The Marketplace via the web site http://marketplace.windowsphone.com will be shut down on July 15th however it will still be possible for users ”to browse, buy and download applications for Windows Mobile 6.x” using the app on their device.

Then on August 7th Microsoft’s My Phone service will shut down. This service backs up most things on a user’s phone such as texts, documents and photos. However Microsoft are being quite nice here by moving some content from My Phone to Windows Live SkyDrive; the company says that “contacts, calendar entries, text messages and photos will be moved to SkyDrive for you”. Sadly though all other content types will not move to SkyDrive so you’ll want to download that ASAP.

This announcement is surely not good news for Windows Mobile users but it has me wondering and guessing about things for Windows Phone. The address http://marketplace.windowsphone.com is likely to be used for the new web based marketplace that will arrive with the Windows Phone Mango update. The closing down of My Phone perhaps ads fire to the rumour that Microsoft is working on a My Phone 2 service that would expand upon the current offerings of Windows Live Phone. It is hoped that this new service would include features seen in the KIN Studio.

What do you make of this news?

iPhone app update – The first thing that Bing did was to update their app for the iPhone with many new and great features.

• Social – This allows users to connect their Facebook and/or Titter accounts to the Bing app allowing the user to see a stream of updates, see friends updates within search results and even allows a user to share Bing results on social networks.

• Visual Scanning – A new and what I think is a quite surprising feature allows users to take pictures of barcodes and find more info about the product from Bing including description, reviews, prices and links to where to buy the product. More than that though its also possible to take pictures of books, DVD, album, etc and Bing will identify which product it is from the cover and again pull up the information about the product.

• Movies – Microsoft also made improvements to the movies section to bring more video trailers for films and easier access to showtimes.
• Shopping – Tweaks allow users to find products faster and with more information such as prices and links to where to buy.

It does seem odd that Microsoft are releasing this app with these new features on the iPhone before anything like this for Windows Mobile, however there are many more people using iPhones to access the internet than there are on Windows Mobile so it makes a lot of sense to me. I also believe that whatever Bing features are found in the iPhone app will also appear on Windows Phone 7 and it will be on that Microsoft mobile OS that Bing release new features before anything else.

Bing gets a fresh look – Bing have been testing this new UI out for a few months but yesterday they went live around the world. The UI introduces Quick Tabs which sit right below the search and replace some of the sidebar navigation. The Quick Tabs indicate that Bing has very high quality results for a search, therefore searching for something which shows tabs for images and videos will mean there are a lot of highly viewed images and videos in the respective tabs; different searches will have different Quick Tabs.

Microsoft have also worked hard on creating the best viewing experience for each different kind of search to create the best viewing and reading experience possible. This is also true on mobile devices with Bing’s new mobile UI.

A New Entertainment Experience for Bing – Perhaps most importantly Bing have unveiled their latest search vertical, Entertainment. This allows users to find the best information about music, TV, film, games, etc from around the web on only a few pages. Unfortunately some of the best aspects of this new area of search only really work in the US as its pulls content from the Zune Marketplace

• Music – Now when searching for a specific artist, song or album users are presented with some new Quick Tabs such as Songs, Albums and Lyrics. In each of these tabs is a whole host of new features, in songs and albums its possible to stream a whole song from the artist/album, after listening to it once users can only listen to 30 seconds subsequently, and in Lyrics the lyrics for a lot of songs are presented. Its great to see Zune integrated into Bing and its something I predicted only a few weeks ago.

• Gaming – Its now possible to browse a lot of information about games including cheat codes, trailers, etc, and even play online games within Bing. I wish I hadn’t started to play Bejewelled earlier, its wasted a lot of time already this morning.
• TV – Bing is now pulling content from across the web for the TV Quick Tab from providers such as Hulu and CBS and allows users to watch over 1500 shows including HD content and a comprehensive TV guide. This obviously is only working 100% in the US.
• Movies – As you can probably guess from the above information Bing have worked hard to bring in more content about Movies such as trailers, reviews, social information from twitter and Facebook. There is also information pulled from other areas of Bing to provide directions, nearby restaurants and parking information.

