Most analysts keep yelling at both companies that their lagging in the innovative space, but based on the numbers RIM and Microsoft are doing just fine. They both have huge market shares and combined still outsell both Apple and Palm. Just in case you’re wondering, there is a reason why both companies are not in a hurry to create the next iPhone, Pre or Android killer. And it lies deep in their strategy.

Ever since Microsoft bought Danger (the makers of the Sidekick), there has been rumors about the company creating its own cellphone. While there might be some truth to it (as the company keeps denying the rumors vehemently), Microsoft isn’t ready to cut HTC, Samsung and Toshiba from their bankrolls yet.

As a corporation, both RIM and Microsoft appeal to a different audience then most attracted to the Pre or iPhone. While the majority of iPhone owners are first time smartphone buyers, those who have Windows Mobile and Blackberry’s are quite aware of what is out there and what fits their needs. Talking to most Blackberry owners you will hear the resounding answer as to why they haven’t adopted an iPhone yet, “it has no proper email support” or “it lacks a keyboard.” While these are “minor” issues to many, to those who have grown to love their Blackberry’s it’s a major deal.

Another reason for the continued success of Windows Mobile and Blackberry is its corporate following. To date the iPhone has a meager corporate base and the Pre is nonexistent. However, both Blackberry and Windows Mobile excel in this arena. To a lot of smartphone owners, buying a smartphone their company approves of is a big deal and with most corporate IT departments still shunning the iPhone Apple has some major hurdles to jump before they cause any real trouble for RIM or Microsoft.

Fancy graphics and cool animations and slick UI’s are not everything in a smartphone. But you already knew that. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that no one is taking notice of Apple and Palm, if they were not there would not be custom UI overlays for Windows Mobile, Blackberry or Android. That said, it still is a fact that not everyone is swayed by them. You’d wonder why people would still use the classic Windows theme even though it’s close to two decades old. Well that is the same reason why people still buy the subject phones here.

Loyalty is the word we’re looking for. According to NDP statistics the average Blackberry user has had two or more devices. Following this same trend, an HTC Touch user is more then likely to grab the Touch Diamond 2 or a similar Windows Mobile device. The loyalty that both companies have built within their customer base is commendable and is one that most cell phone companies seek after.

Last but not least not everyone is a fan of the iPhone or Pre. There are those who categorize the iPhone base as just a subdivision of the Macintosh base who will buy any s_ Apple puts out as long as it’s shiny and expensive. Fortunately this is not the case but Apple has been notorious for its fan boy following and many smartphone users don’t like this.

I won’t say however that RIM and Microsoft need not worry because every update the iPhone gets, it comes closer to gaining a little more acceptance from its enemies. But as is the case with the new players in the game, they are the ones who have to work doubly hard as the seasoned players can relax a bit (however the proverbial rabbit and turtle teaches what happens when seasoned players rest too long).

As the case is right now RIM and Windows Mobile isn’t terribly exciting at the moment. But they both carry functionality, customizability and an avid user base and that’s what counts. However they can learn a lesson or two. As a former owner of both Windows Mobile (MotoQ) and Blackberry (Curve 8330), I can say it didn’t take me much to drop my previous phones for the Palm Pre. Neither can I say it will take a miracle for me to keep my Pre. There are those of us who ride the gadget waves and those are the customers that can make or break a company. Did I mention the new Blackberry Tour and the Toshiba TG01 are looking mighty sexy at the moment?

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Such is the case with the mobile smartphone application market. While it may seem odd to some, Apple wasn’t the first in the mobile app marketplace niche. The credit for this idea actually goes to Helio and their original Ocean. But where the Ocean lacked Apple built on and was able to claim the spot as the most successful smartphone application marketplace to date. This of course has led to many others copying their pattern in one form or another and while all the major players in the smartphone market have released their forms of application markets, albeit some are still beta, Microsoft is still left out of that bunch.

Recently, mobiFrance sat down with Audrey Zolghadr, Windows Mobile Product Manager for Microsoft’s French headquarters. While the interview went over quite a few things many of us already knew about Microsoft’s intentions to dominate the mobile marketplace once again, it did shed some light on a few factors that could really help Microsoft in their quest for this dominance.

