Apple

A few tech blogs on Monday morning are highlighting some choice quotes from a Melinda Gates interview that appears in the most recent issue of Vogue.

According to the Vogue piece, Bill and Melinda Gates, in addition to making their home a no-iPhone/iPod zone, have forbidden their three children from using the devices (no word on rules for other Apple products).

The article's mainly about the Gates Foundation and how it's trying to solve "hunger in the world." We certainly appreciate that, but we'll stick with the inane superficial stuff here, thank you very much.

LG's LG-GM730 may be Melinda Gates' best option as an iPhone substitute.

(Credit: LG)

"There are very few things that are on the banned list in our household," Gates tells Vogue. "But iPods and iPhones are two things we don't get for our kids." The article goes on to add that "Gates acknowledges the inevitable lure of forbidden fruit." The Microsoft founder's wife also is quoted as saying, "Every now and then, I look at my friends and say, 'Ooh, I wouldn't mind having that iPhone.'"

Of course, if we were doing the interview, the obvious next question would be, "Just what cell phones do you and Bill use?"

With a big alliance in place with LG for Windows Mobile phones, I'm betting that they go with something like LG's upcoming LG-GM730. It certainly looks like an iPhone. On the outside, anyway.

Anybody else want to guess?

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer knows not to blink.

On the desktop front, Microsoft is not discounting the approximately 1 percent market share gain Apple has garnered in the past year, bolstering its position as the No. 4 player in operating systems behind Linux, said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, during a midyear update with analysts Tuesday.

"We're very focused on both Apple as a competitor and Linux as a competitor," Ballmer said.

And concerns regarding Google's open-source mobile operating system Android are not far behind.

"I think the dynamics with Linux is changing somewhat," Ballmer said. "I assume we'll see Android-based, Linux-based laptops, in addition to phones, and we'll see Google more and more as a competitor in the desktop operating system business than we ever have before."

Last month, for example, a report surfaced that raised the question of whether the Android operating system had recently been successfully ported over to a Netbook.

"The seams between what is a phone operating system and a PC operating system will change, so we have ramped our investment in the client operating system," Ballmer said.

And on the mobile operating system front, Windows Mobile ranks third, with Apple's iPhone fourth and Google's Android currently a blip on the radar, but nonetheless a concern for the Redmond giant, Ballmer said.

"The truth of the matter is all the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android," Ballmer said.

He added he sees competition in the mobile arena occurring on two fronts: one is selling mobile-related software independently from the hardware, which may explain the software giant's reported interest in launching a Windows Mobile online applications store. The other front is a combination of software, hardware, and services bundled together, similar to Apple's iPhone or Research In Motion's popular BlackBerry.

Motorola's Good Technology group hopes its latest update will eliminate the moment of terror experienced by a traveling salesperson who realizes the slide deck got left back at the office.

Good's smartphone e-mail software, shown here, will now let you access corporate applications and files without third-party VPN software.

(Credit: Motorola Good Technology Group)

Good 6.0 will now allow Windows Mobile smartphone users to access corporate applications and their companies' shared network resources over the same secure connection that delivers their e-mail. This would eliminate the need for VPN (virtual private network) software on smartphones, said Dan Rudolph, director of product marketing for Good.

Good's software allows Windows Mobile and Palm users to get their corporate e-mail on their handhelds, as an alternative to Research in Motion's BlackBerry experience. Despite its affiliation with Motorola, Good doesn't do the soup-to-nuts smartphone experience that RIM provides; it just makes the software.

The e-mail portion of Good 6.0 hasn't changed all that much since the 5.0 release, Rudolph said, although the IT department can now customize the home screen as it sees fit. The real change is the addition of the Good Mobile Connection technology, which allows smartphone users to tap into the same secure pipe that transmits their e-mail to access files and applications behind the firewall. Rudolph promises this experience is transparent to the user, without requiring any sort of log-in procedure.

