Microsoft Baidu Deal, Android Royalties Marked Week - eWeek

Microsoft continued its Android march this week, with a report that the company plans on demanding $15 from Samsung for each Android smartphone produced by the manufacturer.

That information apparently came from unnamed industry officials speaking to the Seoul-based Maeil Business Newspaper, and found its way into a July 6 Reuters report. Were Samsung to enter some sort of royalties deal, it would become the latest in an increasingly long string of companies paying Microsoft an "Android tax." Microsoft insists that Google's Android platform violates a variety of patents it holds.

So far, most of those companies have been small: Wistron Corp., Onkyo Corp., Velocity Micro and General Dynamics Itronix have all agreed within the past 10 days to a royalty agreement. However, both Amazon and HTC pay Microsoft, suggesting that some big enterprises are also in Microsoft's sights.

And some companies have fought back. Motorola retaliated to a Microsoft patent-infringement suit with an intellectual-property complaint of its own. And Barnes & Noble, whose Nook e-reader uses Android, filed a countersuit against Microsoft after the latter sued it for patent infringement.

"Microsoft is misusing these patents as part of a scheme to try to eliminate or marginalize the competition to its own Windows Phone 7 mobile-device operating system posed by the open-source Android operating system and other open-source operating systems," read the bookseller's counterclaim, filed April 25 with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington at Seattle. "Microsoft's conduct directly harms both competition for and consumers of eReaders, smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile electronic devices, and renders Microsoft's patents unenforceable."

Even as Microsoft pushes for Android royalties, there are indications that its own smartphone market share is in serious trouble. For the three-month period between the end of February and the end of May, research firm comScore estimated Microsoft's U.S. share dipping from 7.7 percent to 5.8 percent. That comes despite the marketing push behind the Windows Phone platform.

During the same period, adoption of Android rose from 33 percent to 38.1 percent, while Apple enjoyed a slight uptick from 25.2 percent to 26.6 percent. Research In Motion continued its market slide, declining from 28.9 percent to 24.7 percent.

The top mobile OEMs, in descending order of market share, included Samsung, LG Electronics, Motorola, Apple and RIM.

Microsoft can only hope that its upcoming Windows Phone "Mango" update will increase the platform's appeal to consumers and businesspeople. As Microsoft executives demonstrated for a small group of media and analysts during a May press event in New York City, Mango's new features include a redesigned Xbox Live Hub, home-screen tiles capable of displaying up-to-the-minute information, the ability to consolidate friends and colleagues into groups, and visual voicemail?more than 500 new elements in all, if Microsoft is to be believed.

Mango is due for release sometime this fall. Samsung, HTC, LG Electronics and Nokia have all committed to building new Windows Phone devices preloaded with Mango. Meanwhile, Acer, Fujitsu and ZTE have apparently agreed to produce Windows Phone units for the first time.

Microsoft's issues with Google also extended to the search realm, with news that Redmond is pairing with China's largest Internet search provider, Baidu, to provide users with search results for English-language queries.

Although Google continues to dominate the worldwide market for Web search, the company's run-ins with the Chinese government over issues like censorship are well known. Following a hack of Google servers in early 2010 that exposed Gmail accounts of human-rights activists, Google ceased censoring search results in the country and redirected users to the Google.hk domain in Hong Kong. In March, the company accused the Chinese government of disrupting Gmail service.

A spokesperson for Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, also known as MSN China, told the Wall Street Journal July 4 that the results would be labeled as coming from Bing. The deal holds substantial benefits for both companies: Baidu is looking to expand its user base, while Microsoft has made no secret of its desire for inroads into the Chinese market.

The question is whether the Chinese government will demand Microsoft censor those English-language results. "Microsoft respects and follows laws and regulations in every county where we run business," a Microsoft spokesperson told The New York Times July 4. "We operate in China in a manner that both respects local authority and culture and makes it clear that we have differences of opinion with official content-management policies." 

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Report: Microsoft to Show Off Windows 7 Slider Tablet at CES - PC Magazine

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will demonstrate tablet computers running a version of Windows 7, including a Samsung model with a slide-out keyboard, at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in January, The New York Times reported yesterday in a blog post.

The Times didn't name its source, but the person described the Samsung slate device as "similar in size and shape" to the Apple iPad, but "not as thin." The slide-out keyboard is said to be "unique" and "slick." Given that description, the mystery tablet is nothing like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, which has a 7-inch screen (the iPad's is 10 inches) and no sliding keyboard.

Ballmer will show more slates from Dell and other manufacturers, according to the report. The devices will run Windows 7, though holding them in portrait mode with the keyboard sheathed will activate a "layered" interface. Similar to the announced BlackBerry PlayBook, the new machines are said to be aimed primarily at business users, an audience generally thought to be underserved by the iPad.

The Times report cited one source who suggested Microsoft could even show a tablet running Windows 8, though that appears unlikely. It's possible that Microsoft will show the devices running a variant of Windows 7 or Windows Phone 7 — one that's tailored to work with slate devices, similar to the tablet-specific version of Android dubbed "Honeycomb." Ballmer alluded to such a move in the summer when he said, "We're working with our hardware partners. We're tuning Windows 7 to new slate hardware designs that they're bringing them to market."

Microsoft is said to be encouraging manufacturers to write apps for the new slate machines in HTML5. The apps won't be sold in the Zune Marketplace or any other app store, the Times said. Instead, software partners will host the apps on their own websites.

When contacted, Microsoft told PCMag it had no comment on the rumors.

Tim Gideon contributed to this article.

