Microsoft encourages OEMs to use Bing, shares profits

Under Google's current undisputed monopoly over the search engine world, Bing is trying to come out of its underdog position and be a major player in the field. Currently, Google hold 67% market share, with Bing left with a mere 18%. This is definitely something Microsoft wants to change before the consumers are even more accustomed to Google then they are today (and they pretty much are), so while Microsoft hopped on the bandwagon a tidy late, now it's doing efforts to catch up.

One of MS's tactics is not very different than Google, and it shares profits with OEMs in order to encourage them to use Bing search. The existence of such a tactic has been discovered thanks to Windows Phone Dev Center, in a post you can see below, reminding manufacturers to place codes to earn profits.

We have seen WP starting to gain some market share in the mid- to low-range market, thanks to its rather-aggressive pricing tactic, something which WP has to do in order to get people to try it.

Now, OEMs wouldn't leave themselves such small profit margins, would they. So, to sweeten the peel and inspire budget pricing, it seems Microsoft is sharing the profits in makes from Bing searches with the manufacturers which implement the search engine in their phones, something mostly WP does.

Personally, I would rather have more competition, so while I might favor one OS or another, I would always like for there to be competition, and a player with over 66% market share is a little un-sportive, so the better Bing gets, the more competition, the better output we will all see and enjoy. 

Tell us what you think below!  

Read More

Windows Phone lock-screen getting widget-support

WP users are now starting to receive the latest WP 8.1 ‘Cyan’ update, and with it come a load of new features, and one of them includes new lock screen apps, a.k.a widgets.

While Android users have been enjoying this feature for quite a while now, what Windows did with it looks very stylish, it basically is iterations on the default clock widget, allowing you to choose new styles (in the video below we are introduced to three- Classic, Clock Plus and Stripes)

So, as you can see there aren’t any new animations, but the new lock-screen clock widgets really look very good. It is only available for phones with at least 1GB of RAM, and of course you need the latest 8.1 update.

When it will become available you can download it from the Windows Store. Here’s the video introducing three of the new widgets:

Read More

Microsoft to discontinue Nokia X line, layoff 18,000 employees

Nokia X

Nokia X was Microsoft’s idea at a slight re-branding, to bring the Nokia phone experience to users who are too attached to Android to give up on it. It was basically a Lumia running Android, with slight design changes.

As we all know, the Nokia X was a sales failure, getting greeted grimly by us Android fans, it seemed an un-finished product, not quite Android and not quite WP, it was a crossbreed no-one wanted to touch.

Read More