The new version also allows IT managers to use a Web application to track and control the Good-equipped devices on their network, and improves the reporting capabilities available to those managers, Rudolph said.

Microsoft just held a summit on the next version of Windows Mobile, and one attendee is excited about the product, but worried about the timing.

Brandon Miniman of PocketNow posted a recap (thanks, Gizmodo) of his trip to Redmond for the Microsoft MVP Summit to check out Windows Mobile 7. He couldn't get into details, as he had signed an NDA about the event, but hinted that the leaked screenshots earlier this year are pretty close to what you should expect from Windows Mobile 7.

Windows Mobile 7 is expected to be a dramatic improvement over 6.1, shown here, but when will it arrive?

(Credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft just released Windows Mobile 6.1 at the CTIA show on April 1. The latest version was a pretty incremental improvement to Windows Mobile 6, with a redesigned home screen as the most prominent change. Microsoft's Robbie Bach spent much of his keynote address to CTIA attendees talking about how Microsoft needs to make Windows Mobile easier for consumers to use and enjoy.

While he honored the terms of his NDA, Miniman said "as icing on the cake, think of your biggest complaint with Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6...it's likely that in Windows Mobile 7, it's been fixed." Most Windows Mobile users in the unofficial smartphone survey I conducted last month complained about a stodgy user interface that looks pedestrian compared to Apple's iPhone, so that's the biggest hint of what might be to come.

But Miniman came away from the summit with two thoughts. One, Microsoft won't be ready to release Windows Mobile 7 until 2009, and maybe not until the second half of the year. That's a bit of speculation on his part, but he makes the point that Apple, RIM, Google, and even Palm will probably have released improved operating systems by mid-2009, and Microsoft will just be catching up.

His second suspicion is that Microsoft is going to use the talent it acquired from Danger to build a Microsoft-branded hardware phone. As recently as last month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told my colleague Ina Fried that Microsoft wanted Danger's expertise in delivering applications to handhelds, not the handhelds themselves, when it acquired the company.

But given Microsoft's success with building the Xbox hardware division, it's interesting to ponder whether it would try and turn the mediocre-at-best performance of the Zune group into a phone.

Miniman closes by saying: "Microsoft is working like mad to make Windows Mobile 7 be an OS that we all drool over (both for businesses and consumers), and they've listened pretty well to our bitching and complaining over the last few years." However, he points out that if the company waits too long, it might not matter.

Microsoft is getting ready to take the wraps off the latest version of Windows Mobile, according to a report out Tuesday.

Pocket Lint is claiming that Microsoft will release Windows Mobile 6.1 next Tuesday, which happens to be the day that Microsoft's Robbie Bach, head of the Windows Mobile team, is planning to give a keynote address at the CTIA Wireless conference in Las Vegas. Purely a coincidence, I'm sure, although it will be April Fool's Day.

Microsoft could be getting ready to release an updated version of Windows Mobile 6, shown here.

(Credit: Microsoft)

Windows Mobile 6.1 will be the first major update to ship since version 6.0 made its debut last year. Screenshots that leaked out earlier this year hinted that 6.1 would use a sleeker interface, cutting down on some of the clutter in the 6.0 version.

The sixth version came with some incremental improvements to Windows Mobile 5.0, according to CNET's review of WinMo 6. But next year, Microsoft is expected to take a nod from Apple's OS X and release a touch-screen-oriented user interface as part of Windows Mobile 7.

I'll be at CTIA next week for Bach's keynote address along with several colleagues, as we check out the latest from Microsoft's smartphone group. At the moment, Windows Mobile phones are quite popular with the CNET News.com crowd, but there's not a single company in this industry that isn't re-examining its future road map after watching the debut of the iPhone.

This post was updated at 10:15 a.m. PDT to correct the spelling on Anup Murarka's name.

Even though it has plans to release a competing technology, Microsoft has agreed to license Adobe's Flash Lite technology for its Windows Mobile operating system and browser.

