Microsoft Set to Launch Windows Phone 8

This Friday, Microsoft will be rolling out its Windows 8 operating system for tablets and PCs, and this launch will be followed by the release of the new Windows Phone 8 OS for smartphones at an event in the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco on October 29.

The Windows Phone 8 operating system for smartphones will be officially launched in front of invited reporters. The Windows Phone 8 OS will also be operable on other devices such as Nokia and other smartphone makers.

As the event follows three days after Microsoft’s launch of the Windows 8 OS for tablets, notebooks and desktop computers, it is interesting to note that Microsoft has had a busy year in terms of product introductions and releases; they recently launched Office 2013, Windows Server 2012 for data centers, and an enhanced Bing search engine.

Nokia, the handset maker, has shown dependance on the Windows Phone 8 by replacing its Symbian OS with the Windows product and partnering with Microsoft. Nokia is relying upon the Windows Phone 8 to rescue the company; the Lumia 820 and Lumia 920 were launched last month by Nokia and will also run the Windows Phone 8.

In the third quarter of October this year, Nokia showed a loss of $1.27 billion. This came as the result of severe falls in sales of its present Lumia product range running the Windows Phone 7. Falling from a total of 4 million units in the second quarter, only 2.9 million units were sold globally in the third quarter. Nokia was specifically affected by the upgrade of the OS because Microsoft decided that Windows Phone 7 devices cannot be upgraded to Windows Phone 8; this has meant that devices which are running WP7 are particularly unattractive to consumers.

In June, Microsoft said at its Windows Phone Summit that WP8 is wholly different; instead of the single-core processor on WP7 devices, the WP8 has been designed to operate on a multi-core processor. Owners of the older devices can thus upgrade their current Windows Phone 7.5 to the newer Windows Phone 7.8.

WP8 is also supported on new models launched by HTC and Samsung.

An analyst at Canaccord Genuity, Michael Walkley, said that the future of Nokia is unclear despite having WP8 in its grip. He stated in a research note to investors, “We believe Nokia’s visibility remains limited for its business units and modeling 2013 is challenging... increased low-end smartphone competition [and] the uncertainty of whether Windows can become a viable third ecosystem with the Windows 8 launch.”

Google Android and Apple iOS are presently the two biggest smartphone OS vendors with a 68 percent and 16.9 percent market share respectively, according to IDC numbers for the second quarter of 2012.

With a 3.5 percent share, Windows Phone ranked fifth, following retired fourth-place Symbian which was at 4.4 percent. Research in Motion (RIM) actually did better than the Windows Phone, as Blackberry Smartphones came third with a 4.8 percent share. The Hail Mary OS of RIM upgraded to Blackberry 10, which was as critical to its survival as WP8 is to Nokia's, has been delayed for launch until early in 2013. (CY) Link