Microsoft has used to CTIA this week to expand on its Windows Marketplace for Mobile strategy and its Windows 6.5 upgrades, but entertainment and devices president Robbie Bach used his keynote today to outline how it all fits together. Enabling the connected experience is an important goal for the software maker, invested heavily in IPTV through its Mediaroom middleware, wireless through Windows Mobile and, increasingly, netbooks on the PC side.
Driven by the economy and desire for mobile connectivity, netbooks have been a bright spot in Microsoft’s sales, Bach said. More than 90% of netbooks shipping today run Windows, although the software is up against increasing competition from Android and others. Operators, too, are catching on to the netbook idea, realizing the potential to drive data revenues. Microsoft estimates that by 2012, one-third of netbooks on the market will be sold by operators.
“You are going to see these machines become full-fledged PCs in a very connected world,” Bach said in today’s keynote.
On the mobile front, Microsoft is approaching its next batch of Windows Mobile phones with an emphasis on choice of form factor, functionality and fashion. The Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system will be available on at least 10 phones this year, including a new user interface featuring the date and time, the user’s next calendar appointment and a lock icon with a number associated with it. The number indicates how many alerts – voicemail, texts, email, etc – require the user’s attention. All WinMo phones coming out this year will have a dedicated start key, much like the iPhone, that calls up all a user’s apps.
The widget-driven, touch user interface of Windows 6.5 also includes personal color palettes and wallpapers from fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi. The Marketplace ecosystem will support numerous apps around this idea of personalization and customization, Bach said.
“The thing we hear from customers about these experiences is they want the phones to be unique to them,” Bacj said. “They want choices, but they want the phone to be a fashion statement. When you think about it, people chose phones in part because of the functionality and in part because of fashion.”
To make good on its promising of connecting these platforms, Microsoft also provided more details today on its PlayReady content access and protection technology that AT&T is using to bring shared content and converged entertainment experiences across its three screens. PacketVideo will support PlayReady in its CORE multimedia platform to expand the technology’s reach to the 320 devices the platform is currently embedded in, including those based on the Android, Linux and Symbian operating systems. Future devices will have the option to support PlayReady content beginning later in 2009, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft also announced its PlayReady Service Provider Program, which lets companies deliver PlayReady-protected content without having to deploy their own server systems or directly license the server technology from Microsoft. Instead, content distribution networks and hosting companies participating in the program can provide the servers to other companies to speed time to market. More than 50 companies currently use the software to deliver digital mobile and in-home content, and six companies have been certified as PlayReady service providers, including BuyDRM, CDNetworks, Entriq, ExtendMedia, Ipercast and iStream Planet.
Axinom, Cloakware, CoreMedia, Envivio, SafeNet, Twofour Digital and TXT Polymedia were among the companies that today announced they would incorporate PlayReady into their offerings, which span enterprise, Web content management, video and audio.