The two companies early on Monday announced that Microsoft has signed a license to use Flash Lite and Reader LE in future Windows Mobile handsets as plug-ins for Internet Explorer Mobile. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, such as what the companies plan to do when Microsoft releases Silverlight for Mobile, a competing technology.

Flash Lite is a stripped-down version of the ubiquitous Flash video player that allows mobile handsets to view Web sites created with the Flash technology. Think of Flash Lite as a slightly older version of Flash; the most current version of Flash Lite can't properly display Web sites created with the newest version of Flash, Flash 9, but it works with sites created using older versions of the technology.

As smartphones become more and more common, people are starting to get fed up with the basic Web surfing experience offered by many phones. They want something that looks more like a PC experience, with rich graphics and video. But that's hard to duplicate on a device with a smaller screen, less memory, a slower processor, and battery life requirements.

Enter Flash Lite. "Past technologies have failed trying to get into mobile by cramming a desktop experience into a mobile device," said Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for mobile and devices at Adobe. "The technology has to bend to the use cases, rather than the use cases bending to the technology."

Microsoft's Derek Snyder agreed. "One of the hallmark experiences on any smartphone is the Web browsing experience," said Snyder, a product manager with Microsoft's mobile-communications business. Strengthening that experience, as well as adding support for PDF documents through the Reader LE license, was the motivation for Microsoft to make the deal, he said.

Flash Lite has several limitations compared with regular Flash, beyond the inability to support much of Flash 9. Apple CEO Steve Jobs rather emphatically declared his disdain for Flash Lite at Apple's annual shareholder meeting, saying Flash Lite was "not capable of being used with the Web." Murarka declined to comment specifically on Jobs' put-down, but noted that Flash Lite ships on 500 million mobile devices.

He did acknowledge that developers using Adobe's Flex tools can't build Flash Lite Web pages, although the newer CS3 suite of tools does support Flash Lite.

But one huge advantage of Flash Lite is that it's currently available for mobile devices. Microsoft's Silverlight for Mobile is not.

Silverlight is Microsoft's attempt to rein in on Adobe's position in the Web development market with Flash. Microsoft is fighting an uphill battle, though, in trying to get Web developers to build sites using its technology as opposed to Adobe's.

Earlier this month Microsoft said it wouldn't have a mobile version of Silverlight out until later this year. A technical preview is expected to arrive in the second quarter, but no other details have been released. Snyder declined to elaborate on the time frame for a production version of Silverlight for Mobile.

With Microsoft's Windows Mobile team now having to meet a surge in demand for Web-friendly mobile phones, led by the iPhone, licensing Flash Lite makes sense as a "for now" solution, at least until the company's own dog food is ready. The iPhone has been able to capture mobile Web surfers without any support for Flash technologies, something that other mobile devices running IE Mobile or Opera's mobile browser will likely try to exploit later this year.

Eventually, Microsoft expects to support both Flash Lite and Silverlight on its Windows Mobile handsets. "Flash is, for a lot of people, something they've already invested in," Snyder said. Having support for the incumbent while it tries to get Web developers on the Silverlight team makes sense; "it's good to have both," he said.

If CNET News.com's readers are any indication, Microsoft's Windows Mobile has a better base of support than one might think, but all the winds are blowing toward Apple.

The results of our first annual (maybe) smartphone survey are in, and thanks to everyone who left comments here on One More Thing or over on Crave, and those who flooded my inbox with responses. Yes, I know we should have a survey tool, but we're working on other stuff right now that's more important. (You'll have to trust me on that one.)

Between the comments and the e-mails, we received 159 responses. I must note that this is not a scientific study; we're not going to be putting market research firms out of business anytime soon. But I thought it was time for a look at what some of our readers are using, and I was surprised at some of the results.

Windows Mobile-based smartphones were by far the choice of survey respondents. Of the 130 people who said they owned a smartphone, 42.3 percent said they were using a Windows Mobile-based smartphone. That category includes the carrier-branded models, mostly from HTC, as well as the Motorola Q and the Samsung BlackJack, the two most-popular "tier 1" brands cited in the responses using Windows Mobile.