Although the iPhone has passed Windows Mobile in recent months, (quarterly sales), Microsoft still remains in the top three in overall market share in the smartphone industry. As Audrey Zolghadr pointed out, Windows Mobile has over 20,000 apps currently available for the Windows Mobile OS. That said, Apple confirmed back in February of this year that after 7 months in the mobile application market it has over 20,000 apps available in the iTunes App Store. You might also remember that they recently crossed the 1 billion app download mark.

So how does that fit in with Windows Marketplace? Well for one, when the App Store launched back on July 11th 2008 it only had 500 apps that were approved. Audrey Zolghadr has confirmed that 600 will be available when Microsoft launches Windows Marketplace. It should be noted though that not all apps will appear to every Windows Mobile user. The apps shown on the marketplace will depend on certain things such as screen resolution etc.

But still Microsoft has an advantage here as they have more Windows Mobile phones circulating then Apple has iPhone’s. Since this is coming to an already established platform it shouldn’t be a surprise why analysts are expecting some pretty impressive numbers, and if the recent news about the Palm webOS App Catalog has taught us anything lately, people are app crazy no matter what is out there.
Given the new invigoration pumped into the Windows Mobile platform by partners such as HTC, Sony and more recently Samsung it is going to be interesting to see how this translates to the Marketplace success. Audrey Zolghadr acknowledges that themes, backgrounds etc. will be available for download VIA the Marketplace, so users will be able to change and customize the OS UI on the fly.

Zolghadr has also stated that the Windows Marketplace will be coming sometime this fall. She points out that Windows Mobile has been changed to Windows Phone and reflects the integration of all the different mobile services including MyPhone, Live (Messenger, Spaces, Hotmail etc) and of course Marketplace.

While I am yet to call this a success on the part of Redmond, it is going to be interesting to see what happens come this fall and next year as Windows Mobile (er… Windows Phone 7.0) is released in the coming year.

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Even better is the creation of shopping lists and the mobile version that is compatible with Windows Mobile Devices.

It is possible to add recipes manually to the software program or import them from RecipeML files, the most common recipe format on the Internet. Various websites provide access to recipe downloads which can then be comfortable added to the recipe software.

ChickenPing users can also export recipes to transfer them to another computer system or a mobile device. Recipes can be automatically adjusted by the program according to the number of users the meal is served for which removes calculation problems from the process. The new version that has been released recently now supports multiple recipe snapshots that can even be uploaded to Flickr (if you search for recipe on Flickr you know why this is a popular option).

A search is provided as well which can be used to search for recipes by name, category or specific ingredient. ChickenPing is a sophisticated free recipe software for the Windows operating system that can be a real asset for computer users who cook regularly.

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Opera Turbo has been added to the mobile web browser which is a compression technique that is routing Internet traffic through a server that is compressing the contents so that they can be delivered more rapidly to the user. The monthly bandwidth bill will also benefit from Opera Turbo as compressed data reduces the overall bandwidth consumption of the mobile device.

Other improvements in Opera Mobile 9.7 are the improved widget manager which runs independently from the web browser, Google Gears support and hardware acceleration with OpenGL ES support. Opera Mobile 9.7 Beta has not yet been released but it is expected to be released soon. Opera created a speed comparison video between Opera Mobile 9.7 with Opera Turbo enabled, Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and Microsoft IE Mobile.

The loading times differ widely. Opera Turbo speeds up the page loading time of that specific page by more than 20 seconds when compared to Opera Mobile 9.7 without Opera Turbo and an amazing 3 minutes 7 seconds in comparison to Internet Explorer Mobile.

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The wallpapers have to be unpacked and transferred to the Windows Mobile device after downloading them from the website. Each package will unpack into two directories that refer to the sizes of the wallpapers contained within. While the wallpaper packs have been specifically designed for Windows Mobile devices they can basically be used on any device with a screen resolution of either 480×640 or 240×320.

Wallpapers are divided into several categories like nature, abstract or people. This means that the packs do contain enough variety to please most users. Well worth a download if you use a mobile device with a supported screen resolution.

