Perhaps users of Windows Phone devices don’t understand that the “marketplace” is where you go to buy apps? For some inexplicable reason, Microsoft is appearing going through the process of rebranding its Windows Phone Marketplace into Windows Phone Store. I guess this is falling in line with what Google did too, shifting from an Android Market to a Google Play Store too.

It’s also possible that this is simply Microsoft’s latest attempt to bring everything under the same over-arching umbrella, which is fundamentally the same thing that they’ve started doing with certain Xbox, Zune and Windows-branded offerings. After all, there is a “Windows Store” that’ll come along with Windows 8… but this is still the Windows Phone Store, so it’s not like the two are intricately intertwined either.

At this point, Microsoft is neither confirming nor denying the name change, but the “Windows Phone Store” naming scheme has started to appear in a few places, like on the Windows Phone Dev Center where it says you can “create great apps and add them to the Windows Phone Store for the world to see, try, and buy.”

[Source]

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Remember in the 1990s and early into 2000s when Nokia was riding high? It was at the top of the mobile phone world, selling more devices than any other company. Then, something changed and somehow we find ourselves here today with Nokia revealing an operating loss of 826 million Euro. That’s right around $1 billion US. What happened?

Well, the good news is that the operating loss is offset by licensing royalties and a regular cheque from Microsoft, getting them to a net cash rise of 102 million Euro (about US$125 million). You have to keep in mind, though, that Nokia enjoyed an operating profit of 344 million Euro just one year earlier. To make matters worse, Nokia announced its Q2 results today and it’s nothing but gloom; only 4 million Lumia’s sold worldwide, and 600,000 handsets sold in the USA.

You know Nokia was once the number one cell phone company in the world? It lost that throne too. Samsung now sells more mobile phones than its Finnish competitor. Nokia is also losing on the low-end from other competitors, mostly in emerging markets. Back in 2007, Nokia had a 40.4% market share. That dropped to 27% last year and 21% in the first quarter of this year. It’s a slow and painful bleed.

It’s not like Nokia isn’t trying to innovate. It has spent $40 billion in R&D–roughly four times what Apple has spent–in the last decade working on new devices, but there’s a problem. Many of these never made it past R&D. Frank Nuovo is a former designer at Nokia and he already envisioned a smartphone with a color touchscreen above a single button seven years before the iPhone. In the late 90s, Nokia also had an iPad-esque tablet in the works that never materialized. As Nuovo put it, “We had it completely nailed.” The company culture encouraged research, “but squandered opportunities to bring the innovations it produced to market.”

Yes, Nokia spent a lot of money on innovation, but it didn’t really produce “winning devices or software.” Instead, it now has at least two abandoned operating systems and a bunch of patents. In fact, the patents, worth about $6 billion, are said to make up the bulk of Nokia’s overall value. Even Stephen Elop agrees that if they had “been landed in products…I think Nokia would have been in a different place.” They spent too much time selling to the low-end and not enough time pushing the higher-end devices to market. And the iPhone arrived and gobbled it all up.

[Source]

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So, why does the Remote Device Access matter to us today? As it turns out, Nokia has listed no fewer than six yet unannounced cell phones on that service and developers can presumably book some time with them. Well, they can book some remote access time with them. The six devices are the Nokia 510, Nokia Belle 805, Nokia Lumia 910, Nokia Lumia 920, Nokia Lumia 950, and Nokia Lumia 1001.

Now, we know nothing except for the model names, but the names should give us some indication as to what to expect. The Nokia 510, for instance, is likely a budget-level Symbian-powered successor to the Nokia 500. The Nokia Belle 805 could be a cheaper, lower-spec’d version of the Nokia 808 PureView. All of the Lumia devices will likely be powered by Windows Phone 8 and hopefully not just WP7.5. The larger number of the Lumia 1001 may point toward a Windows tablet, but that’s little more than conjecture at this point.

[Nokia]

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While HTC has plans to release their newly unveiled S4 powered One S (T-Mobile) and One X (AT&T version) within the next two months, Microsoft is reportedly busy testing a Windows Phone 8 smartphone, which is intended for Sprint’s network, with the dual-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm MSM8960 chipset. The new info comes to us courtesy of the folks over at The Verge who were apparently tipped off by “sources familiar with the company’s plans”.

According to The Verge, at least one Windows Phone 8 handset will arrive later this year and the company is hoping that their device will exhibit impressive performance with the chip onboard as the S4 has been proven to be better than Samsung’s Galaxy S II (Exynos) and Motorola’s Droid 4 (TI OMAP) via many tests.

Reportedly, Sprint is interested in a Windows Phone 8 handset equipped with the chip and won’t be launching any new Windows phones before the introduction of WP8. The carrier has also contacted Nokia for sharing their LTE specifications.

