Mobitrends

Apparently Microsoft and “social networks” is a honest mistake

I’ve been pretty critical about Nokia’s software over the past few years. In my opinion their last decent smartphone was the N95 an since then they did not release anything decent on the market – mostly because of their slowness to move to a touch-based HMI and the 20th century look of the Symbian UI.Likewise, Windows mobile has been causing pain to their users for too long a time. Never found anyone happy with their Windows Mobile 6 phones… While Windows Phone 7 may be engaging, Microsoft is still missing an iconic phone to actually mark the minds, just as the Nexus or Droids are for Android.

On top of that Microsoft maps is widely inferior to Nokia’s Navteq, and we know that one of the few features that kept Nokia phones alive is the Maps application.

This deal comes up as expected for some time now since Elop joined Nokia, and is leveraging on all the strong assets of each company to build what could be incredibly strong synergies. Nokia is loosing a lot though, since they basically publicly admit they failed at innovating on the software side, but they will gain the ability to build what can become the Windows Phone’s flagship device thus reinforcing the brand. On top of that this will enable Nokia to enter the North American market which they failed until now.
I imagine how the engineers at Nokia must feel about this deal – yet it’s probably the best thing that happened to Nokia over the past 5 years.

The big looser here is Blackberry since their OS is now the most old-fashioned of the pack…
 

One of my previous projects, VR-WEAR, died 2 years ago. Financing of the prototyping phase failed  - happens, was the crisis and anyways the prototype was still expensive and probably a bit to in advance… For those who don’t remember the idea was to create a set of virtual reality devices enabling strong engagement in video-games both enabling immersion and interaction with sensors monitoring facial expression, eyeballs motions and body language. We built proof of concepts of the headsets and the glove and bound the sensors to Second Life enhancing the avatars with their puppet masters body language.

This year at CES2011 are showing that the vision I had still lives – and we’re getting closer and closer :

1. Microsoft announced that “Avatar Kinect” is coming to the Xbox 360 and will apparently be a place where you can virtually hang out with your “friends” using the ability for Kinect to detect facial gestures like eyebrows, smiles, and laughs.
2. Sony unveiled a crazy 3D prototype of Head Mounted Display  with 720p OLED displays and 5.1 sounds (no price nor release date)

Let’s face it, since Windows XP, everything consumer from Microsoft (apart from the XBOX) has been lame.

Windows Vista, Windows Mobile, MSN/Hotmail have been performing really badly and can be totally regarded as failures.

Yet it seems this time may be over.

For the first time in a long while, Microsoft is releasing exciting products one after another. Short development cycles, convergence and innovation has enabled them to release an excellent Windows 7, a challenging Bing, improved XBOX 360 experience and insights let us hope for the best with the upcoming Windows Mobile.

It seems that Microsoft managed to make massive changes in their R&D process to be able to regain that flexibility and ability to innovate aiming at shorter production cycles and more iterations, sounds like an interesting case I would love insights on.

It’s all over the blogs, Microsoft might be looking to buy 3DV Systems for $35 million, the producer of a 3D webcam device that would be able to get plugged into the xbox 360 to compete with Sony’s EyeToy and bring casual games to the xbox 360 platform.
While I think this is a smart move for Microsoft as they definitely need to catch up in the casual games market which means enabling fun without the hassle of learning to master the so complicated controller they have, I must confess I’m not such a big fan of that kind of technology.
What mainly bothers me with that system, is that you have to remain in plain sight of the camera to be able to play, and in my personal case I’m never twice on the same spot. Also casual game means also multi-player games, i.e. 4 players at the same time on the same platform. The raving rabbits are just so much fun when everyone plays together and the portions where you lay alone on the Wii Fit kinda suck – and that’s the kind of experience that a dedicated camera can only provide.

Yet while I’m not such a big fan of the use case I’m really happy to see that Microsoft is feeling the power of accessories to deliver engaging gaming experience, which is also the main objective of VR-WEAR : mix immersive and interactive technologies to create a strong engagement in the game !
Microsoft, if you read me, I’m ready to sell for just a bit less than 35MUSD !