The All New Windows Phone 8 Arrives

Microsoft is on a mission and with Windows phone 8, it has gone a step further. It is a totally remodelled version of Windows phone platform which says bye-bye to Windows CE kernel and in comes Windows NT core which means that Windows 8 PC, tablets and Windows phone 8 smartphones will be sharing the same platform. That makes microsoft one step closer to unifying its Windows franchise. The biggest advantage will be availability of apps as developers will find it easier to create apps for the two environments.
But there is a catch to the story. Old users with smartphones running on Windows Phone 7.5 will not be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 8 as new capabilities in Windows Phone 8 requires new hardwares. But the bottom line is Windows phone 8 finally appears to have the potential to compete with android and may even the iOS smartphones.

At an event in San-franciso last week, Microsoft officially announced their latest smartphone OS Windows phone 8. And said the phones running Windows Phone 8 is expected to hit the stores in the beginning of the 2013. The move is also followed by the launch of Surface tablet, Microsofts effort to tackle the ever increasing hold of Apple’s iPad.
Windows phone 8 makes the concept of unified platform for all types of form factors namely PC, laptops, smartphones and tablets a reality. And with Nokia’s software solutions and hardwares, they make a pair just perfect for each other. To sum it all up, this is what Windows phone promised to be when it was first announced way back in 2010. And its success will be more critical for Nokia which may well be their last chance to get its grip back in the smartphone market.
Apart from Nokia, Samsung, HTC and Huawei will also be making handsets running Windows Phone 8. Even though Windows phone are getting good reviews, its still is not so popular due to lack of apps available compared to android and iOS market and with Windows phone 8, they will try to reduce that gap too. Time will tell the rest..

Android Grows Further, Windows Phone Still Far Behind

Do you own a Windows Phone? Do you love it?  Then the following news may come as a shocker to you.

Thes latest smartphone market share numbers are out for U.S. and unsurprisingly Android has the largest shares with a whopping 51 percent of smartphones running with android. But the new and attractive Windows Phone, earning many positive acclaims, is still too far behind with just more than 1 percent market shares. And as a fact it is even less than its predecessor Windows Mobile.
Google already announced that android activations grew from 100 million in 2011 by 4 times to 400 millions in 2012. That is an average of hugely impressive 12 activations per minute. And that is reflected in the Nielsen study of market shares.
The new study also shows that every two of three mobile buyers are going for smartphones. Among those, 51.8 percent smartphones are running android. Compare that to comfortably behind second, iOS by apple at 34.3 percent ( which to be fair, is also due to the fact that there are many less iOS devices compared to number of android devices available in the market) and far behind third in the race, Blackberry at 8.1 percent, and we can say that android has no threat in the immediate future.

In the Android market, Samsung expectedly leads with 17 percent market share. HTC is next with 14 percent market share followed by Motorola at 11 percent and the rest of manufacturers with combined 9 percent share of the android market.
Interestingly, Windows mobile, which tried to jam the whole windows desktop into a phone and failed in doing so making the phone more harder and messier to use, still runs on more smartphones at 3 percent market share than its far more usable and attractive Windows Phone OS at 1.3 percent market share.
All of that means just 0.9 percent smartphones running Symbian OS by Nokia so don’t get surprised if Symbian is not even mentioned in next years study. For now its Android and iOS which are winner all the way.