Nokia has just announced that it is to form a strategic partnership with Microsoft. Following talks between both sides early on in the week, an agreement has been made.

Nokia has been desperate to secure this partnership in order to boost its performance in the smartphone market. In 2010 Nokia saw its smartphone market share drop by a massive 10%.

It is a deal that leaves Nokia undoubtedly better equipped to cope with the intense pressure coming from the iPhone. Nokia has confirmed that it will not discontinue its Symbian handsets, but in fact continue to develop the software in collaboration with Microsoft. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft issued a warning to all its Windows users after it became apparent that there was a security flaw in its software. The issue affects users of its Internet Explorer web browser. A bug in the Internet Explorer means that potentially its 900 million users’ personal data could be accessed by malicious hackers.

Microsoft has released a software patch to protect its users whilst it continues to work on a long-term solution. The windows flaw directly affects Internet Explorer, in particular the way in which in accesses certain web pages. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker said its netincome for the latest quarter fell slightly from a year ago.

Net income was $6.63 billion, or 77 cents a share, compared with $6.66 billion, or 74 cents, a year earlier, Microsoft said in a statement.

Sales rose 4.9 percent to $20 billion. The results beat the average projections of 68-cents in profit and $19.1 billion in sales, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The Redmond, Washington-based sold 8 million Kinect devices, more than twice its initial forecast.

“They beat on revenue and profit and showed some nice expense control,” said Katherine Egbert, an analyst at Jefferies & Co. in San Francisco. “The business side is good and then Kinect was good.”

No, this time it’s not Microsoft Word or Excel, but with the publish of OneNote Mobile for iPhone today, Microsoft has begun to put its Office suite on the iPhone.

Over the past a few years, OneNote has been available as part of the Office suite for Windows (since Office 2003); there hasn’t been, and still isn’t, a Mac desktop client. Last year, Microsoft introduced a Web-app version of OneNote.

Microsoft Office VP Takeshi Numoto explained OneNote in more detail in an Office Exec blog post. "In case you haven’t experienced the unsung hero of Office, OneNote is a digital notebook that lets you put everything you need to remember in one electronic place and then easily find it wherever you are. I use it every day. Think of it as a digital file cabinet for all the random bits of information that are too hard to keep track of in your head." Read the rest of this entry »

Today, Microsoft published five new plans for Office 365 cloud Service Suite mainly aimed at offering educational institutions to get the hosted Office Services, and licensed version of the Microsoft Office software.

Microsoft announced that the educational version of Office 365 Service which will be available for the K-12, primary and junior education institutions, later this year. This service give the K-12 institutions 5 services options, such as the free plan which is the lowest level and the highest level of 17$ per month. The free plan offers services like Web e-mail and anti-virus, as well as the 17$ plan brings the combination including VoIP and Microsoft licensed Office Professional Plus for staffs and faculty of K-12. Besides, the same plan for students takes 5$ per month.

As a part of the new plan, Microsoft offers the students Lync Online communication platform and SharePoint Online for free, while the faculty and staffs has to pay 10$ per month per user for this plan. Read the rest of this entry »

Tencent, which operates QQ, the world’s largest instant messaging tool, is ongoing to offer users links to third-party websites and access to externally developed applications, mirroring some features of Facebook. QQ, the very basis of its business, started as an outright imitation of ICQ, AOL’s instant messaging tool.

Tencent’s president, Martin Lau said to FT in a rare interview that the move would change the way China’s largest internet company by revenue makes money.

About 10 third-party applications to run on QZone are under test by Tencent. It is also testing several external websites that users could link to in the way Facebook members can link to other sites with the “like” function.

At the moment, fewer than 10 other sites are taking part in the tests, “but we want to take it to five to 10 times that in the next six to 12 months,” said Mr Lau. The announcement comes as the company scrambles to repair the damage from a fight with Qihoo 360, a local antivirus software provider. Last week, Tencent stopped allowing users to log on to certain services if they also had 360 software on their computers.

The fight began when Qihoo 360 accused Tencent of letting QQ software scan its users’ computers for personal data, and issued tools to block QQ components.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft is reportedly changing its tagline to “Be What’s Next”, the new motto was announced at the annual Microsoft Global Exchange July in Atlanta, a showcase event for the own employees and a few select people from outside of the company. The new motto had been rumoured before the time.

According to the application, which Microsoft filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Nov. 2, Microsoft has finally filed for trademark on the slogan “Be What’s Next” to become their new corporate tagline. It is a new symbol all about agility, anticipation, innovation, and the willingness to take risks in the hope of achieving something great, and the saying of “Your Potential, Our Passion” has lost sheen as Microsoft has slowly moved from it.

The new tag line firsted officially shown in the video which also emphasises how flexibility exists between the various brands from Microsoft. Some assumed that the ribbon icons within the video indicated that Microsoft was about to announce a brand new set of logos for its products.

Although the ribbon icons were not liked on the whole, just as well Microsoft is not planning to use them, the logos and rebranding in the have been widely liked.

Read the rest of this entry »

Through retailer PC Mall,Microsoft is now giving free Symantec security software to small businesses for a limited time, following some grumbling in response to the free distribution of its own security software.

In October, Microsoft began offering small businesses free copies of Microsoft Security Essentials for as many as 10 PCs. It has also started letting customers download the software from Windows Update.

Panda Security and Trend Micro are among the companies that complained about Microsoft offering the security software free.

Panda suggested that Microsoft offer free antivirus software from a variety of companies as a way to prevent a security software monoculture that could make it easier for viruses to spread quickly.

It appears Microsoft is taking that suggestion, although not in partnership with Panda, and only through one retailer.

From Nov. 1 until Dec. 31, businesses that buy a new copy of Windows 7 Professional from PC Mall will also get a copy of Symantec EndPoint Protection Small Business Edition free. The offer is good for up to 50 PCs.

In the third quarter, Facebook grabs bigger slice of display ads pie than any other outfit on Amarican web, according to the latest numbers from market-research outfit ComScore.

The sicial networking gaint’s share of display ad impressions held 23.1 percent of all Internet display ads, or 297 billion ad impressions in the past quarter.

The statistic was totaled more than the sum of its nearest four rivals. Yahoo, with 11 percent market share, is ranked second ahead of Microsoft in third of 5 percent, Fox Interactive in fourth with 3.8 percent and Google Sites, currently sitting in fifth place with 2.7 percent.

Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft Corp. chief executive Steve Ballmer has sold 49.3 million shares worth some 1.33 billion dollars in the software giant this month recently, putting off the company’s shares for the first time in seven years.

Selling some of the holdings of Microsoft stock is to gain financial diversification and to assist in tax planning before the end of the calendar year. Mr. Ballmer, who has been the CEO of Microsoft since 2000, confirmed the stock sales in a statement late Friday.

“Even though this is a personal financial matter, I want to be clear about this to avoid any confusion,” Ballmer said.“I am excited about our new products and the potential for our technology to change people’s lives, and I remain fully committed to Microsoft and its success.”

Ballmer still holds about 350 million shares, worth some 9 billion dollars at Microsoft’s current price of around 26 dollars. According to Microsoft, he plans to offload up to 75 million shares in the company by the end of 2010.

Microsoft issued a statement on Ballmer’s behalf, probably looking to hold back any speculation that the sale of a substantial block of his shares indicated anything negative about the company.

Ballmer is the second-largest Microsoft shareholder after founder Bill Gates, who sold three million shares of his own this week worth some 54.5 million dollars.