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RoboForm is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems and can be installed directly, on a USB device or on mobile devices such as Windows Mobile, Symbian or Blackberry. The software integrates nicely with web browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer or AOL / MSN and displays a toolbar that provides access to all the application’s functions and there is also a System Tray icon providing the same.

The password manager will automatically catch data that is entered in password forms and provides the means to store those passwords in the application so that it can be used to automatically log into the website or service.

Information are stored in so called passcards which do not only contain information like the username or password but additional parameters like cookie length or emails. The information can be protected with a master password which is similar to the feature of the same name in Firefox. The data is therefor protected and save from prying eyes until the master password is provided.

Keyboard shortcuts speed up the process further by providing access to some of the functions and menus. The password manager is only one of the features of RoboForm. It will also aid the user during registration.

It is not a problem to use very long and secure passwords since all passwords are stored in the application. The password generator helps the user by generating a secure password for the website or service.

It provides options to select the length of the password, the allowed characters and the minimum amount of numbers. The password generator will also display the bit strength of the password to give the user an indication of the strength.

Passwords are only one type of information that have to be provided during registration. RoboForm makes use of so called identities that can be used to fill in the other information automatically as well. Identities are data sets that contain information such as names, email addresses, phone numbers and any other type of data the user likes to add.

These information can then be used to automatically fill a registration form which can be a huge time saver for users who regularly sign up for new services on the Internet. Different identities are available to distinguish different users or different environments such as work and home.

Another useful feature of RoboForm is the note taking module. It can be used to store notes securely on the computer. Notes can also be protected by the master password so that no one can access them without providing the master password first. Notes are simple text documents that contain information saved by the user.

RoboForm is an interesting application for users who spend a lot of time on the Internet. If you ever had to register to 20+ services on a day you know how much time it takes to fill out all the information over and over again. Using RoboForm this could have been done in a fraction of the time since the data would have to be entered only once by the user.

We got five RoboForm Pro licenses. If you want one leave a comment below.

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The new Opera 9.5 beta 2 is currently available for Windows Mobile and Symbian UIQ. A release for Symbian S60 phones is planned for 2009. The biggest new feature in this version is the mobile widgets support. Users should not confuse mobile widgets with widgets in desktop versions of Opera because they work and act different which is mainly caused by the limited screen space of mobile phones.

Widgets for Opera mobile are basically one click services that either open a function or website directly. Only a few widgets are currently available including a clock, Twitter or weather information.

Other additions are a new Zoom slider and some user interface and usability improvements in addition to many under-the-hood fixes in the browser core. It is a good time now to test the new Opera mobile browser if you have a mobile device running Windows Mobile or Symbian UIQ.

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The rise of mobile phones, netbooks and other mobile devices pushed the need for data compression tools that reduce the actual size of a data transfer.

Toonel (via Make Use Of) provides a solution both for desktop computer users as well as those that connect with a mobile device to the Internet. It features an impressive list of operating system it is compatible with including Windows, Linux, Macintosh, Windows Mobile and Symbian.

All versions basically function the same way. The traffic is routed through the Toonel servers which compress the communication with the user’s computer system. The user will have to set a proxy address in his favorite web browser or application so that the traffic will be compressed by the local client before it is being send to the Toonel server and from there to the destination address.

Toonel works with http, https, ftp connections and virtually any other form of TCP / IP connections. One interesting feature is to control the quality level of images which can greatly reduce the bandwidth needed to transfer the data. Users who want to save as much as possible might want to consider turning image browsing off in their application.

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Clear Temp does the same for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs. Temporary files and data that you want cleaned can be checked in the main program interface, these include cookies, temp files and cache in various locations, recent programs and a dozen others.

It is furthermore possible to define custom folders that you want cleaned and schedule cleaning during system boot. You should do a soft reset after each cleaning so that the changes can take effect.

Transfer the cab file to your mobile device and tap on it in the file explorer to start the installation.

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A Windows Live account is required to download the Halo 3 ringtones and wallpapers to your computer. Installation instructions for Pocket PCs and Smartphones are available on the website as well. The Microsoft software ActiveSync is used to add the wallpaper and ringtone to the mobile device.

The ringtone is a short version of the Halo 3 Theme song which is downloaded in mp3 format.

Read More:

Halo 3 Ringtone and Wallpapers Download

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