Dumb Move: Chase And Bank Of America Pull Support For Windows Phone Apps

When you consider the current installed base of Windows Phone devices and the ongoing issue Microsoft MSFT -3.82% has with the lack of  depth in app selection for the Windows Store, it’s easy to be dismissive, if product development budgets are on the chopping block. Then again, cutting support for any mobile platform right now, especially in the banking arena, where customer convenience is king, is a thin tightrope to walk. More and more, people are purchasing, browsing and banking on their mobile devices and the current projections are all up and to the right. You cut support for any mobile platform, and you better be damn sure you can stick a fork in it and declare it “done.”

Here’s where Bank of America BAC -1.81% and Chase may have just showed lack of strategic planning. However, I’ll emphasize that there are multiple possibilities for these decisions, because there are a multiple angles to consider. And before I dig in, Microsoft haters, please reality-check your bags at the door.

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Acer adds variety to spice up Windows Phone options at MWC

The Windows Phone catalogue is short on options. Apart from the Nokia/Microsoft smartphone, the HTC One M8 and a few low-end Huawei entries, there isn’t much in the way of variety.

Acer is looking to spice the offerings up a bit with some new Windows Phone, to be launched at Mobile World Congress (MWC) on 1 March.


Acer’s CEO Jason Chen confirmed that Windows Phone devices would be coming to the event, but all of the phones announced at the event will be entry-level devices for developing markets.

The entry-level market is Windows Phone’s most popular segment, making waves in India, Latin America and Eastern Europe. However it still only equates to 2.5 per cent of the total mobile market share.

Investing in a high-end Windows Phone doesn’t make sense in the current climate, when the same smartphone running Android would do much better on the market. HTC did the smart thing: ported the existing M8 and slapped Windows Phone on it.

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Windows 10 phones and tiny tablets won't get the desktop

Prognostications about Microsoft killing the desktop in Windows 10 are coming true—but only for the smallest of tablets.

New tablets with screens smaller than 8 inches will not ship with a classic desktop, and won’t be able to run legacy Win32 (read: desktop) applications according to Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Operating Systems Group. These devices will instead run something very similar to the phone version of Windows 10 that Microsoft showed off last week.

If you already have a 7-inch Windows tablet like Toshiba’s Encore Mini, don’t panic; Belfiore clarified on Twitter that existing tablets will retain their desktop functionality. They’ll also support the new Continuum feature that switches to a mouse-and-keyboard interface when you dock the tablet with a desktop monitor.

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The dream of Windows Phone on tablets is almost coming true

The Windows desktop is at once the most important and least important part of the Windows experience. On the traditional desktop and laptop, it's fundamental; it's where most apps run, and it's where most users want to be. The perceived downplaying of the desktop in Windows 8 was one of the many reasons that desktop users were unhappy with the operating system.

But on the tablet, the desktop is a liability. Small, fiddly apps that aren't designed for fingers do not make for a good tablet experience. Every time a tablet user has to use the desktop—and on Windows 8.1, they will have to do so at least some of the time—then that tablet user has to suffer an experience that is, at its heart not a tablet experience, and it's no fun at all.

The Windows desktop: totally essential in some situations. Totally unwanted in others.

Microsoft does have a desktopless Windows—it's called Windows Phone—and many wanted the company to use the operating system as the basis for its tablet platform. Through necessity, Windows Phone is a complete touch environment, with every feature usable with fingers alone. When Windows 8 materialized, with the full desktop in tow, the reaction was bemusement. Sure, technically you could add a mouse and a keyboard to a tablet and use that desktop for desktop software, but that was hardly the point of tablet systems.

This was doubly so on the ARM-powered Windows RT tablets. These had the full desktop, but unlike their x86 counterparts, couldn't even run desktop software. The desktop was a necessary evil because the touch-friendly Metro environment lacked things like a complete settings app, a competent file manager, and any kind of productivity software.

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Windows 10: What it will bring to Windows Phone (hands-on)

Following the announcement that Windows Phone will be Windows 10 in the near future, does it still feel like a smartphone operating system? We got some time with a preview handset at the Microsoft announcement press conference in Seattle to see whether the death of the Windows Phone guise is a sensible move.

From Cortana, Photos, universal Outlook and Maps, to the notification pane and a reading mode in Project Spartan, Windows 10 actually gets a lot of features from Windows Phone, rather than the other way around.

The phone version isn't just a tweaked version of Windows 10 for PC though. For a start (no pun intended) it has a feature set familiar to Windows Phone 8.1 – but many elements will be improved, addressing a lot of user requests – in many ways feeling like "Windows Phone 10" (which, while not the official title, seems a natural adoption) with some of the PC elements. Windows 10 devices on PC, tablet and smartphone will also be able to "talk" to one another more easily, which is a big take-away point of the incoming update.

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How to Back Up a Windows Phone

Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system attempts to make life with a smartphone easier. Its Live Tiles make it easier to see what apps you should be paying attention to or what services you might want to update with a new status. Automatic picture and contact backup were built into the first version of Windows Phone way back in 2010. In 2015 we have a very different idea of what a complete back up is that goes far beyond what was available in Windows Phone 7. Here’s how to back up a Windows Phone so that if you’re about to install an update or trade your smartphone in for another, you have everything you need.

Before we begin, it’s important to note that the device we’re using for this example is running Windows Phone 8.1. Beyond being the latest version of Windows Phone available to users, Windows Phone 8.1 includes the most robust backup and restore tools yet. Information backed up includes apps, they’re position on your Start Screen, background, theme and Live Tile color. Email addresses are backed up to Microsoft’s servers too, but that depends on your settings. For example, Windows Phone 8.1 seems to back up user accounts and for independent email addresses, but you’ll need to enter the password for them again.

