Maluuba, the Waterloo, Canada-based Siri competitor and TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2012 Battlefield finalist, today announced that it has added two new features to its voice-powered personal assistant app for Android and Windows Phone: sports and TV schedules. With this, Maluuba users in the U.S. and Canada can now ask it for near real-time sports results and query the service for TV listings in their… → Read More
Nokia has added another device to its burgeoning Lumia portfolio of smartphones today, with the introduction of the Lumia 925: a sleek, PureView-branded handset that will be its first flagship on T-Mobile U.S. At today’s London launch, Nokia executive VP of smart devices, Jo Harlow, sat down with TechCrunch to field a few questions. → Read More
Fresh from last week’s Verizon Lumia device launch, Nokia has taken the wraps off a new smartphone in its Windows Phone-based Lumia range at an event in London today. The Lumia 925 is its first flagship for T-Mobile in the U.S. This means that following the Lumia 928 launch on Verizon, and factoring in Nokia’s initial launch of the Lumia 920 on AT&T last year, Nokia now has a… → Read More
Nokia looks like it’s hoping to turn up the volume of its Windows Phone-based Lumia smartphones in the US by signing another carrier to its cause. Bloomberg is reporting that Nokia and Verizon have struck a deal that will see the carrier offer the Lumia 928 starting from next month. The deal has not yet been made public but Bloomberg said two people familiar with the situation confirmed the plan. → Read More
Nokia has just reported is results for Q1 2013 with sales of $7.6 billion and a non-IFRS loss per share of $0.03 (and a reported EPS of $0.09) — a mixed result compared to analyst estimates, who had expected a loss per share of $0.05 on revenues of $8.65 billion (€6.6 billion). That estimated loss per share is effectively half of what it was a year ago, when Nokia posted a loss of $0.08… → Read More
Microsoft Windows Phone chief Terry Ryerson took the stage at the D: Dive Into Mobile conference this morning, and wanted to make it very clear that he sees Windows Phone a little differently than others might.
Given that Windows Phone is still an underdog when it comes to the mobile OS arms race, it’s not exactly a surprise to hear Ryerson characterize the WP team as a scrappy (albeit… → Read More
The big winners in the three-month period ending in February in terms of smartphone share globally and in the U.S. were Android and Windows Phone, according to Kantar Worldpanel, with BlackBerry experiencing significant declines in consumer interest and iOS remaining fairly level in most markets. The bad news for BlackBerry is that it saw its smartphone OS share decline even in the U.K., where it… → Read More
I’m a little embarrassed to admit how reliant I’ve become on Uber when I’m traveling — most regular cab drivers seem to find me terribly repellant — but now the service is now is working to expand its reach even further. The folks behind the on-demand car service announced earlier today that Windows Phone users now have a native app of their own, albeit one that doesn’t look quite as pretty as… → Read More
Spotify and Rdio have already made their mark (for better or worse) on Windows Phone 8, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t room in the Windows Phone Store for another claimant to the streaming music throne. Nearly five months after it was publicly announced, Pandora has just officially pushed its native Windows Phone 8 app out into the wild. → Read More
Skype released an update today for Windows Phone, which restores the “People Hub” integration (Windows Phone’s fancy address book) that had been disabled in January due to bugginess and performance issues. Though today’s blog post from Skype doesn’t directly address the Hub’s former problems, it does hint at them by saying that the new release focuses on “increasing quality and reliability.” → Read More
Windows Phone fans are still waiting for Instagram to land on their mobile platform of choice but there’s some good news for U.K. owners of Microsoft-powered smartphones: the BBC is porting its TV-on-demand iPlayer app to the platform. Cyrus Saihan, head of business development at BBC future media, said the corporation will be releasing a shortcut to BBC iPlayer “in the near future”. → Read More
Microsoft only provides sporadic updates to how the Windows Phone Store is doing, but today, it used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to offer a few new numbers. According to Microsoft, there are now over 130,000 apps in the Windows Phone Store, and the average Windows Phone user has now downloaded 55 apps. App downloads, the company says, have increased by 75 percent since the Windows Phone… → Read More
Ahead of its Mobile World Congress press conference today, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop sat down with TechCrunch to talk about the company’s dual OS strategy, expanding product portfolio and the evolving competitive landscape of smartphones and smart devices. → Read More
The Android + iPhone duopoly in the smartphone space will ease up slightly this year, according to a marketshare forecast by ABI Research — albeit Google’s platform is still predicted to take a 57 per cent share of the global smartphone pie, while Apple’s iOS will cut itself about a fifth (21 per cent), giving the two rival platforms a 78 per cent chunk of the global market. → Read More
ABI Research has put out its latest projections on the lay of the land for smartphones and tablets worldwide in 2013: it says that there will be 1.4 billion smartphones, and 268 million tablets in active use this year, with Android keeping its lead in handsets and iOS continuing to dominate in tablets. Microsoft and BlackBerry will continue to remain in the game in smartphones with small shares of… → Read More
Nokia has announced via its Conversations blog that the long-awaited Windows Phone 7.8 update, which brings a few of the features from Windows Phone 8 to older hardware, has begun rolling out to owners of Nokia 510, 610, 710, 800 and 900 owners and will continue to do so over the next few weeks through February, pending operator approval. → Read More
Don’t get me wrong, HTC’s Windows Phone 8X is great and all, but the rest of Verizon Wireless’ Windows Phone lineup (think the Nokia Lumia 822 and Samsung;s ATIV Odyssey) is a bit lacking in the oomph department.
