Tag: Windows RT

Windows Phone and Windows RT May Soon Be Free Of License Fees

The Verge is reporting that sources close to Microsoft have indicated the company is seriously considering making Windows Phone and Windows RT available to device manufacturers free of charge. Microsoft would most likely move to a free licensing model with the upcoming “Threshold” update, the next major Windows update rumoured to bring back the Start menu.

The majority of Windows revenue currently comes from licensing Windows 8 and Windows RT to OEMs. However, Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Nokia’s handset division virtually eliminated any significant Windows Phone licensing revenue, as the Finnish manufacturer was responsible for 80% of all Windows Phone shipments.

It is expected that Microsoft will try to make up for the revenue loss through apps and services, the company has experimented with running ads in Windows 8 apps so something along the same lines can be implemented in those operating systems as well. The aim is to combat Android, but it remains to be seen if free versions of its mobile operating systems will entice OEMs to develop more Windows Phone and Windows RT powered devices.

December 12, 2013
Microsoft to Launch Remote Desktop For Android and iOS Devices

Microsoft will launch the Windows Server 2012 R2, and will release its Remote Desktop app on Windows, Windows RT and OS X, but also on iOS and Android, probably by end of this month.

The press release further shows, with Windows Server 2012 R2 Microsoft is introducing the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, available for download in application stores later this month, to provide easy access to PCs and virtual desktops on a variety of devices and platforms, including Windows, Windows RT, iOS, OS X and Android. However, this is the first time Microsoft’s remote desktop is available for rival platforms, but having said that this could be a problem for current apps which perform the same function.

The remote desktop for the iOS version will support iOS 6 and 7, while the Android variant will support everything from Gingerbread upward. No information is available on the date of the release yet.

[toggle title=”Press Release “]Microsoft unleashes fall wave of enterprise cloud solutions
Oct. 07, 2013
New Windows Server, System Center, Visual Studio, Windows Azure, Windows Intune, SQL Server, and Dynamics solutions will accelerate cloud benefits for customers.

REDMOND, Wash. – Oct. 7, 2013 – Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a wave of new enterprise products and services to help companies seize the opportunities of cloud computing and overcome today’s top IT challenges. Complementing Office 365 and other services, these new offerings deliver on Microsoft’s enterprise cloud strategy.

Satya Nadella, Cloud and Enterprise executive vice president, said, “As enterprises move to the cloud they are going to bet on vendors that have best-in-class software as a service applications, operate a global public cloud that supports a broad ecosystem of third party services, and deliver multi-cloud mobility through true hybrid solutions. If you look across the vendor landscape, you can see that only Microsoft is truly delivering in all of those areas.” More comments from Nadella can be found on The Official Microsoft Blog.

Hybrid infrastructure and modern applications

To help customers build IT infrastructure that delivers continuous services and applications across clouds, on Oct. 18 Microsoft will release Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2. Together, these new products empower companies to create datacenters without boundaries using Hyper-V for high-scale virtualization; high-performance storage at dramatically lower costs; built-in, software-defined networking; and hybrid business continuity. The new Windows Azure Pack runs on top of Windows Server and System Center, enabling enterprises and service providers to deliver self-service infrastructure and platforms from their datacenters.

Building on these hybrid cloud platforms, customers can use Visual Studio 2013 and the new .NET 4.5.1, also available Oct. 18, to create modern applications for devices and services. As software development becomes pervasive within every company, the new Visual Studio 2013 Modern Lifecycle Management solution helps enable development teams, businesspeople and IT managers to build and deliver better applications, faster.

Enabling enterprise cloud adoption

Recognizing that most enterprises will take a hybrid approach to cloud, Microsoft wants to help customers utilize their investments in on-premises software solutions toward the adoption of cloud computing. On Nov. 1, Microsoft will offer Enterprise Agreement (EA) customers access to discounted Windows Azure prices, regardless of upfront commitment, without overuse penalties and with the flexibility of annual payments.

As another part of this effort to reduce cloud adoption barriers, Microsoft on Monday announced a strategic partnership with Equinix Inc. Building on recently announced partnerships with AT&T and others, this alliance will provide customers with even more options for private and fast connections to the cloud. Customers will be able to connect their networks with Windows Azure at Equinix exchange locations for greater throughput, availability and security features.