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Microsoft says sells 1 million Kinect devices - Reuters

Assistants demonstrate the game ''Kinect Adventures'' for Kinect for Xbox 360 during a media briefing at the Wiltern theatre in Los Angeles, June 14, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Mario Anzuoni

SEATTLE | Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:20pm EST

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday it has sold more than 1 million of its new hands-free Kinect gaming systems in the first 10 days since launch, putting it on track to beat its target of 5 million sales by the end of the year.

The world's largest software company is hoping the Kinect will help revitalize sales of its Xbox game console this holiday shopping season and counter competing motion-based gaming systems from Nintendo Co, which makes the Wii, and Sony Corp, which introduced its Move product two months ago.

"It's a strong start," said Don Mattrick, head of Microsoft's game unit, in a telephone interview on Monday. "Consumers are loving it."

The Kinect -- a sensing device you plug into the Xbox which allows you to play games just by moving your body and speaking commands -- is priced at $150 for a standalone unit and $300 bundled with a 4 gigabyte Xbox console.

It went on sale in U.S. stores November 4, although many customers had pre-ordered units, likely causing a spike in early sales. Microsoft is hoping sales will stay hot as the day after Thanksgiving -- one of the biggest shopping days of the year, known as 'Black Friday' -- approaches on November 26.

More than 30,000 U.S. stores are selling Kinect in the United States, including branches of Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Target Corp, Best Buy Co, GameStop Corp and online at Amazon.com. It went on sale on November 10 in Europe and is due to go on sale in Asia on November 18.

Ultimately, Microsoft is hoping the new technology will help extend the role of its Xbox 360, which has sold 45 million units, and introduce a concept that is expected to feature in forms of electronics and computers in the next few years.

Microsoft shares were trading unchanged after hours, after closing down 7 cents at $26.20 on Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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Motorola Says Top Microsoft Products Infringe Patents - PC Magazine

On Wednesday, Motorola fired back against Microsoft, suing the software giant for patent infringement that the suit claims involves a number of key Microsoft products.

Motorola filed separate suits in both the Southern District of Florida as well as the Western District of Wisconsin, alleging that Microsoft's products infringed at least six of Motorola's patents. (Copies of the Wisconsin suit were not immediately available, as the court's Web site was down for maintenance.)

Microsoft said it was reviewing the suit. "We are still reviewing Motorola's filing, which we just received," said Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing at Microsoft, in a statement. "This move is typical of the litigation process and we are not surprised. We remain confident in our position and will continue to move forward with the complaints we initiated against Motorola in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and with the International Trade Commission (ITC)."

The Florida suit, however, claims that Microsoft's Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7, plus Microsoft's Bing, Windows Live Messaging, and even the Xbox game console all violate Motorola's patents.

Motorola also challenged Microsoft's use of Wi-Fi and digital video encoding patents, two topics that are at issue in Microsoft's own suit against Motorola, which argued that Motorola was obligated to provide so-called Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory licensing terms to Microsoft, as per a trade industry group's bylaws. In early October, Microsoft also sued Motorola, claiming that Motorola's Android phones violated certain Microsoft patents.

"Motorola's R&D and intellectual property are of great importance to the Company and are renowned worldwide," Kirk Dailey, corporate vice president of intellectual property at Motorola Mobility, said in a statement. "We are committed to protecting the interests of our shareholders, customers and other stakeholders and are bringing this action against Microsoft in order to halt its infringement of key Motorola patents. Motorola has invested billions of dollars in R&D to create a deep and broad intellectual property portfolio and we will continue to do what is necessary to protect our proprietary technology."

Editor's Note: This story was updated at 11:16 AM PT with comments from Microsoft.

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Microsoft Security Patches Plug 11 Vulnerabilities - eWeek

A month after breaking its record for the largest Patch Tuesday update in history, Microsoft released a much smaller round of fixes Nov. 9 with just three security bulletins.

The bulletins cover a total of 11 vulnerabilities across Microsoft Office and Forefront Unified Access Gateway (UAG). Just one of the bulletins is rated "Critical" ? MS10-087, which addresses five vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office. Among those five is a rich text format stack buffer overflow vulnerability Microsoft considers likely to be exploited.

?The bulletin is rated Critical for Office 2007 and Office 2010 due to a preview pane vector in Outlook that could trigger the vulnerability when a customer views a specially crafted malicious RTF (Rich Text Format) file,? explained Jerry Bryant, group manager of response communications for Microsoft Security Response Center, in a blog post. ?The update also addresses an Office vector for the vulnerability described in Security Advisory 2269637, which has been referred to as 'DLL Preloading' and 'Binary planting'.?

A second bulletin affecting Microsoft Office deals with two vulnerabilities in PowerPoint that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a malicious PowerPoint file, according to Microsoft. The bulletin is rated "Important" because user interaction is required to open the malicious file, Bryant blogged.

The final bulletin, also rated Important, plugs four vulnerabilities in UAG, which is part of Microsoft Forefront. The most significant of these bugs could allow elevation of privilege if a user clicks on a malicious link on a Website, Bryant noted, adding the update is only being offered through the Microsoft Download Center at the moment.

Josh Abraham, security researcher from Rapid7, said the critical bulletin should be at the top of enterprise patch lists this month.

"Based on the huge amount of patches from last month, some customers might be up to speed while others are still struggling to catch up ? this would depend on the unique customer and the strength of their vulnerability management program,? Abraham said. ?Another thing that is interesting is that Microsoft has been breaking their own records with the number of bulletins they are releasing in a given month. To help everyone overall, a better approach would be to keep a semi-constant rate of patches every month so that system administrators are not over burdened during specific months."

He added that administrators should also remain vigilant for attacks targeting the recently disclosed zero-day in Internet Explorer as well. That vulnerability has not been patched.

So far, Microsoft said, none of the vulnerabilities addressed in today?s update have been targeted by attackers.

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MARKET TALK: Microsoft Raises Estimates On Kinect Device Sales - Wall Street Journal

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