In the News

Microsoft has announced that the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store combined have over 560,000 apps. The number has gone up by 35,000 apps from the 525,000 apps announced in November 2014.

To simplify mobile phone applications purchase, Microsoft and Idea Cellular have joined hands to introduce operator billing on the Windows Store for Idea subscribers, said Nikhil Mathur, Director, B2B and Operator Channels, Nokia India (a subsidiary of Microsoft Mobile Oy). This partnership will enable Idea subscribers to download or procure local and global paid contents on the Windows Store.

Mobile technology startup AppVirality has raised an undisclosed amount from prominent angel investors. AppVirality helps developers identify and implement the right growth techniques without having to code, and was accelerated in one of the recent batches of Microsoft Ventures Accelerator in Bengaluru. “The world is amidst a massive shift in mobile space and we are happy to see one of our portfolio companies leading this change,” Ravi Narayan, Director, Microsoft Ventures India.

The HP Stream 11, priced at Rs. 19,990, comes with a 11.6-inch HD display and is powered by an Intel Celeron N2840 SoC coupled with Intel HD Graphics, 2GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC flash memory. HP is offering 1TB of Microsoft OneDrive storage free for one year, and an Office 365 Personal subscription for one year. The HP Pavilion Mini, with a starting price of Rs. 26,990, includes 1.7GHz Intel Pentium 3558U processor, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB 7200RPM HDD.

Lenovo, the number one PC player in the world, has launched the ThinkPad 8 Tablet for professionals in India. The first ever Windows 8 tablet from the iconic ThinkPad stable delivers a full PC experience with USB3.0 Dock. Offering a whole new experience for tech enthusiasts, the Tablet is equipped with a full-HD screen, Quick Photo Capture combined with 4x Faster Graphics, making it the most sought after device ‘for professionals on the go’.

The WorldWide Telescope project (WWT) was started by Microsoft in 2007 and now the company has announced that they are open sourcing the project. The project started as a collaborative institutional program to visualise the universe and let other people explore “multi-spectral imagery” for free.

Windows Phone fans, we suggest you grab this one before it disappears. The phone is being sold for Rs 21,000 on Flipkart. There is one catch however, the Lumia 1020 is only available in the black option. Both yellow and white versions have been out of stock for quite some time now.

Microsoft Devices Group has tied up with Idea Cellular to allow the telco’s 34-million data users to purchase apps and pay for them through monthly bills or prepaid balances. Idea Cellular’s customers will be able to make the purchases from Microsoft’s Windows store. Partnerships where telcos team up with app stores may work better in India where the credit card adoption and use for making payments over mobile is far less than net banking or debit card usage.

With optimism surrounding the economy and organizations fighting for the best talent, a few cutting-edge practices promise to keep the fittest ahead in the race. HR heads from different sectors shared their idea of top trends in 2015. Rohit Thakur, HR Head at Microsoft India, said, “With the growing proliferation of data analytics in the corporate world, many organizations are using reliable data to make strategic decisions. One key trend we see is enterprises leveraging HR analytics for measuring productivity and employee effectiveness. Intuitive technologies based on analytics are enabling HR teams to make more informed and accurate decisions in a shorter amount of time, which is why we will see continue to see this trend grow at an accelerated pace.”

Microsoft rings in New Year by rolling out new enhancements to its Azure cloud computing platform. The company has announced larger, high-performance virtual machines, a Key Vault for secure storage of customer encryption keys, and availability of Docker images for customers to use on Azure. Today marks another milestone of the Microsoft Azure integration with Docker container technology and ecosystem with a fully integrated Docker engine on an Ubuntu image, available in the Azure Marketplace,” said Corey Sanders, director of program management, Azure, in a blogpost.