"This past weekend I traded in my BlackBerry Pearl for the HTC Tilt on AT&T's service," said a Crave reader with the screen name Yieeman. "So far it has been great. I like the fact that it works more like a computer for the organization of e-mails and documents, but also has amazing call clarity."

With 19.2 percent of the responses, the BlackBerry was the second most popular device among readers when the data was sorted by operating system. Apple's iPhone came in third, with 17.7 percent. Palm and Symbian tied for fourth place with 10 percent each.

Most of News.com's readers come from the United States (Thursday, 70.7 percent of our readers were in the U.S.), and most of the Windows Mobile phones claimed by respondents were carrier-branded models, with the AT&T/Cingular 8525 and 8515 popping up the most often. Symbian is by far the leading smartphone operating system provider in the world, but its phones are generally harder to find in the U.S., where RIM dominates the smartphone market.

Sorted by manufacturer, RIM and the HTC models were tied, with 19.2 percent of the survey respondents. I counted most of the carrier branded models as HTC models, in the cases where the carrier-branded model was a carbon copy of the HTC-branded model. Most people referred to their HTC designs with the carrier brand, AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint.

Apple was just behind RIM and HTC, sorted by manufacturer, with 17.7 percent of the survey responses. Apple was followed by Motorola, Palm, and Samsung, in that order, each with around 10 percent of the responses. Surprisingly, Nokia, the worldwide leader in smartphone shipments, was used by only 4.6 percent of respondents. Sony Ericsson was used by 5.4 percent.

And it's clear that while Apple's iPhone isn't the smartphone of choice just yet among survey respondents, it hasn't escaped their notice. When asked which smartphone might be their next model, survey respondents cited the iPhone most often by far.

Of the 159 total responses, 66 people said they would consider an iPhone as their next (or first) smartphone. That was three times as many mentions as the second most desired smartphone, the BlackBerry.

"If I were in the market for a phone today, especially in light of the coming apps and integration with Exchange servers, I would likely get an iPhone," Ryan Hendley said over e-mail. "My current phone, Samsung Sync, does not integrate well with my MacBook calendar and contacts. In fact, it doesn't sync at all."

All those Windows Mobile users appear to be considering a switch, as HTC's models were cited by 10 respondents, but no other major manufacturer, including Nokia, Samsung, Motorola, or Palm, received more than 5 mentions. Several people cited multiple phones on their potential wish lists, so I just counted everything that was mentioned.

Most of the people looking at the iPhone were waiting for either a 3G version or a version that worked with their carrier, citing a desire to avoid AT&T. They were also intrigued by the business features slated to roll out in June, which gives them the option of using their iPhone at work.

The statistics were interesting, but I had also asked people to share the reasons they bought a smartphone in the first place, and whether they liked their current model. Most people did in fact like their current phone. The Windows Mobile users probably grumbled the most about their devices, but still, more than half of them were happy with their experience.

Most people bought their smartphones because they wanted to access e-mail, Web browsing, and telephone calls on a single device, as might be expected. I had thought going in to this survey that most respondents would mostly be using their phones for business, but an overwhelming number of people said they used their devices both for business and pleasure.

The BlackBerry users might have obtained their phone to check their corporate e-mail, but that doesn't mean they don't check sports scores in between meetings, or plot directions to the campground on the weekend. This will be the next big source of growth for smartphones, devices that can balance multimedia consumer desires with business needs. People aren't going to want to carry multiple devices for fun and work: that's why they got a smartphone in the first place.

So, again, thanks to all who participated. Stay tuned for the big CTIA Wireless conference at the beginning of April, which should bring new smartphones, new operating system news, and tons of coverage from both News.com and our colleagues at CNET Reviews.

Can Google's application development prowess be transformed into a next-generation mobile operating system?

