Microsoft news: The International CTIA (Cellular Telephone Industries Association) WIRELESS show is the premier wireless event representing a $1 trillion global marketplace that brings together the wireless and converged communications, wireless broadband, mobile web computing and data industries. International CTIA WIRELESS is where the wireless world meets each year for three days of intense business, learning and networking.
Microsoft is making improvements to its Bing search engine to surface answers more quickly for its users in the hope of helping them make purchasing decisions. Microsoft demonstrated these changes at the Search Engine Strategies show in New York March 25, showing Bing on a Windows Phone 7 Series device and a real-time integration with location-sharing service Foursquare. The new features are the latest move in the company’s broad effort to gain more market share from Google and Yahoo.
Microsoft demonstrated handsets running Windows Phone 7 Series at last week’s CTIA Wireless 2010 conference in Las Vegas. The new operating system, which features a slick consumer interface reminiscent of the Zune HD, Microsoft’s well-reviewed but little-used portable media player, takes a different approach by integrating Web and mobile-application content into category-specific “Hubs” such as “Games” and “People.”
While Microsoft’s Bing and Windows Phone 7 Series are primarily consumer-oriented, Microsoft also had announcements last week that pertained to the enterprise, particularly the announcement of the next version of its unified communications software, code-named Communications Server “14.” Slated for availability in the second half of 2010, the platform will introduce a Communicator client intended to interoperate with Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Exchange, while leveraging communications and collaboration tools such as instant messaging into the enterprise.
Even as Microsoft seems determined to grow or maintain its market share in areas such as search and mobility, though the company has seen market share for Internet Explorer decline in certain major European markets following the release, earlier in March, of its “Web browser choice screen.” Designed to give Windows users in the European Union a selection of browsers other than Internet Explorer, and designed with an eye toward alleviating monopoly concerns from the regulatory European Commission about the bundling of IE with versions of Windows, the ballot screen gives users a choice of 12 different browsers prominent and small.