Cody Taylor

mjasay writes “Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler points to some interesting long-term trends in browser market share, noting that ‘browser releases aren’t having any major impact on the macro trends,’ which suggests that a better IE will likely have little impact on its sliding market share. The most intriguing conclusion from the data, however, is that Firefox could surpass IE market share as early as January 2013 if Firefox continues to gain 5 percent every year, even as IE drops 5 percent each year. In the past, Microsoft might have fought back by tying IE to other products to block competition, but with the EU keeping a close antitrust eye on Microsoft and the US Obama administration keen to make an example of an antitrust bully, Microsoft may have few good options beyond good old fashioned competition, which doesn’t seem to be working very well for the Redmond giant, as the market share data suggests. Microsoft’s loss of IE market power, in turn, could have serious consequences for the company’s efforts to compete with Google on the Web.”

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clang_jangle writes “Arstechnica has a short article up describing how Microsoft and Intel have ‘goofed up’ Windows 7’s XP Mode, by ensuring many PCs will not be able to use it. (And it won’t be easy to figure out in advance if your PC is one of them.) Meanwhile, over at Infoworld, Redmond is criticized for having the ‘right idea, wrong technology’ with their latest compatibility scheme, and PC World says ‘great idea, on paper.’ With Windows 7 due to be released in 2010, and Redmond apparently eager to move on from XP, perhaps this is not really a ‘goof’ at all?”

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nandemoari sends along word that Apple has picked up Richard Teversham, a senior Executive from Microsoft’s European Xbox operations, ending his 15 years of service to Redmond. Some press accounts assume that Teversham’s role may lie in beefing up the games scene on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Forbes goes farther, opining that Apple “appears to be preparing an all-out assault on the handheld gaming market.” Other reporting associates the hire with Apple’s recent buildout of chip-design expertise.

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It’s crazy, we know. Just hours after hearing shockingly believable whispers that Apple’s white-hot iPhone 3G could be sashaying over to Verizon Wireless, in flies a Wall Street Journal report asserting that the suits in Redmond are (also?) in talks with America’s largest carrier. Should be launched next year!!!

nandemoari writes “With only a few weeks until Microsoft’s Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 (RC1) is released, Microsoft is already looking for people to help with Windows 8. An April 14th job ad posted by Microsoft says the upcoming version of Windows will have new features like cluster support and support for one way replication. Apparently the Windows 8 kernel is being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. Windows 8 will also include innovative features that, according to Microsoft, will revolutionize file access in branch offices.” Relatedly, several users tell us that both 32 and 64-bit versions of the Windows 7 release candidate have been leaked into the wild via p2p networks. The current leaked version shows little change beyond bug fixes, so it would seem what you see is what you get. This all comes as Microsoft posts quarterly sales that have fallen for the first time in the company’s 23-year history. Seeing a 6% drop in revenue and a 32% drop in earnings, some within the Redmond giant expect the downward trend to continue.

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Microsoft’s supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on “value” instead of “cost” with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant’s recent “Apple Tax” message. “While I’m sure Ramji meant well, I’m equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Microsoft’s supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on “value” instead of “cost” with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant’s recent “Apple Tax” message. “While I’m sure Ramji meant well, I’m equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

It looks like Windows Mobile 6.5 will arrive a little earlier than expected. A post on the WinMo team blog says that the update to Redmond’s smartphone platform will officially launch on May 11, the first day of the Tech Ed conference.

An anonymous reader writes “Citing figures from market research firm NPD, Microsoft says Windows’ share of the US netbook market has ballooned from less than 10% in the first half of 2008 to 96% as of February. ‘The growth of Windows on netbook PCs over the last year has been phenomenal,’ wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft’s in-house Windows blogger, in a post Friday. Information Week author Paul McDougall notes Microsoft’s 8% decline in Windows sales is due to netbooks sporting Linux. How does Redmond make an 80% gain in netbook market share without the sales numbers reflecting that gain?”

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Would you like the iPhone as much as you do if it came from Redmond instead of Cupertino?