If a new report from The Verge’s Tom Warren holds true though, that may not be the case for too much longer — according to sources within Verizon, the carrier is gearing up to… → Read More
Despite recent suggestions that Nokia is at least keeping an open mind about adopting Google’s Android platform, the company has reiterated that it is sticking to its guns with Windows Phone and its homegrown S40-based Asha devices. Speaking during its Q4 earnings conference call today CEO Stephen Elop said Nokia is working with Microsoft to drive the Windows Phone platform lower down the price… → Read More
Symbian is now officially dead, Nokia confirmed today. In the company’s earnings announcement that came out a little while ago, Nokia confirmed that the 808 PureView, released last year, was the very last device that the company would make on the Symbian platform: “During our transition to Windows Phone through 2012, we continued to ship devices based on Symbian,” the company wrote. “The Nokia 808… → Read More
You know a mobile app store is still young and needs more content when the company behind it still writes its own blog posts when interesting new apps appear in it. With 150,000 apps, the Windows Phone store isn’t actually quite as empty as the Windows 8 store, but Microsoft could sure use some marquee apps for its mobile platform. To get developers and consumers a bit more excited about it, the… → Read More
Twitter’s new API rules have claimed another victim. Red Badger, the developers of the Windows Phone Twitter client Birdsong, just announced that it will remove its app from the Windows Phone marketplace. The company says it’s doing so because of Twitter’s guidance around building clients based on its API, but the company also says that the “Windows Phone Marketplace has not proven itself, for us… → Read More
Nokia is slowly turning around its ailing mobile handset business and today that effort had a nice fillip, by way of some revised figures in which it “exceeded expectations” for Q4 sales. Within that, Nokia says that in Q4 it sold 4.4 million Lumia devices — exactly twice as many units as those of its once-mighty Symbian platform, which sold 2.2 million. → Read More
Some good news for Nokia today: the company announced that it is exceeding guidance for Q4 sales, after a strong quarter of sales for its Windows Phone Lumia line and its Asha low-cost smartphones, with sales of Lumias nearly doubling over last quarter to 4.4 million devices. It also noted that its operating expenses are also lower and that the two combined are helping improve the company’s… → Read More
Relations between Nokia and its former BFF Microsoft are evidently not as cosy as once they were. While the Finnish mobile maker has reiterated it’s “immediately focused” on Windows Phone for smartphones it has also indicated it is keeping an open mind about using alternatives to Microsoft’s mobile OS in future — potentially even considering a move to Android. → Read More
Rejoice, Windows Phone users: your daylong Google Maps crisis will soon be over.
After causing quite a kerfuffle the other day by effectively blocking Windows Phone users from accessing Google Maps in-browser, Google has released a statement (obtained by The Next Web) clarifying its rationale and promising that it would soon fix the issue. → Read More
On Microsoft’s public policy blog today, Microsoft VP & Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner has a post complaining about YouTube’s lack of support for its mobile platform and how that affects users. Microsoft has been trying to get a proper YouTube app working, and has developed its own app to bring a high-quality experience to Windows Phone, but YouTube has prevented Microsoft from doing so. → Read More
The mobile app economy continued to power ahead last year, with 43.6 billion downloads worldwide in the 12 months ending September 2012. And while first-mover Apple may have today had a setback in its attempts to fight off competitors with trademark complaints over the very use of the phrase “app store”, it continues to lead the market in the category, according to figures out today from ABI… → Read More
There can be no doubt that 2012 was a very important year for Microsoft, though it probably wasn’t the successful year the company had envisioned during the planning stages. With the launch of Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8, Microsoft’s biggest challenge beyond just getting people to buy them, was getting developers to write apps for them. According to Todd Brix, Microsoft’s Senior Director for… → Read More
Nokia may be struggling to reach a critical mass of users to adopt its Windows Phones instead of Android or iPhone devices, but today it got a little light relief in its bigger battle: it’s had a class action suit over its choice of the Windows Phone platform formally dismissed, with no compensation paid. → Read More
Microsoft has joined up another piece of its Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 puzzle by launching a SkyDrive app for the Xbox 360 — allowing users of its cloud storage service to view and access content via the Xbox. The move dissolves a rather odd disconnect between Microsoft’s flagship products. The Xbox SkyDrive app is due to live later today. → Read More
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