There are some excellent updates here and quite why some things haven’t been implemented before I’m not sure but its good to see them here now.

Bing have also made improvements to other areas of the site such as finance and autos although these have only been fairly minor tweaks.

I am very pleased to see Bing still able to innovate and go from strength to strength and am still looking forward to Zune Marketplace going global so I can make the most of Bing.

Over the next few days Bing will be documenting some other new features they have released and I will keep you posted on any major ones.

First up its the home screen which presents all the information one would expect in a clean and obvious fashion.

When clicking on the + next to the date presents a list of all the hours and any events on during the day. I presume the down arrow will take the user to the specific event.

Next up is a view of an event showing all the information that is likely to be needed.

And editing or adding an event presents the following screen.

Viewing a week is similar to the home page however days are listed even if there are no events on those days.

Month view allows the user to see which days have events on them and I guess users wont actually be able to jump to a day from this screen hence the “Go to date” at the bottom of the page.

When clicking “Go to date” a new calendar appears where the user can select a day to jump too.

Finally Liveside had an image of the options screen which only seems to allow users to select their time zone and which calendars appear.

I am glad that there are some image of the Calendar on a mobile browser, its certainly something that has been missing from the online suite and I just hope that there will be a way to sync the calendar on a Windows Mobile 6.5 device with the Windows Live service; I know its coming in Windows Phone 7 but it’d still be nice to have now.

Another thing to like about these images is the focus on touch with nice big buttons to access features rather than requiring a stylus or numbers all over the place. Wave 4 is looking increasingly like the biggest update yet to the suite and although a beta is still weeks away I am getting more excited about it.

Gizmodo believe that the devices will go on sale in late April but have no info on pricing. In terms of specification nothing new has been given away but we do know that the OS running on the device wont be 7 Series. It does, however, look like there will be apps on the device but whether this is going to mean another SDK, closed development apps (like the Zune HD) or web apps is still unknown.

I wonder if the devices of Project Pink will run Windows Mobile with a hugely overhauled UI, surely Microsoft haven’t been working on another completely new mobile OS; that would mean they would have 4, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone OS, Zune HD OS and Project Pink OS. It will certainly be interesting to see what Microsoft have planned for these devices, why they think another type of phone is needed and what Microsoft’s partners have to say on the matter.

The second piece Gizmodo had about Project Pink showed off some leaked shots of the rumoured Pure device.

Again no real specifics were given with these images but you can see the interface looks very Zune-y/7-Series-y (that music panel certainly looks like Zune) however its obviously neither of them. The source of the leak apparently got a few seconds to use the Pure, and said it was intuitive, "better than Android," and decorated with Windows Phone 7-style animations throughout.

The only way I can see these devices doing well in the market is if they are high-end feature phones aimed at being teenager’s (or increasingly younger) first phone before they get a smart phone. These devices would likely be much cheaper than any 7 Series handset and if Microsoft can get the interface, features and marketing right these could be quite successful in the lower-end of the market. If Microsoft can tie in some of their other services like Zune and Bing I’m sure it would encourage younger users to get these devices before going the full hog a few years later for a 7 Series device.

There has sadly been no name for this range of devices but I would guess it will be a four letter made up name seeing as the consumer focussed brands from Microsoft follow this pattern; Bing, Xbox and Zune.

I am looking forward to hearing more about the Project although its highly likely I will never own one.

Update: PocketNow have just received a load of new images of the UI. Below is thought to be a contacts screen that allows dialling a user’s contact just push pressing the contact’s photo.

There are two images thought to be the default lock screens of the two Project Pink devices, Pure being the first and Turtle being the second.

The next set of images are “covers” for applications, whether these are splash screens shown when apps are being opened or background for the apps is unknown. The screens are for Contacts, Phone and Photos, PocketNow are aware that there will be other apps including Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live, Yahoo Messenger, MySpace and also images for an RSS reader, SMS, Search, Settings, Alarm, Browser, plus several others.

