“We believe that consumer choice is one of the most critical components to ensuring a rich and seamless client experience,” said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services, Motorola Mobile Devices. “Motorola and Microsoft have enjoyed a longstanding collaboration and the addition of Bing services to our Android-based smartphones in China is another important step in empowering our end-users.”  That’s what, an indirect, politely stated “in your face” to Google?

As if Microsoft’s leap onto the Android platform wasn’t enough, we now have this going on.  Well, boys and girls, here’s a lesson on keeping your friends close, and your enemies even closer.

Motorola Announces Alliance with Microsoft for Search and Maps Services;  Launching on New Smart Phones in China

Services to provide additional choice to consumers on Motorola devices powered by Android

LIBERTYVILLE, Ill., March 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced a global alliance with Microsoft Corp. (NYSE: MSFT) to deploy Bing services on Motorola devices powered by Android.  This new offering, launching in China on smartphones in Q1, will provide consumers a choice when using search and map functions on their Android-based devices.

With this collaboration, consumers will enjoy a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on their mobile browser and an enhanced search widget with Bing integration.  By enabling users to customize their devices and select their own Search provider, Motorola, with help from Microsoft, is expanding the capabilities and range of services currently offered in the marketplace and opening the doors for increased personalization.

“We believe that consumer choice is one of the most critical components to ensuring a rich and seamless client experience,” said Christy Wyatt, corporate vice president of software and services, Motorola Mobile Devices. “Motorola and Microsoft have enjoyed a longstanding collaboration and the addition of Bing services to our Android-based smartphones in China is another important step in empowering our end-users.”

“Mobile devices continue to be a critical place for customers to access location-based services such as local search and mapping,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Services Division at Microsoft. “We are pleased to expand our long-standing relationship with Motorola to bring powerful Bing location-based services to Motorola’s innovative new mobile devices, providing consumers with more choice and flexibility in mobile search.”

Search and Maps capabilities through Microsoft will initially be available in China, starting in Q1 2010, through either pre-load or over-the-air updates for devices already in market.

Tag is available starting today as a free download from the Android Market (I’d be giving it a go, if it were not for some connection problems on the phone).  To use the app, you’re supposed to focus your smartphone’s camera at a tag (a smaller version of the QRCode), take a picture, and the Tag program will then proceed to interpret it.  First thought?  We already have a fairly competent barcode scanner app for Android.

This is remarkable to note for the reason that Android is Microsoft’s direct contender in the mobile operating system arena.  However, seeing as Microsoft has established Tag with the BlackBerry, Symbian, J2ME (Java), and even iPhone platforms, they apparently have no qualms on leveraging other competing platforms to get their technology across.

[via Techcrunch]

A quick online search shows I’m not alone; support forums for both individual devices like the Motorola DROID and the Nexus One, together with general Android forums, are peppered with users having problems with mixed-up mail.  While I’m trying to use Android’s native Exchange support, others are having similar issues with POP and IMAP accounts.  Some users have problems with the date on emails, with email claiming to have arrived in 1969.`

The only solution, at present, appears to involve removing the errant account and re-adding it to the phone, wiping all data in the process.  Sometimes merely deleting the account isn’t enough, and you have to dig through the settings to manually wipe archive remnants.  I’ve had the problem appear twice on the Nexus One, and it happened at least once on the MILESTONE (the European version of the DROID); other owners have been less fortunate, and have had almost daily errors.

Before the Nexus One, my daily-driver was another Android device, the HTC Hero, though I used a third-party app for email as HTC’s Mail client didn’t support our Exchange-compliant server.  As far as I can tell, though, the issue has mainly come to light with Android 2.x; the MILESTONE I’ve been testing is running OS 2.0 while the Nexus One is on OS 2.1.

I’m planning to test out a third-party Mail replacement – I also want Exchange calendar support, which frustratingly 2.x still can’t manage – to try to work around the problem, but it’s galling to have to pay for extra software when the advertised functionality lets you down.  Anyone else finding email on their Google phone is causing headaches?

With about a dozen Android phones announced this year along, and maybe dozens more coming next year, Google, it would seem, is about to get so far ahead of Microsoft. We know that Motorola has dropped WinMo from its entire line to switch to Android. And even Palm – a long time WinMo supporter – has dumped the Redmond OS in favor of their new webOS.

Add to the mix the poor satisfaction rating among the WinMo customers, and it doesn’t look good at all for the Redmond giant. With 32 carriers in 26 countries, Android is becoming a big player in the cellphone arena, and it has been out in the market only for a year, so the future for the relatively young OS looks bright.

Lets not forget though, that the Microsoft OS still has many corporate fans, so I would not say WinMo is dead, but with the rest of the players updating their systems faster and more efficiently, Microsoft needs to watch out. What do you think about this situation? Don’t forget to let us know in the comments area.

Overseas last month, Telefonica Europe said that sales of the iPhone topped 1 million in the U.K. Although T-Mobile UK, the exclusive carrier of the first Android device, the G1, would not say exactly how many of the devices had been sold, it did say the handset now accounts for 20% of its contract sales. London-based Informa believes Symbian’s switch to open source will help the Symbian Foundation maintain its leadership over Android, Linux, and Microsoft over the next few years.

Notwithstanding, according to Informa, both Android and OS X are eating into the market share of the best-selling smartphone OS maker, Symbian. Last year, just under half of smartphones sold were based on Symbian, a drop of 16% points from the year before when it had 65% market share. BlackBerry OS, Linux, and Windows Mobile are also gaining popularity and eating some of Symbian’s share. Overall, Informa suggests smartphone sales will be immune to the global economic downturn, maintaining a prediction of “robust growth” of 35.3% year over year. The direction of phone technology will be very interesting to watch. I am at a loss to think what form a phone will take by 2010, let alone 2012! Who will you put your money on?

