microsoft

Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system might soon support 1080p resolution, leaked file information in Visual Studio 2013 suggests.

Former Nokia and Microsoft engineer Justin Angel tweeted out on Monday an image of Visual Studio 2013. The image showed Windows Phone 8 emulator files containing 1080p resolution of 1,920 x 1,080.

Microsoft's mobile operating system supports 720p resolution, as well as WVGA and WXGA. Full 1080p support, however, has been sorely lacking from the operating system. The resolution is available on several Android handsets.

For its part, Microsoft hasn't confirmed that 1080p support is coming … Read more

Facing stiff competition in mobile messaging, Microsoft-owned Skype updated its Android application Monday with a crisper design meant to emphasize conversations. The application has been installed on more than 100 million Android devices, Skype said.

Skype for Android 4.0 arrives with a contemporary look where messaging -- chats, voice calls, and video calls -- takes center stage.

The application now features a person's most recent conversations on the home screen and comes with call and chat buttons at the bottom of the screen for quick access. Messaging dominates in the Favorites and Contacts tabs as well, as the … Read more

Microsoft's head of Interactive Entertainment Business, the unit responsible for the Xbox, is leaving the company to work for struggling social gaming company Zynga, All Things Digital reported Monday.

Unnamed sources told AllThingsD that Don Mattrick will take a job at Zynga, possibly working as CEO under founder and current Chief Executive Mark Pincus. The announcement about Mattrick's new job could come as early as Monday, after the market closes.

Mattrick, who left Electronic Arts in 2007 to join Microsoft, became the head of the Interactive Entertainment Business unit in 2010. He also has overseen PC and mobile … Read more

Microsoft is expanding distribution of its Surface tablet/PC devices via authorized distributors and resellers, company officials said Monday.

Starting in the U.S., Microsoft is authorizing CDW, CompuCom, En Pointe, Insight, PC Connection, PCM, Softchoice, Softmart, Software House International, and Zones to sell Surface Pro and RT devices. "Over the next few months," Microsoft officials said, they will authorize commercial distributors and resellers in more countries.

Microsoft also plans to expand its education offer for the Surface RT -- offering devices for $199 via qualifying schools and universities purchasing direct from Microsoft -- into the commercial channel … Read more

Microsoft has lost a trademark battle against British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) at the U.K.'s High Court in London, which may force the software giant to change the name of its clouds storage service, or pay fines. 

In a court ruling on June 28, Judge Sarah Asplin found that Microsoft had infringed the "Sky" trademark owned by BSkyB by using the "SkyDrive" name. As a result, the software giant could be barred from using the marketing term for its consumer and enterprise document and photo storage service in the 28 member state bloc.

Another … Read more

Windows 8 has hit a new milestone. It's now the third most used operating system in the world, at least in the eyes of market tracker Net Applications.

For the month of June, Windows 8 scored 5.1 percent of all desktop OS Web traffic seen by Net Applications. That boost helped Microsoft's latest OS finally leapfrog over Windows Vista, which grabbed a 4.62 percent share last month.

The most recent figure showed a healthy gain for Windows 8 from its 4.27 percent share in May and continued growth since its official release in October. Over … Read more

More than a year after Microsoft announced its Xbox Music service, the company has finally brought it to the Web.

Microsoft's Xbox Music platform is now available for users in the browser. Customers can head over to its page and stream "millions of songs" from within the browser. Microsoft last week told CNET that the subscription, storage, and track-purchasing service would be coming to the Web, and it has officially made good on that promise.

Microsoft claims to offer "millions of songs" through Xbox Music and allows users to download tracks they purchase to a … Read more

Windows 8.1 may fix Microsoft's dot-zero release but it may not fix the PC market.

After Citi Research revised its PC market growth forecast down to negative 10 percent growth earlier in the month, market researcher IDC chimed in on Friday with a less-than-upbeat snapshot for May.

"May results reflect deteriorating conditions rather than improvement and the market will probably fall short of projections," said Loren Loverde, an IDC analyst in a statement, referring to May regional PC shipments.

"The results for May are behind pace for achieving the projected [second quarter 2013] growth rate,&… Read more

The smartphone market leaders are more entrenched, and that's bad news for the underlings, based on a new study from ComScore.

ComScore's latest MobiLens report had no shifts in status among the major phone manufacturers and mobile operating systems in the three months ended in May, but the top two in both fields gained share while the bottom three all lost ground.

Apple ranked as the top phone maker with 39.2 percent of U.S. smartphone subscribers, up 0.3 percentage point from the prior quarter, followed by Samsung with 23 percent market share, up 1.7 … Read more