microsoft news

Netmarketshare has released its market share report for June 2020.In this month’s report, Windows 10’s share is 58.93%, up from last month’s 57.83%.  Windows 7 share continues to decline from 24....

Intel has accused Qualcomm of driving it out of the mobile market. It claimed that the mobile chip manufacturer leveraged its advantages over Intel to keep its chips from being adopted by OEMs en mass...

For the first time in a while, Microsoft has overtaken Google’s market capitalization. As of today, Microsoft’s market capitalization stood at $732 billion beating Google who stood at $731 billion.This is the first time in around 3 years that Microsoft has overtaken Google in terms of market capitalization. Although, this shouldn’t come as a surprise since M...

Steam’s Hardware Survey numbers are out for February, and while they are useless for PCs at present, they do give us a look into the market share of the various VR headsets, due to Steam’s cross-platform support and attractive library of VR games and other applications.This month’s numbers, for February 2018, show slow growth for Windows Mixed Reality device...

A new trademark application by Samsung in South Korea suggests the company may be getting ready to release their own smart glasses into the market soo...

If Mixed Reality is to get a foothold in the construction industry hardhat compatibilityis a legal requirement. We have already posted about Meemim’s hardhat kit, which is already on salebut now giant engineering firm Trimble have aounced their own version that should hit the market soon.Shown off at the World of Concrete exhibition, their kit integrates the HoloLens with a hardhat, making 3D virtual reality accessible to workers in the field, and bringing CAD drawings to life in the real world via theTrimble Coect software, which can stream designs from the cloud.The Trimble Coect software lets users select different layers of information from multiple subcontractors such as structural, mec...

Microsoft has been pushing for White Spaces Inteet for more than a decade, with varying amounts of success around the world. Microsoft’s White Space technology offers wide area long distance wireless networking over the old television bands, offering higher throughput, low power usage and greater penetration into buildings. Globally, the white space technology has been successfully deployed in the US and Singapore and is being tested in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa and the Philippines. Now in their latest move, they have registered a new trademark for a service related to the technology named Airband. The trademark pertains to two uses. One, for “Computer hardware, software and software a...

Microsoft is currently pushing out a patch for Windows 10 users designed to address the processor vulnerabilities which is involved in the Meltdown and Spectre exploits.With proof of concept exploits already in the wild it seems a very good idea to update your PC as rapidly as possible, but today we have already seensome sites explaining how to disable automatic updates due to the rumoured performance impacts of the patch, which has been said to reduce execution speed by up to 30%. Intel has, however, said for most tasks performance impact should be minimal, and now Techspot has done some benchmark tests to see exactly who will be affected. First, the bad news. There is a clear reduction in ...

Microsoft launched their Windows Mixed Reality ecosystem in October last year, and so far we have had very little indication of how the platform is doing. Fortunately, the Steam platform has come to the rescue. The software store is currently the largestrepositoryof VR titles, with direct support for Windows Mixed Reality and indirect support via a portal feature developed by Microsoft and Steam. The company publishes monthly stats, and has now for the first time revealed in December 2017 that a bit more than 4% of the installed base of VR headsets using their service are Windows Mixed Reality devices. The rise of WMR appears to have impacted the HTC Vive the most, which has seen a decline...

According to analytics vendor NetApplications, Microsoft ended 2017 a bit worse than it came into the year, with a combined IE + Edge market of 16.97%, down from 18% it came into the year with. Microsoft has been having trouble regaining its browser share ever since losing it to Google and its Chrome browser, and even recently released a new ad promoting the security and speed of the browser. However Redmond has been having a hard time getting users to switch from the all too familiar Chrome browser, which ended 2017 with 60.6% browser share. NetApplications, which measures browser share based on browser agent strings of those who visit its clients’ websites, recently scrubbed fraudulent bo...

While the rumours regarding S9 are not new, Samsung might be working on something entirely different. The company has recently filed a trademark for Dex Pad which might confirm the rumour that the company was working on a newer variant for Samsung Dex. The application was filed on December 29th which is justified if Samsung is plaing to unveil Dex Pad during CES next week. The earlier rumours, however, suggest that’s unlikely which gives the company another month before MWC in Barcelona. The device is considered to be more of a pad where your phone or the other compatible devices can be docked while coected to the display using either Wireless or Wired coection. We aren’t still sure if Dex...

Around the middle of last year, we predicted, based on the then trend, that Windows 10 will overtake Windows 7 worldwide by the end of 2017. Now the latest Netmarketshare numbers are in, and at least by their numbers, it appears that date may be pretty far off still. It appears in the last quarter of 2017 the decline in Windows 7 numbers stabilized, while Windows 10 lost some momentum. Netmarketshare found worldwide Windows 7 held 43.08% market share, down only 0.04% from November 2017, whileWindows 10 held 32.93% share (up 0.98%), Windows XP 5.18% (down 0.55%) and Windows 8.1 5.71% (down 0.22%.) Last month Microsoft revealed there were 600 million active Windows 10 users, and we expect it ...

