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The long reigning king of the desktop OS is in trouble. Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, is rapidly steering the company into the back office and service spaces, while their nascent mobile and desktop platforms are crumbling around them. Microsoft is putting on a brave face continuing to heavily advertise the 2-in-1 Surface debacle, but Nadella is only buying time, as he must surely know that Apple and Google is the two-headed beast that Microsoft can not stop. In less than a decade, Microsoft will be associated with IBM or Oracle, not Apple or Google. Apple’s iOS is poised for...

24/7 Wall St. has created a new list of brands that will disappear, which includes Sears (NASDAQ:SHLD), Sony Pictures (NYSE:SNE), American Apparel (NYSE:APP), Nokia (NYSE:NOK), Saab, A&W All-American Foods Restaurants, Soap Opera Digest, Sony Ericsson, MySpace (NYSE:NWS.A), and Kellogg’s Corn Pops. (NYSE:K).Each year, 24/7 Wall St. regularly compiles a list of brands that are going to disappear in the near-term. Last year’s list proved to be prescient in many instances, predicting the demise of T-Mobile among others. In late May, AT&T (NYSE:T) and Deutsch Telekom announced that AT&T would buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. The deal would add 34...

“Just months after selling its ailing handsets business to Microsoft, the Finnish company is planning to go back into the consumer market with a new tablet,” Matti Huuhtanen reports for The Associated Press. “It will launch a 7.9-inch device early next year in China, the world’s biggest market, before selling it elsewhere.” “The device will be manufactured by Foxconn, which makes Apple’s handsets. And it will operate Android instead of the Windows software Nokia used on its cellphones when it began a partnership with Microsoft in 2011. That partnership ended unsuccessfully — in April, Nokia sold its cellphones unit to...

Microsoft is using CES 2014 as a venue to give an update on sales of Windows Phone devices to members of the media. There was already evidence that products using the OS have gained a lot of sales and increased market share in Europe in the past few months and today Microsoft said that it saw those sales increase even more during the recent holiday sales period. In a statement sent to Neowin by a Microsoft spokesperson, the company said: We’ve seen record sales of Windows Phone this holiday worldwide, nearly doubling phone sales during Christmas week (YOY). In the...

Stardate 20021005.2128 (On Screen): As I think many of my readers know, I used to work for Qualcomm designing cell phones. Qualcomm is the company which invented CDMA, and made it practical, and made it into a market success, and it now dominates the American market, where Verizon and Sprint both use it. There are two other nationwide cellular systems: AT&T currently uses IS-136 TDMA, which is obsolete and has no upgrade path. Cingular uses GSM, a more sophisticated form of TDMA from Europe. And right now I'm basking in the evil glow of a major case of schadenfreude. The...

Finland is boiling with rage this weekend over the $25 M bonus payment the CEO Stephen Elop is set to receive as he leaves Nokia NOK -1.35% after his two-year tenure. Questions are now being raised by the oddest aspect of the bonus: the board of Nokia seems to have given Elop a $ 25 M incentive to sell the handset unit cheaply to Microsoft MSFT -0.87% way back in in 2010. This effectively means that the board hired a man who was given a giant carrot to drive down Nokia’s overall valuation and phone volumes while preparing a sale...

Two years after hitching its fate to Microsoft's Windows Phone software, a withered Nokia collapsed into the arms of the U.S. software giant, agreeing to sell its main handset business for 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion). Nokia, which will continue as a maker of networking equipment and holder of patents, was once the world's dominant handset manufacturer but was long since overtaken by Apple and Samsung in the highly competitive market for more powerful smartphones. Nokia's Canadian boss Stephen Elop, who ran Microsoft's business software division before jumping to Nokia in 2010, will now return to the U.S. firm as...

Company to hold investor call; members of the media invited to attend. REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 2, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft Corp. and Nokia Corp. today announced that the boards of directors for both companies have decided to enter into a transaction whereby Microsoft will purchase substantially all of Nokia's Devices & Services business, license Nokia's patents, and license and use Nokia's mapping services.

Everyone was understandably excited when Windows Phone got its own native YouTube app. That is, until Google decided it violated the terms of service by blocking advertisements and promptly asked Microsoft to remove the app. The two companies kissed, made up and collaborated on a new version that would adhere to Mountain View's developer guidelines. Unfortunately, it appears that, despite Big G's involvement, the latest version of YouTube for Windows Phone still has some issues that can't be overlooked. Only two days after returning, with the ability to upload video added as a bonus, Google has again begun blocking Microsoft's...

6:15 PMIf Windows Phone really does start to take off, it will be in large part thanks to the efforts of Nokia, the Finnish device manufacturer that has come under withering criticism from both analysts and investors for choosing Microsoft’s mobile platform over Google’s Android. Seeking Alpha has posted a compilation of charts showing that Nokia has been slowly increasing its market share in many key markets, which is helping Windows Phone gain a foothold in its efforts to become the world’s No. 3 mobile operating system.As you can see from the chart, which is based on numbers from Kantar...

