The high-end PC market is not a bad place to be. Just ask Apple, which rules it and with great financial success. According to new stats from NPD Group, Apple now claims 91 percent of the U.S. retail market for personal computers costing more than $1,000. Nine out of 10 dollars spent on such machines in June went to Cupertino.
Apple and Microsoft have long competed for market space. And soon they’ll be competing for retail space as well. In remarks at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference today, COO Kevin Turner said Microsoft has settled on a location for the retail stores it announced earlier this year: Right next to Apple’s stores. There goes the neighborhood, right?
As Apple marks the one-year anniversary of its App Store with a bit of celebratory smack talk, Microsoft has provided a few more details about its forthcoming rival offering: Windows Marketplace for Mobile store. At its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this morning, the company said it will begin accepting applications for the store on July 27 with an eye toward opening it by the end of the year.
It was more than a decade ago that Microsoft’s Outlook email client first became accessible over the Web. Now the rest of the company’s flagship Office suite is following suit. At the opening of its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this morning, Microsoft announced a “technical preview” of Office 2010 and revealed that some of its key applications–Word, Excel and PowerPoint–will be available over the Web in 2010. For free.
After a bit of reflection, the Street is beginning to have its say about Google’s new Chrome operating system, and the consensus seems to be that while Chrome is obviously the company’s most direct assault on Windows to date, it’s not likely to be all that disruptive to the ubiquitous OS. “It’s not good news for Microsoft,” said FBR Capital Markets analyst David Hilal. “The real question right now is how bad can it be?”
Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Microsoft Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, was given a bump-up in title today. He was promoted to president, joining Stephen Elop, Bob Muglia, Qi Lu and Robbie Bach as the fifth company executive with that title. The official announcement and all-hands memo, after the jump.
Apple claims that Safari 4 is “the world’s fastest” Web browser. That may or may not be true, but certainly its speedy market share gains are impressive, particularly among Windows users. Apple said Friday that more than 11 million copies of the new browser have been downloaded in the first three days of its release, including more than six million downloads by Windows users.
What a brilliant move. The European Commission claims Microsoft’s practice of bundling Internet Explorer with Windows violates European competition laws, so the company strips IE out of European versions of Windows 7. Now the Commission can’t argue that Microsoft’s behavior distorts fair competition in the browser market because, well, there’s no browser.
Microsoft’s recently unveiled search engine, Bing, has piqued Google’s interest, but the search sovereign isn’t losing any sleep over it–or it would like us all to think that, anyway. In an interview with Fox Business Network Tuesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt dismissed Bing as the latest in a string of feeble search efforts at Microsoft.
What’s Google got that is new today? Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, for one thing. The App allows users to sync Outlook with Apps, just like Outlook natively syncs with Exchange. Offers fast email sync with Google-native protocol, full calendar and contact sync, as well as global address autocomplete and search and free/busy information support.
Pretty slick. Google has essentially recreated the Outlook GUI within Apps.
In a year, Google Apps will be “night and day from what they are today.” That’s what Dave Girouard, president of Google’s Enterprise division, told attendees of the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch Technology Conference last week. Today we’ll likely find out whether that was truly a foretelling of things to come or more Google braggadocio. At an event in San Francisco, Google was set to discuss the future of its productivity suite and some enhancements that may begin to close the gap with Microsoft Office. Click through for a live blog of the event.
With a 20 percent share of the the world-wide browser market and 31 percent of its European segment, Mozilla’s Firefox browser has clearly proven that Microsoft Internet Explorer is not immune to free-market competition. But the natural course of the free markets is apparently not moving fast enough for the European Commission, which is mulling forcing Microsoft to include browsers other than IE in its Windows OS.
What’s in a name? Apparently, the answer to Microsoft’s many search problems. As we previously reported, the software behemoth plans to debut its new search service at our D: All Things Digital conference later this week, and when it does it may have a new name. Reports claim that Microsoft Live Search, once known as Windows Live Search, and prior to that as MSN Search, will henceforth be known as… Bing.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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