Microsoft users say goodbye to Hotmail, hello to new Outlook.com

Microsoft has announced that its new webmail service, Outlook.com, is now set to replace Hotmail.com. The software giant said that Outlook.com is coming out of beta testing and is now ready for primetime. The service, which was announced last July, now has 60 million users and will now replace Microsoft’s older webmail system. Microsoft”s Hotmail, which was originally MSN Hotmail, has been online since 1997. Hotmail users will still keep their Hotmail.com email addresses and their contacts and emails will all be moved over, they will just now get a new user interface and all the new features of Outlook.com, ABC News reports. According to the report, Outlook.com was designed with a similar aesthetic to Microsoft”s Windows 8 operating system.

It also includes new social features and a sorting option called Sweep, the report said. The Sweep feature moves newsletters, promotional messages and other recurring emails into their own folders or to the trash, it added.

Source: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/microsoft-users-say-goodbye-to-hotmail-hello-to-new-outlook.com/1076963/

Microsoft testing Outlook app for Windows RT devices: Report

Teams within Microsoft are reportedly debating whether the company should release a native version of Outlook for Windows RT devices or not. The company has reportedly completed and testing a final version of Outlook for Windows RT devices.

Microsoft is reportedly testing a native version of MS Outlook for Windows RT-based devices. Dubbed as Outlook RT, the e-mail client would run on Microsoft’s ARM-based Surface RT devices as well as any ARM-based Windows RT slates and PCs.

According to CNET, Microsoft hasn’t yet decided the date for commercial availability of Outlook RT, as odds are the company may never release it. The teams within Microsoft are still debating whether the company should release the app or not.

The report further quotes sources at Microsoft claims some people at the Windows unit want to retain the Mail/Calendar/People app as it bundles currently. There are some other people who want to simply rename the existing Mail app in Windows RT as Outlook. There are also suggestions to launch Outlook as a separate native app.

“Microsoft currently has its own Mail client for Windows 8 and Windows RT — a product that is not seen as very robust or solid by many of us Surface RT/Windows RT users. The Windows RT Mail client is not even as good as the Mail client that’s part of Windows Phone, many of us feel,” writes Mary Jo Foley in the report.

“Quite a few of us would rather have the option to run Outlook on our Surface RTs and other Windows RT devices. But for now, Microsoft doesn’t include Outlook as part of the Office Home & Student 2013 RT suite that it bundles with the Windows RT operating system. Only Word RT, Excel RT, PowerPoint RT and OneNote RT are included. (It’s worth noting that these four apps are Desktop apps, not “Metro-Style”/Windows Store apps. There are only two members of the Office suite that currently exist in Metro-Style form: OneNote and Lync.),” she adds.

Microsoft is yet to comment on the rumours of a native Outlook app for Windows RT.

 

Source: http://www.thinkdigit.com/Apps/Microsoft-testing-Outlook-app-for-Windows-RT_13224.html

Microsoft in talks to invest up to $3 billion in Dell: CNBC

Microsoft Corp is in discussions to invest between $1 billion and $3 billion of mezzanine financing in a buyout of Dell Inc, CNBC cited unidentified sources as saying on Tuesday.
Private equity outfit Silver Lake Partners is trying to finalize a bidding group to take the world’s No. 3

PC maker private, and has opened discussions with potential equity partners, sources familiar with the matter have said.
Dell also has formed a special committee to take a close look at any potential deal on the table, multiple sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. If successful, it would be one of the largest corporate buyouts since before the global financial crisis.

Microsoft, which accelerated its foray into computer hardware in 2012 with the launch of the Surface tablet, will provide the capital in the form of mezzanine financing according to CNBC, which is a hybrid of debt and equity.

Microsoft and Dell both declined to comment on the CNBC report. Shares in Dell gained climbed 2 percent to $13.08 in late morning trade.

iPhone wins 51 percent of U.S. smartphone sales, says report

Apple snared more than 50 percent of U.S. smartphone sales last quarter, says Kantar, though Android remained dominant across Europe and the world.

Apple’s iOS continues to outshine Android, at least in the United States, according to data released today by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

For the final quarter of 2012, the iPhone won 51.2 percent of all U.S. smartphone sales. In second place, Android soaked up around 44.8 percent of U.S. sales, leaving Microsoft’s Windows Phone with 2.6 percent.

Apple’s flagship platform also scored well in Japan, proving tops among two-thirds of Japanese smartphone buyers.

“Apple’s continual improvement is thanks to both the iPhone 5 and older models attracting various customer groups, from repeat Apple buyers, first-time smartphone buyers. and those coming from other smartphone brands,” Kantar analyst Mary-Ann Parlato said in a statement.

Over the past year, 36 percent of iOS sales in the U.S. came from users of other smartphones, notably Android. The percentage of Android users jumping ship to the iPhone was 19 percent in 2012, compared with 9 percent in 2011, according to Kantar.

Verizon subscribers were especially eager to hop onto iOS. A full 59 percent of iPhone-buying Verizon customers came from other brand phones, while 30 percent had used Android specifically. In comparison, 15 percent of AT&T users who bought an iPhone jumped from a different platform, while only 6 percent were former Android users.