[via CNET]

Windows Mobile currently ranks third, just in front of Apple iPhone with Ballmer seeing Google Android as a “blip on the radar”. Having said this, the concern for Microsoft is that the real market momentum with operators and device manufacturers is swinging toward Android, even if “consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry.” Competition is moving across two fronts: Firstly selling software independently from hardware and secondly, selling a combination of software, hardware and services bundled together.

Ballmer said on Tuesday during a midyear update that “the dynamics with Linux is changing somewhat. I assume we’ll see Android-based, Linux-based laptops, in addition to phones, and we’ll see Google more and more as a competitor in the desktop operating system business than we ever have before.” Microsoft is not discounting any player in the field at the moment, you always need to keep an eye on the little guy…

Click here to view the embedded video.

[via CNET]

The other day Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, spoke at Australian telecoms company Telstra’s annual investment day, he was quick to dismiss Google all together saying, “They can hire smart guys, hire a lot of people… but, you know, they start out way behind in a certain sense.” This comes as a surprise to me as Google has continued to outshine Microsoft in the past, overcoming them on many top ten lists.

Ballmer questioned Google’s ability to make money from this mobile platform as he went on to say, “I don’t really understand their strategy. Maybe somebody else does. If I went to my shareholder meeting, my analyst meeting, and said: ‘Hey, we’ve just launched a new product that has no revenue model!’… I’m not sure that my investors would take that very well. But that’s kind of what Google’s telling their investors about Android,”

In a perfect world for large companies such as Microsoft, making money is all that really matters in the end. What they don’t realize is that open source is not about raking in the money, it is about creating something and then allowing others to partake of it as they see fit. Google is getting many more search hits with the integration of search in Android. Ballmer argues that Google’s Android is doing well for its first generation of phones, but when it comes down to it, how will it do in the third and fourth generations? We want to know what you think about the comments made by the CEO of Microsoft, dismissing Android yet again.

[Via ZDNet]

We were really excited to be able to completely go through and test the G1 this past week. We found the G1 was very small and sturdy in your hands. The user interface was amazingly responsive and easy to navigate. Applications such as TuneWiki and ShopSavvy (formally known as GoCart) still have me in awe. However not everything about the G1 was something to celebrate. The battery dies extremely quickly, we have been led to believe that it is the lack of a way to end background processes such as applications. We have found that GPS does not work in all cities. We were able to quickly find our location in Scottsdale AZ, however the G1 was not able to locate positions in Manhattan NY. We are not sure if it is a firmware issue or network issue.

Google has a killswitch in their operating system that can disable applications remotely “just in case”. Unlike Apple with the iPhone, Google was very upfront with letting the public know about it. Motorola hinted that the new 350-member Android team is working on a social networking based Android-powered handset. Information about this handset came from an ad placed for a position on their Android development team. Microsoft may one day bring their Flash-equivalent to Android with their Silverlight program. This would be a large advantage for the Android platform over the iPhone which currently does not have Flash.

Handango will be the first to bring both free and paid applications to the Android Market. This is good news for new G1 owners who are looking for popular applications such as Garmin turn-by-turn directions. Many mobile gamers will be happy to know that games such as Spore may be on their way to the T-Mobile G1 very soon. Not many people use Gmail to synchronize their contacts, the vast majority of people use Microsoft Exchange to manage their address books. Out of the box the G1 does not support Exchange synchronization, but it didn’t take long for Wrike to create an application that will sync your Exchange contacts to your phone. Currently it only supports one way synchronization, but they promise to soon have two-way functionality.

Here at Android Community we have had a lot going on, our community member Designdawg has created what now is our site banner. We were so impressed that we even made a few limited-edition shirts using the design. We are just about to wrap up our Golla G1 case giveaway. We have had 11 winners so far, the last contest winner will be announced on October 22nd, the day the G1 is set to launch. We also held the official Android Community G1 launch party in Texas, hopefully a real treat for our members; the lucky few close enough to take part got to meet the people behind Android Community and some walked away with some really nice prizes.

Photo courtesy of Android Community member heyitsnan.

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie told TechRadar.com “[The] Google phone is slightly different [from the iPhone]. It’s more of an open platform, that is something we’re going to continue to look at. Certainly as it’s gotten deployed and if sales are good we’ll definitely keep our eyes out and look at that in the future.”

For reasons still unknown Apple made a potentially bad decision to keep Adobe’s Flash plugin as well as Microsoft’s Silverlight off of the iPhone. Many iPhone owners cannot look beyond the fact that, despite how advanced the phone is, it still lacks Flash support. If Android-powered handsets see Silverlight or flash before the iPhone, it could possibly hurt iPhone sales in the future.

[Via TechRadar]

Ballmer also called on politicians to make “the right decisions” in this time of economic crisis. He told the BBC that Microsoft had become a “David in search alongside the Goliath of its arch-rival Google”. “I don’t think there’s any confusion in Washington that they need to make smart choices to help the US economy,” he continued. While Android helps handset prices come down because there is no licence to purchase, nor any of the other fees associated with Windows, Microsoft has to look for other ways to promote their OS products when people are looking to save, not spend.  It’s unclear what consumers will do in an economic crisis, Ballmer said, “you’ve got to assume that people are going to assess their overall wealth differently so they aren’t going to be spending as much on high-cost capital goods”.

Ballmer insisted that Windows Vista – the much criticized Windows operating system – had been the most popular OS that Microsoft had ever created. Ballmer did not deny any claims to the issues reported with Windows Vista, instead suggesting that such incidents were inevitable: ”any time you change something as fundamental as an operating system people will have issues.”

Photo provided by Android Community member heyitsnan

[Via BBC News]