It seems increasingly likely that Google, the ubiquitous tech company, is about to throw its hat into the race to develop the next big mobile device. Google's no gadget-maker, but it does develop quite a bit of software, and reports have been building that the company is relatively close to releasing the Gphone. (Our style department says we have to spell it that way.)

Most people who have wandered onto the Internet in the past couple of years are familiar with Google. The company's various applications from Gmail and Google Docs to Google Desktop and the Google Toolbar are likewise familiar to lots of PC users. When it comes to smart phones, Google Maps is almost a must-have application, and it comes standard with the iPhone.

It's very much a wide-open race to develop the next advanced mobile operating system. Symbian has the lead worldwide thanks to its close partnership with Nokia, the largest shareholder in the company. Windows Mobile is the second most widely used smart-phone operating system, according to Forward Concepts, and Linux is the third.

According to reports, Google wants to expand on that last category with its rumored mobile OS. The Gphone would be based on Linux and supported by advertising, which to many techies probably sounds like the ultimate Silicon Valley marriage made in hell. Try to forget, for a moment, about using a smart phone inundated with advertising messages and think about the implications of a Google-developed smart phone operating system.

It's still the very early days for this type of computing. Symbian and Microsoft have staked out opposing positions, but no company with the size and clout of Google has thrown its support behind the Linux development efforts for mobile computing.

Mobile phone makers are intrigued by Linux because of the constrained memory and power requirements of mobile computers and the ability to customize a Linux base for their products. Lots of work has already been done to make Linux modular, or to create building blocks that can be mixed and matched depending on what is desired. Tomihisa Kamada of Access told me earlier in the year that carriers and phone makers also like the idea of having their own branded interface on the phone, rather than relying on Microsoft and Symbian's branded operating system. If you go that route, that means you have to differentiate your products mostly on hardware, and that can be tricky.

But established phone makers and carriers looking for an answer to the iPhone are finding it hard to bet on a single Linux provider. Palm is floundering, with the recent news that the Linux-based version of Palm OS has been delayed again. Access, the company that acquired former Palm OS developer Palmsource, isn't faring much better. The folks at OpenMoko have gotten some buzz, but when First International Computer is your only hardware partner, you've got an uphill fight ahead of you. MontaVista has had some success with Motorola, and Wind River has been doing some interesting work, but are they in the best position to persuade the world to take a chance on their products?

Google, on the other hand, is Google. They've got open-source credibility, they've got mobile phone pioneers on board with their acquisition of Android in 2005, and some of the best and brightest engineers that Silicon Valley has to offer (not to mention enough cash to fund four or five internal projects that might have produced the eventual winner). As mobile phones start to deliver the same Internet experience as a PC, mobile search will be a vital application.

Could Google be the next mobile operating system company? It's more prepared than you might think.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The part that trips me up is the notion of an advertising-supported Gphone, something also reported by BusinessWeek as a key part of Google's aims for this market, along with its intention to go after the 700MHz spectrum auction. You're going to have to offer people something pretty special to have ads--even targeted ads--be an integral part of the phone experience, which has thus far been mostly ad free. BusinessWeek thinks Google could be trying to do a television model on your phone, where voice and data minutes are free when the phone user agrees to accept advertising. While that might work to a certain extent, I think people have shown themselves quite willing to pay for things that get around the increasing reach of advertising. The New York Times reported Monday, however, that Google may be forgoing a licensing fee for its software in favor of the advertising model, which could make the software that much more attractive to phone makers.

Despite a lack of smart-phone experience, Google has to be taken seriously in this market. It has the talent and the assets to worm its way into mobile phones, a consumer-friendly brand, and the industry heft to stick around through a few development cycles. The look and feel of any Gphone will be crucial to its chances, and without any solid information to that effect, it's hard to say whether this thing will be a success or a flop. But it's not hard to imagine that Google is making mobile development executives at Symbian, Microsoft, and Palm think long and hard about the current projects they have under development.

UPDATED, 10/9 5:40 p.m: Corrects spelling of Tomihisa Kamada's name.