Windows Mobile misses target

Microsoft sold more than 18 million Windows Mobile software licenses in its recently completed fiscal year – about 2 million short of its widely publicized 20 million-unit target – the senior vice president in charge of the business acknowledged Wednesday.

However, Microsoft was still able to increase Windows Mobile’s overall share of the worldwide mobile phone operating system market, despite increased competition from Apple’s iPhone, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry and others, said Andy Lees, senior vice president of the Redmond company’s Mobile Communications Business, in an interview.

Symbian to marry Google’s Android

Bangalore: Nokia’s open source mobile platform Symbian is just getting bigger. It will merge with Android, Google’s mobile device platform, which is also based on open source, to facilitate a single but larger open source operating system.

Analysts at J. Gold Associates say, “The merger will take place sometime in the near future, say three to six months.”

The move is considered unexpected as Android was about to launch its devices in late 2008, and Nokia announced in June that it would be moving Symbian towards open source, giving no clue of the two companies having any formal relationship that would come close to such a collaboration.

“But this is happening,” says J. Gold, because “A combination of the Android and Symbian efforts would be good for the industry, good for Google and good for Symbian.” And a handful of similar mergers are in the offing that includes Linksys and Belkin, Red Hat and Ubuntu, and Engadget and Gizmodo.

Agendus vs Pocket Informant

Well, I’ve been using Pocket Informant for several years now and have been quite happy with it’s performance.  It is a great solid application for Windows Mobile which adds enhanced performance and features that are not included with the default WM PIM.  So today, I decided to give Agendus a try and see how it compares to Pocket Informant.

Agendus for Windows Mobile has been designed from the ground up with one goal in mind: to bring order and piece of mind in the busy life of today’s windows mobile phone users. It accomplishes such goal by seamlessly unifying schedule, contact management and task organization in a homogeneous, straightforward and pleasant to use interface. Its out-of-the-box ready to use functionality is complemented by a variety of fine tuning options and preferences aimed at satisfying the novice as well as the power user audiences.

Static continues for Apple’s iPhone debut

LOS ANGELES – Apple’s experiencing serious Microsoft-type growing pains with its launch of the new iPhone that went on sale two weeks ago.

It’s not just that Apple can’t satisfy demand for the phones. A new, longer procedure to activate the iPhone is making the in-store buying process much longer and keeping customers waiting in line and fuming for hours.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Grace Ciurluini, in line at the Los Angeles Apple Store at The Grove shopping center Sunday. By 11:30 a.m., just 30 minutes after opening, the store had sold its allotment of iPhones for the day. A line of about 50 people was all it could handle. Apple reps closed the line to newcomers, telling them to return Monday between 8 and 10 a.m. for vouchers to get phones.

Verizon profit rises, but wireline disappoints

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) posted a higher quarterly profit on strong wireless sales, but its shares fell on worries about its declining landlines and weaker-than-expected growth in its FiOS Internet and video service.

FiOS, delivered over a high-speed, all-fiber network, is a key part of Verizon’s strategy to bolster its landline business and compete with cable companies’ all-in-one phone, video and Internet offerings.

Second-quarter profit rose to $1.88 billion, or 66 cents a share, from $1.68 billion, or 58 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding items such as merger integration costs, earnings per share were 67 cents, beating the average analyst forecast for 64 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

iPhone 3G battery results: Music and video

Our CNET Labs team has unveiled their battery performance results for music and video playback on the iPhone 3G. We’re still working on iPhone talk time testing and we’ll be doing another round of audio and video tests with 3G disabled–but at least we have another piece of the puzzle to add to our review.

To give the test results some context, we also retested the first-generation iPhone, and simultaneously tested a comparable 3G multimedia phone, the Samsung Instinct. Apple’s public tech specs claim the iPhone 3G is capable of up to 7 hours of video playback and 24 hours of music playback. Surprisingly, with 3G switched on the iPhone sailed past 24 hours of music playback, but tanked when it came to video. Further testing with 3G disabled may yet redeem Apple’s claim of 7 hours of video playback.

iPhone Software Update May Fix Frustrating Bugs

When Apple released its iPhone 2.0 software earlier this month, CEO Steve Jobs said it would provide the best user experience and the most advanced software platform for a mobile device. However, glitches in the software are leaving users frustrated, with a laundry list of complaints.

Apple launched its App Store just before it released the iPhone 3G, which uses the 2.0 software. Users of both the iPhone 3G and the first-generation iPhone upgraded with the 2.0 software can buy and download apps created by third-party developers.

Users May Help to Vet Android Apps

Google may use a user-driven rating system to help keep bad or harmful Android applications off mobile phones.

The search giant is in talks with mobile operators about offering phones based on its Android open-source platform, said Rich Miner, group manager of mobile platforms at Google, in an interview at the AlwaysOn Stanford Summit on Wednesday. However, the carriers want reassurance that users won’t install troublesome applications, Miner said.

Google is making Android freely available to developers under the Apache open-source license and not restricting what they build with it. The company says its aim is to establish a common software platform for many handsets and help make mobile applications proliferate. In much of the world, software for mobile phones traditionally has been supplied through carriers after laborious reviews and modifications.

MS Plots iPhone Rival, Vista PR, as MobileMe Draws Flak

Apple has been boosting sales of Macs with its Mac OS X operating system — seemingly at Microsoft’s expense, as more PC users turn up their noses at Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Apple also has had great success with its iPhone, but now that Apple is taking flak because of problems with its MobileMe service, an admiring Microsoft appears ready to go after some of Apple’s revenue.

In a memo distributed to Microsoft employees Wednesday, CEO Steve Balmer said Apple is good at “providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience.” As a result, he wrote, Microsoft will work with hardware vendors to make sure there are “absolutely no compromises.”

Sprint Nextel Sells Its Towers; Raises Around $670 Million

Sprint (NYSE: S – News) Nextel is ditching its cellphone towers. In a bid to raise some much needed cash, the troubled carrier has agreed to sell nearly all of its towers to the private-equity backed firm TowerCo for around $670 million in cash, the two companies announced Wednesday. Sprint will sell around 3,300 towers to TowerCo and lease them back from the firm for both its current CDMA and iDEN networks, as well as for its future WiMax efforts.