Pedro Hernandez

Microsoft isn’t exactly setting sales records with its Surface RT tablet. But that doesn’t necessarily spell doom for the software giant’s mobile ambitions. The company’s first stab at the tablet market, the Surface RT, failed to excite tablet buyers, according to Brent Thrill, an analyst for UBS. Thrill’s estimate indicates an encouraging burst of early […]

Microsoft is hoping to lure mobile app developers to its Azure cloud platform with a fresh batch of service offerings and resources. Nick Harris, technical evangelist for Windows Azure, pointed out in a recent blog post the strides his company has made since it first launched the Windows Azure Mobile Services public preview last year. […]

Microsoft’s big gamble is paying off, according to Windows executive Tami Reller. Reller, who is chief marketing officer and chief financial officer for Windows, revealed that the company sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date. Reller revealed the statistic during the J.P. Morgan Tech Forum at the CES trade show in Las Vegas this […]

It’s official. Microsoft is shutting down its Live Messenger service March 15. Come mid-March, Messenger’s estimated 100 million users—with the exception of those in mainland China—will be fully transitioned to Skype, the popular voice over IP (VOIP) service that Microsoft acquired in 2011. Similar to rival platforms like Google+ Chat, Live Messenger provides instant messaging […]

While Microsoft may no longer have an official presence at CES, unofficially its hardware partners are keeping the torch alive. Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and even Vizio, a company better known for its HDTVs than computing devices, are flooding the Las Vegas trade show with Windows 8 machines. Today, the field grows even more crowded with new […]

Microsoft may be gone, but it’s definitely not forgotten. The software giant announced in late 2011 that it would give up its coveted CES keynote and quit erecting a huge booth starting with this year’s event. Instead, Microsoft would focus on select conferences and stage its own events, like this past summer’s Surface unveiling in […]

Love it or loathe it, Microsoft’s minimalist and blocky Metro user interface will provide Windows its signature look for the foreseeable future, according to reports making the rounds. New details have emerged on an upcoming version of Microsoft’s operating system code-named Windows Blue. An enthusiast at the Taiwanese online forum PCBeta claims that Windows Blue […]

Microsoft is expanding its retail presence next year by opening at least six new locations, the company announced today. The news caps a year of rapid store openings, said Jonathan Adashek, general manager of communications and strategy for Microsoft’s Sales and Marketing Services Group. “It’s been a momentous year for the Microsoft retail stores. We […]

HTC, only days after it was revealed that Nokia is rebooting its Windows RT tablet plans, also is throwing its hat into the ring, according to an article in Bloomberg. The Taiwanese handset maker is making up for lost time. HTC is reportedly readying two Windows tablets for release in the third quarter of 2013 […]

Nokia is readying a 10-inch tablet that will rival Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet, according to a report from DigiTimes. Sound familiar? That’s because the Finnish handset maker was reportedly working on a Windows tablet in March, before Microsoft debuted the Surface and derailed Nokia’s plans. At the time, Nokia’s tablet called for a dual-core Qualcomm […]

Microsoft officials are seeing more researchers, who are trying to push the boundaries of scientific discovery but often come to the realization that there are too few supercomputers to go around, turning to cloud computing environments as a solution. Dennis Gannon, director of cloud research strategy for Microsoft’s Research division, said that clouds are providing […]

Microsoft is issuing an open invitation to Gmail users that were left smarting by Google’s decision to drop Exchange ActiveSync support for free accounts. Last week, Google announced that free consumer Gmail accounts would no longer support the Microsoft-developed email, calendar and contact synchronization protocol as part of the company’s “winter cleaning.” In an official […]