Governments are among the most demanding enterprise customers. To help U.S. federal, state and local government agencies realize the benefits of public cloud computing, Microsoft is introducing its Windows Azure US Government Cloud. This will offer U.S. government customers a dedicated community cloud for data, applications and infrastructure, hosted in the continental U.S. and managed by U.S. personnel. Windows Azure has been granted FedRAMP Joint Authorization Board Provisional Authority to Operate, making it the first public cloud of its kind to achieve this level of government authorization.

Data platform and insights

As part of its vision to help more people unlock actionable insights from big data, Microsoft next week will release a second preview of SQL Server 2014. The new version offers industry-leading in-memory technologies at no additional cost, giving customers 10 times to 30 times performance improvements without application rewrites or new hardware. SQL Server 2014 also works with Windows Azure to give customers built-in cloud backup and disaster recovery.

For big data analytics, later this month Microsoft will release Windows Azure HDInsight Service, an Apache Hadoop-based service that works with SQL Server and widely used business intelligence tools, such as Microsoft Excel and Power BI for Office 365. With Power BI, people can combine private and public data in the cloud for rich visualizations and fast insights.

People and devices in the cloud

The proliferation of cloud applications, data and consumer devices is moving many enterprises to a bring-your-own-device model. The new release of Windows Intune, also available Oct. 18, combines with System Center Configuration Manager to help IT departments give mobile employees security-enhanced access to the applications and data they need on the Windows, iOS and Android devices of their choice. This unified management environment for PCs and mobile devices complements the new access and information protection capabilities in Windows Server 2012 R2.

Further, with Windows Server 2012 R2 Microsoft is introducing the Microsoft Remote Desktop app, available for download in application stores later this month, to provide easy access to PCs and virtual desktops on a variety of devices and platforms, including Windows, Windows RT, iOS, OS X and Android.

Software as a service business solutions

The next major version of the company’s CRM solution, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall ’13 will be available later this month, helping make customer interactions more personal via contextual information for deeper insights than the previous version, delivered on a variety of devices.* The on-premises version is expected to be available later in the fall for deployment either in-house or hosted by a partner. More information is available here. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 R2 is now available, offering small and midsize businesses interoperability with Office 365, full multitenant support, and a range of tools designed to support large-scale hosting of the application on Windows Azure.

More information on Monday’s announcements can be found at the Microsoft News Center.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

* Devices include Windows 8 tablets and iPad tablets with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013; Windows Phone 8, iPhone and Android phone shortly following the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013.[/toggle]

October 9, 2013
Specs And Images Of Rumoured Nokia Windows RT Tablet Leak, Will Launch In September

Windows RT may not have been the belle of the ball Microsoft wished for, and many OEMs are shying away from releasing a tablet with the ARM-compatible OS, but that doesn’t mean it’s dead.

Microsoft itself is rumoured to be launching a second-generation Surface RT in the coming months, having recently discounted the initial version to $349, and Nokia, Microsoft’s only true OEM partner these days, is also planning to release a Windows RT-powered tablet.

Nokia’s rumoured Windows RT tablet was leaked by Chinese site Digwo, and shows off a matte red backing, complete with Verizon 4G LTE logo. Nokia is expected to debut the tablet at a special event on September 26th, and has apparently been drumming up developer support in the process.

The back also says “Windows RT” on it, which is either a good sign that the tablet’s running Microsoft’s operating system for ARM devices or that someone really wants us to think this is a Nokia tablet running Windows RT.

While the photo doesn’t offer any detailed specs, it certainly looks about the right size for a tablet with a 10 inch display.

If earlier leaks are anything to go by, it’s likely that the tablet will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor and feature a 1920 x 1080 pixel display.

It is interesting to note that Nokia believes the Windows RT platform has a future, after Microsoft itself failed to make a dent in the market with its Surface RT tablet, taking a $900 million charge for “inventory adjustments” for the tablet in its last quarterly earnings.

[Via]

August 16, 2013
Asus Pulls Out Of Windows RT Devices

Asus says it will no longer make systems that run the Windows RT operating system, while Nvidia implies the OS’ problems hurt Tegra sales.