Among other iPhone buyers, 35 percent upgraded from a previous model, while 30 percent were buying their first smartphone, Kantar said.

Android is still No. 1 throughout the world, including key countries such as the U.K., China, Spain, Australia, and Germany, according to the report. But it’s lost some of its fire.

“At the end of 2012, the global OS picture shows Android on top, but clearly the rate of growth it experienced over the past year is beginning to slow as easy wins from first-time smartphone buyers begin to reduce,” Kantar analyst Dominic Sunnebo said in a statement.

Samsung is tops in the U.K., with 35 percent of smartphone sales last quarter. But Apple is catching up with 32 percent.

Finally, Microsoft’s Windows Phone is gaining some traction in Europe. For the quarter, Windows Phone won 5.9 percent of smartphone sales in Britain, up from 2.2 percent a year ago, and 13.9 percent in Italy, up from 2.8 percent the prior year.

“It has been far slower than Microsoft would have liked, but Windows Phone is now starting to gain respectable shares in a number of key European countries,” Sunnebo said. “However, its performance in the Chinese and U.S. markets remains underwhelming. As the two largest smartphone markets in the world, these remain key challenges for Microsoft to overcome during 2013.”

The data comes from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech USA’s consumer panel, which conducts more than 250,000 interviews per year in the United States. This report focused strictly on sales rather than market share.

Former Microsoft exec says CEO Ballmer culls internal rivals to retain power

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is not the right leader for the world’s largest software company but holds his grip on it by systematically forcing out any rising manager who challenges his authority, claims a former senior executive who has written a book about his time at the company.

“For Microsoft to really get back in the game seriously, you need a big change in management,” said Joachim Kempin, who worked at Microsoft between 1983 and 2002, overseeing the sales of Windows software to computer makers for part of that time. “As much as I respect Steve Ballmer, he may be part of that in the end.”

As a senior vice president in charge of a crucial part of the company’s business with direct access to co-founder Bill Gates, Kempin is the most senior former Microsoft executive to write a book critical of the company, which is famous for the loyalty of its ex-employees.

His criticism echoes that of investor David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital, who called for Ballmer to step down in 2011.

Kempin left Microsoft under a cloud in 2002 as some of the aggressive contracts he crafted with PC makers were seen as fodder for the U.S. government’s antitrust prosecution of the company, which started in 1998 and was largely resolved by 2002.

His book, titled ‘Resolve and Fortitude: Microsoft’s “secret power broker” breaks his silence’, is scheduled to be published on Tuesday. He talked with Reuters by phone on Monday.

DEFEND THE THRONE

Kempin charges Ballmer with purposefully ousting any executives with potential to wrest him from the CEO seat, which he has occupied since 2000.

He said he saw the process first with Richard Belluzzo, a former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N) executive credited with launching the Xbox game console who rose to chief operating officer at Microsoft but left after only 14 months in the post, in the same year Kempin left.

“He (Belluzzo) had no room to breathe on the top. When you work that directly with Ballmer and Ballmer believes ‘maybe this guy could someday take over from me’, my God, you will have less air to breathe, that’s what it comes down to.”

Microsoft representatives declined comment. Attempts to reach Belluzzo were not successful.

Several leading executives, touted by outsiders at one time or another as potential successors to Ballmer, have left the company in the last few years, most recently Windows unit chief Steven Sinofsky, who departed in November.

Before Sinofsky, Windows and online head Kevin Johnson went to run Juniper Networks Inc (JNPR.N), Office chief Stephen Elop went to lead phone maker Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE), while Ray Ozzie, the software guru Gates designated as Microsoft’s big-picture thinker, left to start his own project.

“Ozzie is a great software guy, he knew what he was doing. But when you see Steve (Ballmer) and him on stage where he (Ozzie) opposed Steve, it was Steve’s way or the highway,” said Kempin.

Kempin said he spoke to Ballmer around two years ago and expressed his concerns about his management style and direction of the company, but has seen no changes since. He said he sent Ballmer and Gates copies of his new book but has yet to get a reply.

“Steve is a very good business guy, but make him a chief operating officer, not a CEO, and your business is going to go gangbusters,” said Kempin. “I respect that guy (Ballmer), but there are some limitations in what he can and can’t do and maybe he hasn’t realized them himself.”

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES
In his book, Kempin writes about how Microsoft foresaw the major moves in technology in the last decade, but bungled its entry into tablets, phones and social media, ceding leadership in the technology world to Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and others.

“They missed all the opportunities they were talking about when I was still in the company. Tablets, phones…we had a tablet going, we had tablet software when Windows XP came out, it was never followed up properly,” said Kempin.

He also claims the decline of PCs is partly due to Microsoft’s mismanagement of hardware makers, an area that Kempin oversaw at Microsoft.

“Just think about the insult of Microsoft coming out with a tablet themselves, trying to mimic Apple, and now they are going to come out with a notebook on top of it,” said Kempin, referring to Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet and soon-to-be-released Surface running Windows Pro.

Several PC makers went public with their unease about Microsoft’s decision to make its own computers last year.