PocketNow also believe that the phones will support Microsoft Exchange for email synching.

These images all look “arty” and suggest a serious attempt to make this a “cool” and “trendy” interface for phones, now if only the look of the devices can match what these images imply. To me it looks increasingly like this will be aimed at teens.

If you want to follow what Microsoft announce at the keynote (seeing as most people I have spoken to about it are free to follow) you can watch it streamed live from Microsoft or read some of the Live Blogs from the likes of Long Zheng and Tom Warren or Engadget(no link posted yet).

I am very excited to hear what Microsoft have planned for their mobile devices (and maybe the wider consumer market) but I’m very disappointed I shall be missing it.

I had said I wasn’t going to post much more about what Microsoft may or may not announce at MWC but when seeing such compelling evidence as the pictures from Engadget I can’t help but start thinking how this could all work together.

Caution all ye who read on from here, there be some serious speculation up ahead.

Windows Phone 7 Series

Over the past few hours I’ve been wondering what could constitute a “series” from Microsoft. If you look at Windows 7 there are several versions in the market but that is only marketed as one product. Therefore I think the idea of the series only being different version of Windows 7 doesn’t make sense.

As suggested in an earlier post Microsoft will be announcing Windows Mobile Starter Edition that is thought to be a version of Windows Mobile 6.x. It makes sense that Microsoft would want to avoid any confusion with having several versions of Windows Mobile by having all versions of Windows Mobile branded under one name, Windows Phone 7 Series.

Another aspect of the “series” name is that it could incorporate Microsoft branded hardware too such as “Zune Phone” or Project Pink running variations of Windows Mobile 7 (making it part of the series) but with very different interfaces.

The “series” idea could actually answer one question I have had about Microsoft and its phone plans which was how they could avoid confusing within the marketplace when offering what looks like several very different experiences. Rather than making it a “Windows Phone” which suggests a device that will run the same OS a “series” suggests differences within a collection, exactly what could be the case.

The there is the question of “7”, yes the next version of Windows Mobile is scheduled to be 7 but I think Microsoft is trying to use the good publicity about Windows 7 in its mobile branding. I personally don’t like the sound of Windows Phone 7 Series, the number suggests a single experience and series suggests variation; unless, of course, there are 7 different components that make up the series (ie 7 different products that make up the series).

…although having just seen this tweet from @jont84 I really shouldn’t get ahead of myself, things might change.

Microsoft Store Announcement

One unrelated idea I have had about other possible announcements by Microsoft during its keynote is news of more Microsoft Stores. For me part of this poster (from Engadget) bares an extremely close resemblance to the Microsoft Store logo.

If Microsoft is serious about bringing Windows Phone to consumers in a big way then being able to showcase and sell the device through their own stores would be a great way to achieve this. If, as rumoured, the first phone running Windows Mobile 7 aren’t released until September then there is plenty of time for Microsoft to open several more stores across the world than just the 2 in the US.

I am concerned of an iPad situation where the rumours make the final product seem very bland, but at the same time I am too much of an optimist and want the best from Microsoft and to share my ideas.

Below you can see the sticker over the poster against the effect of revealing what it say below.

*Sigh* Another rumour now to add to the mix for MWC, not sure what believe Microsoft will announce any more, things just keep changing today. My guess is that there will be a business version and media version just like I have stated a few times.

I wonder if this series idea also explains this morning’s news of Windows Mobile Starter Edition running a Windows Mobile 6.x variant so the various OSs in the series don’t all need to be running Windows Mobile 7.

As always, roll on Monday!

The image its self contains nothing major, in that we knew Microsoft were looking to bring Xbox Live to Windows Mobile. But something that has made me think a bit is the way Microsoft plan to position the Zune and it would seem they plan to do a similar thing for Xbox Live.