Even after you do a backup, don’t expect passwords for all of your different apps to sync back to your device if you have to restore it. As such, make sure you know the passwords for services like Facebook, Netflix, Reddit and Instagram since you’ll need to put them in again.

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Microsoft VP Details Windows 10 Update for Windows Phone Users

Microsoft used its Lumia Conversations blog today to give some of the details for the upcoming software update for Windows Phone, which will be moved to Windows 10. Chris Weber, Corporate Vice President of Sales for the Microsoft Mobile group address the update, and gave details as to which devices will be eligible. Unlike the update from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8, the entire lineup should be eligible for Windows 10 on the phone, although not all of the experiences will be available on all devices due to hardware limitations.

Though Chris Weber did not address all devices, he did specifically mention the new low end Lumia 435, and that their goal is “for the majority of the Lumia phones running Windows Phone 8 and 8.1 to join the Windows ecosystem” so there should be no issues with any Lumia device getting upgraded. As for other Windows Phone OEMs, they should be safe too but of course that may depend on each OEM and wireless carriers updating the devices, which is not always the case.

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Microsoft just saved Windows Phone. Now stop whining

Analysis It's always jam mañana for Windows Phone owners. In 2011, the "Apollo" update (which became Windows Phone 8.0) would bring new riches. Then it was 8.1. Now it's mid-year before Windows Phone 10 devices can storm the market.

So at the enthusiast end of the market, they're not a happy lot. There hasn't been a headline-grabbing, shiny new flagship to boast about for over a year – and really, for 18 months, since the Lumia 1020.

An American bank has given up because too few people downloaded their app. Even people paid to write about Windows Phone, it seems, have given up using Windows Phone as their main device.

Some hardcore fanbois are starting to sound as whiny and entitled as net neutrality campaigners or copyright reformers: "Give me the moon on a stick – someone else can pay".

The Windows Phone platform certainly has lost momentum and market share has declined. In the UK Kantar reckoned market share was seven per cent, down from a peak of 12 per cent in August 2013. In China, it's down from 3.5 per cent in October 2013 to 0.7 per cent thirteen months later.

Yet in an expanding global market being flooded by low cost Android, Microsoft has managed to stay in the game. Microsoft saved Windows Phone in 2014 by making it royalty free, which encouraged an explosion of new OEMs. Imagine if it hadn't.

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Windows 10 to feature Windows Phone-like dark and light themes, new image reveals

A new report revealed today that the upcoming Windows 10 operating system will sport Windows Phone-like dark and light modes, which will be the main draw for the new user-interface which has been rumored to be coming to Windows 10.

A leaked images (of which CNBeta claims is an internal concept image) reveals just what Microsoft is planning to make Windows 10 look like. The taskbar is black, much like in build 9901 which leaked recently.

The Verge claims that there will also be a light version of the theme, for those who dislike the dark mode. This is very similar to that on Windows Phone, which also has dark and light modes.

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Windows Phone users love pornography - we won't judge

Popular porn site, PornHub, released their website statistics for 2014 and they are calling it the year that the globe “decided to take their porn to go”. While watching pornography on the go doesn’t seem to be a shock, the platform that grew the fastest was a bit of a surprise – Windows Phone.

According to PornHub’s statistics, from 2013 to 2014, the website saw an amazing 52.3% increase in traffic being served to Windows Phone devices. While that number sounds impressive, Windows Phone devices on PornHub only account for 2.6% of total mobile traffic.

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2015 is the year to find success on Windows Phone with Marmalade and Microsoft's developer offer

It's the time for new starts and fresh challenges, and Marmalade and Microsoft have put together an enticing package for developers in 2015.

The cross­platform tools company has hooked up with Microsoft to get the best new games and apps onto Windows Store and Window Phone Store.

Developers can apply for the program with games and apps already published on other platforms and, once accepted, will be provided with a Windows device, a Windows 8.1 Pro licence (worth up to $200), and a Marmalade Indie licence (worth $500) to develop with.

The program is live now and will be running until 31 March 2015.

Everyone's a winner

Windows is a platform that demonstrated significant growth in 2014; downloads were up 110 percent while the number of registered developers jumped 80 percent.

Reasons enough for all developers to be publishing on the platform, but if you require more encouragement, Marmalade and Microsoft are offering additional incentives.

Once your game or app is live on the store, developers will receive a $100 PayPal voucher and the guarantee of a priority review for Windows Store promotion.

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Reports of Windows Phone being pulled are wide off the mark

In the past few hours reports have surfaced that all Windows Phone devices had been pulled from the Verizon site.

It’s a lovely conspiracy theory and certainly something to fire up the fanboys, nothing spells fan better than Microsoft or Apple.


Unfortunately, rumors of the handset’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, if I may paraphrase Mark Twain.

Journalists may wish to pay a quick visit to the Verizon site, as devices such as the Samsung Ativ SE, for instance, are still available. Nokia Lumia, or Microsoft, as the case may be, aren’t listed.

That is odd, but not the end-of-the-world.

No information is forthcoming yet from the carrier, which isn’t surprising. The company has never been the most forthcoming of entities.

Verizon just recently began issuing updates for current devices, which should raise red flags for those talking of the platform’s downfall.

No, Windows Phone isn’t the end-all, be-all of mobile phones. None of us thinks it is. Android rules the roost, with iPhone trailing behind it.


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