covers computer security and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Robert on Twitter at @bobmcmillan. Robert's e-mail address is robert_mcmillan@idg.com

Yahoo! News

This post was made using the Auto Blogging Software from WebMagnates.org This line will not appear when posts are made after activating the software to full version.