We wrote in September 2017 about the Juicero-like Otto smart lock, launched by a number of ex-Microsoft and Apple employees, that was meant to set a new high water mark for price and quality for smart locks. CEO and ex-MicrosoftieSam Jadallah’s high-end door lock would have offered key-less entry to authorized users identified via Bluetooth with apps on the phones of users. Users would simply have to press the single button to gain entry, and unauthorized users would be kept out by the marine-grade 316 stainless steel construction of the $699 replacement lock designed to be no larger than the mechanical deadbolt it replaces. At the time we noted a real risk of the device going the Juiceroro...

Studio Wildcard’s Ark: Survival Evolved is now available in the Windows Store with cross-play between Windows 10 and Xbox One.Stranded on the shores of a mysterious island, you must lea to survive. Use your cuing to kill or tame the primaeval creatures roaming the land, and encounter other players to survive, dominate… and escape!It is notable that while purchasing the store version will let you play on both PC and Xbox, it will not let you play againstSteam players on the PC, and that the title is much more expensive in the store at $59.99 vs $23 at the Steam Store.It is, however,an Xbox One X enhanced and features two graphics modes.See the launch trailer below:If playing againstyour Xbox ...

Yesterday we reported about the Back and Front Panels leaked online which confirmed the design of the upcoming Flagship Galaxy S9. Now a Twitter user who goes by the name “Zyad” shared the benchmark results from Geekbench which confirms Snapdragon 845 as the processor.The device is listed asSamsung SM-G965U1 in Geekbench and did confirm other details as well. Galaxy S9 will come with Android Oreo out of the box and will have 6 GB RAM. The Geekbench leak finally gives us a sneak peek at the technical specs of the devices.As for the scores,Galaxy S9 + reaches a single-core score of 2122 points, while it comes to a total of 8351 points in the multi-core test. It should, however, be noted that t...

Analyst company Moody’s Investor Service claim that 2018 will be a good year for Microsoft and Apple despite the continuing decline in the PC industry as people are moving forward with portable devices instead of using PCs.Microsoft, in particular, had a decent year with Cloud business and Surface sales. This should continue in the coming year if the analysts are to be believed, with Microsoft and Apple dominating the IT sector moving forward.Moody’s expects aggregate revenue to grow 3.5%-4.5% in 2018, but only 2.5%-3.5% if you exclude Apple and Microsoft. Similarly, Moody’s forecasts 6%-7% growth in operating profit for the sector, but only 5.5%-6.5% when excluding the two companies.Revenue...

After months of waiting, Paint.NET recently became available from the Microsoft Store.Paint.NET is image and photo editing application for PCs. It features an intuitive user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.Paint.NET’s Microsoft Store app is almost exactly like the classic Win32 version of the app, meaning that all the features you can get on the classic version of the app are available from the Microsoft Store version. The app also supports all the third-party plugins.On their blog, the developer has posted some details about the comin...

At Qualcomm’s Snapdragon summit Microsoft and Qualcomm promised a PC from Lenovo ruing Microsoft’s new Always Coected PC initiative on ARM, and now the first indication of the devices’ actual existence has popped up on Geekbench.The benchmark shows both a 4 and 8 GB model exists, and at more than 4000 for the multi-core performance shows a pleasing improvement over the low 3000’s we saw with earlier leaks.The device is expected to be unveiled at CES 2018, but it appears at present that it is unlikely we will see any Always Coected PCs ship until Redstone 4, though of course any of the companies, which now includes HP, Asus, and Samsung and Xaiomi rumoured, could easily surprise us.When the d...

We posted some renders last night of a new Microsoft patent for a dual-screened computer which is likely Microsoft’s mythical Surface Phone.While those renders gave use a pretty good look at the device and how Microsoft expects us to use it, they were not exactly detailed, unlike the image above, which hails from the extended patent filling and clearly shows that Microsoft is not simply doodling on a napkin, but has detailed plans for the device, similar to the Surface Studio patents which leaked well before the device came to market.One example of the level of detail of development is this design for a modified low profile USB-C port, presumably designed to keep the device as slim as possib...

Every week dozens of games are discounted across Xbox One and Xbox 360 for some stellar deals. These titles range from smaller indie experiences to AAA blockbusters. If you’re trying to get the most bang for your buck, you’ll want to check out the Deals with Gold if you have an Xbox Live Gold membership. This week’s Spotlight sales and Deals with Gold can be read below. There certainly aren’t as many as last week but some popular titles are on sale like Ark: Survival Evolved and Mega Man Legacy Collection (via Reddit).Xbox OneGamePrice (USD)Sale Type$ 9.00Gold$ 2.67Gold$ 11.99SpotlightHDRXbox One X Enhanced$ 35.99Spotlight$ 64.99Spotlight$ 31.49Spotlight$ 3.00Spotlight$ 1.05Spotlight$ 3.30Go...