Microsoft’s mobile platform has not been the blockbuster success the Redmond, Washington-based technology giant was hoping for thus far. Google’s Android OS and Apple’s iPhone are still dominating the smartphone space by a huge margin in the United States and abroad, while Microsoft’s share of the global smartphone market has continued to decline. According to a new report from market research firm Kantar WorldPanel, however, Windows Phone is finally showing signs of life in several ke...

According to a new report from Forrester Research, Microsoft is leading both Apple and Google in the TV and home entertainment sector, The New York Times reported on Wednesday. While Apple and Google may control mobile, Microsoft’s Xbox entertainment system tops both Apple TV and Google TV according to the report. With the Xbox, Forrester analyst James McQuivey believes Microsoft is the farthest along when it comes to delivering users content through their television sets. “Using those metrics, Micro...

A Russian startup that received $100,000 of funding from Microsoft made headlines recently as its emerging efforts to battle digital piracy found their way to the spotlight. Dubbed Pirate Pay, the company’s technology launches attacks on groups of computers hosting pirated content, theoretically making it impossible for them to share copyrighted material. While the company claims to have already successfully trialed its technology when it blocked nearly 45,000 attempts to download pirated copies of a Russi...

NPD Group last week announced that video games sales for the month of April were down 26% and software sales plummeted from $630.4 million to $307.2 million, representing a 42% decline from April 2011. The numbers shocked industry analysts, who predicted a maximum software decline of 27%. The only segment of the gaming industry that did not suffer was the accessories segment, which grew a mere 0.5% from $147.8 million last year to $148.6 million this year. According Gamasutra analyst Matt Matthews, “sho...

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is the worst CEO of any large publicly traded American company, according to Forbes. The executive sits atop of a list that contains the CEOs of other large companies such as Cisco, General Electric, Walmart and Sears. The publication highlights how Ballmer has “singlehandedly steered Microsoft out of some of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, handsets and tablets),” and in the process has sacrificed the growth and profits of other co...

A former Microsoft executive in charge of the company’s Zune division has admitted its music players were a mistake, GeekWire reported. “The portable music market is gone and it was already leaving when we started,” Robbie Bach said at an entrepreneurs’ event in Seattle last week. “We just weren’t brave enough,” he said, admitting that Microsoft had been targeting Apple “and there wasn’t a reason for somebody to say, oh, I have to go out and get [Zune] that thing....

Russian startup Pirate Pay is taking aim at the growing popularity of illegal file-sharing as it looks to cooperate with music labels and movie studios to stem the distribution of copyrighted materials on the Internet. The company’s technology launches attacks on “BitTorrent swarms,” or groups of computers hosting pirated content, making it impossible for them to share copyrighted material, TorrentFreak reports. “After creating the prototype, we realized we could more generally preve...

One of Microsoft’s latest research projects offers gesture controls using a computer’s speakers, microphone and inaudible sounds. The technology is called “SoundWave” and it utilizes the Doppler effect to detect gestures. With the help of a computer’s speakers and microphone, SoundWave can detect the frequency change of a sound wave by using inaudible sounds and measuring the change in feedback as a hand gesture is performed. Even if a user is playing music on his or her laptop o...

Sprint’s director of consumer acquisition, David Owens, said at the CTIA Wireless trade show on Tuesday that he’s “still bullish on Apollo,” possibly indicating the nation’s third-largest carrier plans to soon offer a wider selection of Windows Phone devices, PCMag reported. Owens at CES in January said the network’s only Windows Phone handset, the HTC Arrive, hadn’t “done well enough for us to jump back into the fire.” He did say, however, that Sprint wou...

The majority of mobile subscribers in the United Stated now own a smartphone according to the latest numbers from Nielsen. The research firm found that 50.4% of all U.S. mobile subscribers owned smartphones in March, up from 47.8% in December 2011. Consumers purchasing new phones picked smartphones more often than featured phones, with Apple called the top manufacturer and Android as the top platform. During the first quarter of 2012, 48% of smartphone owners had an Android-powered device, while 32% of device...

Nokia continues to struggle as the once dominant cell phone maker continues to lose share in both the smartphone and broader mobile market. The Finnish vendor’s Lumia handsets have yet to take off and Nokia’s stock has tumbled 90% over the past five years. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop may look toward his former employer, Microsoft, to step in and help the troubled handset maker, Reuters suggests. The company’s partnership with the software giant is seen as a last chance to turn its business arou...

A Texas electronics company has allegedly begun production on Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox gaming console, according to a report from IGN. Production of the Xbox 720 is reportedly underway at the Austin, Texas branch of Flextronics, the same electronics company responsible for manufacturing the Xbox 360 and the original Xbox. Despite these reports, however, Microsoft firmly stated that the next-generation Xbox will not debut at this year’s E3 gaming convention. The hardware currently being man...

As previously rumored, Microsoft is now offering a subsidized 4GB Xbox 360 gaming console and Kinect for $99 with a monthly subscription option. The bundle requires customers to sign up for a two-year subscription to Xbox Live Gold Membership for $14.99 per month. The subscription plan is similar to the model wireless carriers have been using for years. If a customer is to break off the agreement prior to end of the 24-month contract period, early termination fees will apply. The deal is only available at Mic...

Samsung and AT&T on Monday announced the Samsung Focus 2, a budget-friendly Windows Phone launching on May 20th for just $49.99 on contract. The handset features a 4-inch Super AMOLED display, a 5-megapixel camera, Windows Phone 7.5 and 4G LTE connectivity. “AT&T offers our customers the broadest Windows Phone portfolio of any carrier, with three 4G LTE Windows Phones – the only 4G LTE Windows Phones in the U.S. – now at a variety of price points and form factors,” AT&T SVP of devices Jef...