Nokia Windows Phone Peek, BPOS Outage Marked Microsoft Week

The U.S. Department of Justice approved Microsoft's $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype. That means Redmond now faces the singular challenge of digesting Skype's assets into its various products, including the Lync unified communications platform and Outlook, during preserving Skype's enormous brand equity. In addition, Microsoft has to monetize Skype in such a way that its sizable built-in audience, so used to paying little-or-nothing for VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) and video calling, doesn't flee to a competing platform.

"During it's true that Skype has been slow to make money off its service, the potential is there," Forrester analyst Ted Schadler wrote in a May 10 blog posting, soon afterwards the deal was announced. "Local phone numbers, three-way video conferencing, business administration, and making calls to real phone numbers are all things that people will pay for." It could as well boost the consumer appeal of Microsoft's more business-centric products, including Lync.

Speaking of the cloud, Microsoft wrestled with another BPOS outage this week, with some North American users of the messaging and collaboration service reporting network connectivity issues starting the morning of June 22. "Source of network issue identified and hardware elements replaced. Then update within 30 mins," read the Official Microsoft Online Twitter feed at around 1 p.m. EST June 22.

Microsoft fully restored BPOS service later on June 22, in the end blaming network equipment issues in the data center.

The past few days have as well offered glimpses of two upcoming Microsoft products: the then version of Windows, and the first Nokia smartphone running Windows Phone.

New build of Windows 8

"A new build of Windows 8, build 7989, has surfaced," the blog Redmond Pie reported June 18. "Slowly nevertheless surely, it's finding its way onto file-sharing sites, and some Windows enthusiasts have already dug deep into it."

Features discovered in the build supposedly include SMS support and per-feature licensing. In theory, the latter could allow Microsoft to offer users a "bare bones" version of Windows 8, with the ability to unlock additional features for a fee. Microsoft tried something similar with Office 2010, offering a free, stripped-down, ad-supported version of its latest productivity suite pre-installed on certain PCs; a single-use license on a plastic card, purchased from a retailer just as Best Buy, would unlock the functional version.

Other Microsoft-centric blogs just as Winrumors posted notes and video about the Windows 8 build's virtual keyboard, which would be necessary for tablets. The keyboard, which is capable of deploying in an ergonomic, "thumbs optimized" configuration, has been glimpsed previously. The then version of Windows will support SoC architecture, in particular ARM-based systems from partners just as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Texas Instruments, which in turn will give Microsoft the ability to port it onto tablets and other mobile form-factors.

The end of the week

Near the end of the week, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop offered an audience a glimpse of what looked like a Nokia N9 smartphone running Windows Phone, Microsoft's mobile operating system. The N9, which runs a MeeGo operating system slated for mothballing by Nokia, marries a curved 3.9-inch AMOLED screen to a body engineered from a single piece of polycarbonate. Nokia plans to transition wholly to Windows Phone as the software platform for its smartphones, with the first devices scheduled to make their debut at the end of 2011.

By at that time, Microsoft will be even furthermore underway with its cloud projects, Windows 8 development, and Windows Phone rollout. Each of those efforts, clearly, will face their own unequalled challenges.