ASUS CEO Jerry Shen spoke with the WSJ citing the reason for the company’s dropping of Windows RT is due to “weak sales” as well as “industry sentiment… that Windows RT has not been successful.” Windows RT getting the boot means ASUS is now able to focus solely on creating Windows 8 devices that will run on Intel chips due to the backwards compatibility that Windows RT lacks.

Shen told the WSJ that Asus is not the only device-maker to have been disappointed with the not-too-heartening response to Windows RT; and added that “the industry sentiment is also that Windows RT has not been successful.”

Windows RT, launched at the same time as Windows 8, is designed to work on ARM-based devices from the likes of Qualcomm and Nvidia and is a pared-down version of Windows 8. Stripping out the desktop and designed for tablets, its biggest problem is that in switching to ARM it had to drop support for many of the software apps people have come to expect from a Microsoft PC.

Microsoft slashed prices for the Surface RT last month due to an inability to move units and wound up taking a $900 million “inventory adjustment” charge associated with the Surface RT in its last fiscal quarter.

As far as Nvidia’s decision is concerned, the chip-maker’s executives have indirectly blamed the lower-than-anticipated sales of Windows RT devices for the precipitous plunge in the company’s revenue from its Tegra chip business.

[Via]

August 10, 2013
Windows Store Hits 50,000 Apps

According to an unofficial tally by the site MetroStore Scanner, Microsoft has pushed past 50,000 total apps within the Windows Store.

The service also noted that there has been a large decline in new submissions since November of last year, with averages dropping from 400 to 150 in February before seeing an uptick to 200 in March.

It is unclear whether Microsoft’s new rewards program has helped in the growth. The company began offering developers $100 per app for new published apps submitted to either the Windows Phone Store or the Windows 8 Store before June 30th. Each developer can qualify for up to 10 apps per store, for a net total of $2000 in bonuses. All apps must meet standard certification requirements, and the app must do more than just launch a web page. Additionally, you cannot clone existing published apps.

The offers runs until June 30 but is exclusive to those living in the US.

As TechCrunch’s Matt Burns notes, it’s difficult to compare the growth of apps in the Microsoft Store versus rival Apple, which lists approximately 13,000 total apps or so in its Mac App Store as of this article’s writing, as there is a huge difference in the quality of apps available for the 2 OSs.

While this is good news for Windows 8 PC users, it’s not so great for Windows RT tablet users considering the iPad has 376,000 dedicated applications.

With that in mind there’s still plenty of work for Microsoft to do, but signs are more encouraging.

[Via TechCrunch]

March 24, 2013
Nvidia CEO : Windows RT Is Disappointing

Add Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang to the list of people disappointed with the debut of Windows RT.

[pullquote_left] “We expected to have sold more than we did,” he said Tuesday. “I think everybody expected to have sold more than we did.” [/pullquote_left]

Huang was speaking to financial analysts on the sidelines of Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California.

That “everybody” includes companies like Samsung, which launched the Ativ Tab with Windows RT, then canceled its future Windows RT tablet plans.

Toshiba pulled out from Windows RT production before it even released a single RT device.

Meanwhile, next to the Microsoft Surface RT, the Asus Vivo Tab RT,Lenovo Ideapad Yoga, and Dell XPS 10 have been hanging in there.

Windows RT is a version of Windows 8 for Arm-based chips like Nvidia’s Tegra processors. Traditional versions of Windows are written to run on Intel and compatible chips, but they won’t run on Arm processors. With Arm becoming so popular in tablet computers, Microsoft developed Windows RT to match Android.

While Huang’s comments on Windows RT’s current lack of success were to be expected, he then surprised the analysts by his pleas for Microsoft to launch an Outlook client that would run on Windows RT. In fact, he flat out said he has been praying to the “Outlook God” to make this happen.

He stated that if Outlook for Windows RT were released, “It would make my life complete. My life would be complete. I don’t know about you guys but I would need nothing else. I am one Outlook away from computing nirvana and I just hoping he is listening now. Outlook God, please.”

At the moment, the only Microsoft mail client for Windows RT is the Mail Modern app.

March 21, 2013