Microsoft want to make Zune into a brand, and not just a device, that will allow them to provide an entertainment platform across many platforms and devices. Zune can now be accessed through PCs, Xboxes and the internet but we also know Microsoft plan to provide an application for Windows Mobile. It is also their aim to provide software for other platforms most like Macs, iPhones and iPods (if Apple will allow them). When looking at the image above it seems to me that Microsoft are attempting to do a similar thing with Xbox Live, first bringing the brand to its own platforms and then plans to provide it for competitors platforms.

It is an interesting idea as it would benefit Microsoft hugely and in theory could turn a large number of handheld devices into portable Xboxes and could instantly make Microsoft a giant in handheld gaming, rather than leaving it all to Sony and Nintendo (and increasingly Apple). This would also allow people to choose the right hardware for them and allow them to have access too any addition features they wanted from a handheld device, a problem with current handheld gaming machines is there is limited choice.

There is nothing known about what Xbox Live Games (the mobile version of Xbox Live) will be but I hope its something that can be spread out to other platforms to allow people to game wherever the are on whatever they have.

I doubt we will see anything from Microsoft about Xbox Live Games  any time soon as the job posting was only posted within the last few months, but perhaps this time next year we will know more about Microsoft’s plans to allow the Xbox to go mobile.

What has amazed me though is how people are predicting the end for Windows Mobile because of the likes of the iPhone, Android, webOS and Blackberries. The iPhone was launched in 2007, Android 2008 and webOS in 2009, what’s wrong with Microsoft lauching their mobile OS in 2010. Yes Microsoft will be leaving it late but won’t be completely off the mark.

I grant you that the current version of Windows Mobile could well be the one which is the least friendly to consumers, however many other mobile OSs are still adding features which Windows Mobile has had for a long time.

With Windows Mobile 7 Microsoft will have to offer all the functionality, and more, of Windows Mobile (6.5), which will probably mean it will offer more functionality than any other OS on the market. This will be one of the better features of Windows Mobile 7 where it shouldn’t need to play catch-up with its competitors as it should be building on what functionality Windows Mobile already offers.

Microsoft already have a very healthy relationship with many device manufactures and as far as I can it sounds like Microsoft is tightening the constraints on those companies to ensure updates are provided quicker.

If Microsoft are clever they will integrate all their services and products deep within Windows Mobile 7 such as Windows Live, Zune and Office to raise awareness, bring great user experience to mobiles and stop various teams of Microsoft from competing with each other(such as Media Center, Media Player and Zune). Microsoft certainly wont be fined for bundling applications or services when Apple and Google are doing it far more prolifically.

Now to the backend of Windows Mobile 7, I can’t see Microsoft keeping the current set up and just tweaking it because too many people have complaints with it and its needs and overhaul. The problem for Microsoft, and its customers, is that it means they will need to build up a brand new library of applications and I doubt old applications will be able to run in the new mobile OS. In some ways this will be good as a lot of Windows Mobile apps are very ugly. Microsoft will also look at making it very easy for developers to write a program for a vast array of devices.

Now on to how Microsoft will handle applications, Apple is often criticised for its application approval system and I’ve heard some people having complaints with Android’s deployment of applications on various devices. If Microsoft can get the Marketplace, developer ecosystem and the coding for Windows Mobile 7 correct they could well be on to a winner.

Finally the UI of Windows Mobile 7 will probably be the make or break aspect of the OS, Microsoft have to get it right. However I have less concerns with this than several other aspects of the OS. With Windows 7, the Zune software and Zune HD Microsoft showed in 2009 they can create great interfaces and interfaces for software and hardware which I hope will carry on in 2010 with more than just Windows Mobile 7.

Unfortunately there is just nothing known about Windows Mobile 7 but these are just my ideas on what Microsoft needs to do and I hope that Windows Mobile 7 is very competitive when it comes out. We should be hearing all about it next month at the Mobile World Congress and I am really looking forward to it.

Just bear in mind that if Google, on their first attempt at an operating system, can make a mobile OS which competes with the iPhone, in a little over a year, then there is certainly hope for Windows Mobile yet.