We're not sure if this is a good sign for Microsoft or a bad sign for BlackBerry, but Windows Phone is now the third largest smartphone operating system, according to IDC. Since we're optimists, we'll say it's a good sign for Microsoft. It's trying to catch up to Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems. It has a very long way to go before it catches either of them, but it had to start somewhere. Perhaps this is the start of the most unlikely come-from-behind victory in history. Here's the IDC numbers, via All Things D:

Supply of Nokia's Lumia 920 was getting scarce in the past few weeks due mainly to solid demands and apparently the Finnish mobile phone maker was caught off guard by the overwhelming reception generated by its new flagship smartphone. In a research note published Monday by market research firm Canaccord Genuity, it appeared that the Lumia 920 started on a rock-solid footing in the U.S. market, its sales numbers decent enough to come behind the bestselling smartphones in America as of November this year - Apple's iPhone 5 and Samsung's Galaxy S3. "Our checks indicated the Lumia 920 was the...

A Nokia job listing [since taken down] has been discovered seeking a Senior Engineer with Linux expertise, rather than Windows Phone experience, this leading the Android masses to have a freak-out-festival about the possibilities of a Google OS Nokia device. At the moment it’s a nearly all-Microsoft party at Nokia with the latter shaking hands heavily with the former for the launch of Windows Phone 8 with devices like the Nokia Lumia 920, a hero for the operating system. With a Linux expert on their team, (not that Nokia doesn’t already have engineers with such expertise), it would appear...

(Photo : Reuters) The Lumia 920 may give Nokia the push it needs when Black Friday comes around. Nokia's Lumia 920 may not be as disappointing as some critics said it would be. Actually, the Windows 8 smartphone is flying off shelves as we speak, which is a good sign for Nokia's Black Friday sales.The Lumia 920 has already made it on the Amazon Best Sellers list. It is already in high demand in Germany.Like Us on FacebookAccording to AllThingsD, a number of Nokia Deutschland's German retail partners experienced "stock-outs" since the device first became available earlier November."Because of the high demand, we are aware of the reports the Lumia 920 is sold out in...

The early returns/opinions are in on the Nokia Lumia 920—expected to reach retailers in November—and they declare the new flagship smartphone for Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system a winner. From its high-quality construction to its dazzling display, the Nokia 920, introduced Wednesday, garners kudos across the Net. "It's incredibly handsome," gushed David Pierce at The Verge. "The new Nokia Lumia 920 mobile phone is the best the company has ever made," added Matt Warman, consumer technology editor at The Telegraph, based in the United Kingdom. The 920's construction earned some praise from Andrew Wooden at T3. "Nokia’s R&D department...

The Lumia 920 represent the company's latest best shot at turning its ailing smartphone business around. Nokia today unveiled its latest flagship phone, the Lumia 920, its first to run on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system. CEO Stephen Elop showed off a bright yellow Lumia 920, larger than its predecessor, the Lumia 900. The phones represent Nokia's latest bid to vault back into the smartphone business in a big way. They also represent a last chance of sort for the company to pull out of its recent decline. The camera's advanced features were spelled out to an audience of...

More than seven years before Apple Inc. AAPL -1.63% rolled out the iPhone, the Nokia team showed a phone with a color touch screen set above a single button. The device was shown locating a restaurant, playing a racing game and ordering lipstick. In the late 1990s, Nokia secretly developed another alluring product: a tablet computer with a wireless connection and touch screen—all features today of the hot-selling Apple iPad. Former Nokia designer Frank Nuovo says the company had prototypes that anticipated the iPhone. "Oh my God," Mr. Nuovo says as he clicks through his old slides. "We had it...

Microsoft's consolation prize to anyone who owns a current Windows Phone is a new homescreen landing in an update known as Windows Phone 7.8, pictured above running on the Nokia Lumia 900. It's best described as a sweetener to coat the bitter truth that anyone who's shelled out for a Windows Phone in the last 20 months isn't getting the big upgrade to Windows Phone 8. Bitter because Microsoft knew this schism was coming all along but kept Windows Phone buyers in the dark. Instead of iterating the Windows Phone software, Windows Phone 8 is a clean break with Windows...

Microsoft revealed many new details of Windows Phone 8, its smartphone platform due later this year. Here are the cool new features that will make developers and users happy. First of two parts THE GOOD Microsoft on Wednesday revealed key pieces of its Windows Phone 8 smartphone strategy at an event for developers in San Francisco. The news is mostly good, and should vastly improve the scale and reach of the Windows Phone ecosystem when the platform launches later this year. Looking at all the pieces of its mobile strategy offered by Microsoft, it's easy to foresee a brighter future...

It looks like Microsoft are about to launch their own Tablet device, probably running a version of Windows 8 (and yes, I’m assuming Taniyama-Shimura once more). I’m fully expecting a lot of commentators to talk about how inexperienced the Redmond based company is at making hardware. So let me point out two counter-examples before the big event for your consideration. I’ll start with the Xbox 360. It’s had a pretty rough ride in terms of hardware with the Red Ring of Death and numerous issues early in the life cycle of the platform, but as Microsoft have understood the issues,...