But it is not known whether Microsoft will be checking out the quad-core Tegra 3 processor on the global version of the HTC One X. Although Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 has done remarkably well on previous tests, the latest benchmarks of the HTC One series show that the Tegra 3 is on par with S4 in processing power, and it actually is better when it comes to graphics performance.

The idea of multi-core processor support for future Windows Phones can never be pushed aside after this leak. And Qualcomm, when asked about the possibility of Windows Phone S4 devices, gave out answers that suggest they know about Microsoft’s tests.

We will keep you updated on the matter, so stay tuned.

The post Windows Phone 8 Dual-Core Smartphone For Sprint Being Tested? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Windows Phone as an OS certainly doesn’t lead the pack, at a party there’s usually one guy with a Windows Phone while everyone else is on Android or iOS.  And this is due to the fact that it is often considered to be lagging behind in features and release time. With the new touch-friendly Windows 8 on its way later this year, Microsoft will try its hardest again to “catch up” and surpass the competition.  It is imperative that Windows Phone 8 becomes something more than a release to bring them up to “the bar,” because well, that’s all Microsoft has done in the past.  And if its future tablet and smartphone initiatives dream of becoming a staple gadget in someones hand, they’re simply going to have to do more.

“I am very excited to hear that Microsoft is making a strong push to catch up to the iOS and Android platforms,” Sina Mobasser, co-founder of iOS and Windows Phone app BarMax said. “But while the specs that were leaked are certainly appetizing, they will not be enough.” Mobasser thinks Microsoft is still “holding a lot of cards close to its chest,” and we have to agree.

Just last week we talked about a leak regarding Windows Phone Apollo, today we are going to try hard to answer another big question:
How does Apollo stack up against Android (or even iOS)? Are it’s new features enough to draw new users in?

Hardware Options

First off, unlike the current iteration of Windows Phone, Apollo will offer multi-core processors and expandable storage through microSD.

In comparison, iOS doesn’t have expandable microSD ports but certainly does do multi-core. As for Android, while they do both just fine, which essentially means this is one area where Microsoft simply ‘catches up’.

Mobile Payments

Apollo is set to use NFC technology to bring us mobile payments allowing you to simply swipe your phone onto a point-of-purchase RFID tag to buy coffee, consumables, and other awesome goods. This is very similar to what Google is attempting with its “Google Wallet” platform.  The big difference here is that Microsoft’s NFC system will play by carrier rules due to its ability to be directly controlled and branded by the carriers. So, at least in theory this trumps Android’s Wallet, and for now at least, even iOS has a no direct comparable ‘wallet’ feature.

Desktop Integration

There is one of the areas where Apollo is really going to shine: direct integration as a companion experience to the upcoming Windows 8 OS. It seems that Windows Phone 8 is actually switching out to the NT kernel (same core as standard Windows), and apps should easily be able to convert between both platforms, something that will make developers happy.

Additionally, both will have very similar interfaces and experiences, making WP feel more like an extension of our desktop/laptop world, and not something completely foreign.

Apps

It is no secret that both iOS and Android win here, Microsoft hopes that by the time Apollo arrives it has at least 100,000 apps in the market.

Data Management

Both Windows 8 and Apollo tout new features that supposedly are designed to make tracking your mobile usage much easier than in the past. Both have “DataSmart” as a live tile that breaks down your overall usage and automatically tries to go for WIFI whenever possible over cellular connections to data.  This seems to be an area that Android 4 has improved on quite a bit, so overall I’d say WP just plays catch up here.

Enterprise

Another area where Windows Phone could likey shine above the competition is in enterprise. WP8 will offer the same native BitLocker encryption that is found is Windows 8, meaning 128-bit, full-disk encryption. Additionally, companies will be allowed to create personalized, proprietary software for their employees with Windows Phone 8.

Overall

Windows Phone Apollo looks to finally play catch up in a lot of different areas that Apple and Google currently lead the pack on. Whether or not its enough to pull in users remains to be seen.

Either way, 2012 looks to be an interesting year for Windows and Microsoft.

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The post How Does Windows Phone 8 ‘Apollo’ Compare To Android And iOS? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

On the hardware front, insiders claim that Microsoft is taking things to the next level, adding support for multiple cores, NFC, and full microSD card storage. Apollo (WP8) will also support four different screen resolutions as well.

Probably the most exciting feature, though, is that developers will be able to use most of the same code when porting a Windows 8 app over to the Windows Phone platform. Combined with NFC radio, it should also become pretty easy in time to tap-to-share between WP and many W8 devices. Other new features included integrated Skype (about time!) and a live tile for data usage called “DataSmart”. It is also worth noting that Redmond has already estimated that by the time Apollo launches, the marketplace should have at least 100,000 apps in total. With Windows 8 just around the corner, is it possible Window Phone can finally see a wider adoption by smartphone users out there? All we can do for now is wait and see.

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