Device Arena

Now things are really getting interesting. China Telecom and Nokia just unveiled the Nokia 800C, the first CDMA Windows Phone in China and the first Windows Phone on a major carrier there.

The phone—a China-tuned version of Nokia’s popular Lumia 800—hits stores in April and comes in black and cyan. And Nokia is just getting started: A CDMA version of the Lumia 610 is also headed to China Telecom sometime in the second quarter of 2012.

The companies are a great match. Nokia has been building and selling phones in China, the world’s biggest mobile market, for 26 years. Some 250 million people there already use a Nokia phone.

China Telecom, meanwhile, operates the world’s largest CDMA cell network.

As a result, Nokia 800C owners will have access to popular Chinese media and social networking services including Sina, SOHU, Tencent and Renren. The phone also comes with Lumia-exclusive apps. Nokia Maps provides 3D maps of China and 190 more countries, plus content from popular Chinese travel, food, and real estate sites. Nokia Drive is a voice-guided, turn-by-turn navigation app. And Nokia Music offers unlimited free music for 12 months in mainland China.

To celebrate the first Lumia in the country, Nokia plans to offer 100,000 free downloads of the hit games Fruit Ninja and Plants vs Zombies via the new Chinese-language Windows Phone Marketplace.

windowsteamblog.com

HP Enterprise Services and Microsoft Corp. today announced a global, four-year initiative to deliver Microsoft’s leading communications and collaboration applications via global private and public cloud services.

Under the agreement, HP and Microsoft will offer private and public cloud solutions designed to help organizations rapidly scale new users, shift IT resources from maintenance to innovation and change IT from a capital to operating expense. The solutions include the following:

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Private cloud: HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Messaging, HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Collaboration and HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Real-Time Collaboration deliver Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 productivity applications as a service from HP datacenters around the world.
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Public cloud: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft’s Office collaboration and productivity tools, will be delivered by Microsoft through the cloud.
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Hybrid solution: HP will resell Microsoft Office 365 with HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Messaging, HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Collaboration and HP Enterprise Cloud Services – Real-Time Collaboration.1
HP and Microsoft engineering resources will collaborate to deploy, support and enhance the new solutions. The solutions will launch globally, with initial availability this month in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“Large organizations, particularly those in regulated industries like financial services and public sector, have demanding functionality and service level requirements,” said Brandt Faatz, vice president, Workplace Services, HP Enterprise Services. “HP and Microsoft help meet these needs with a flexible range of global, cost-efficient, cloud-based productivity solutions running on the latest technology.”

“Microsoft is committed to putting the unique and ever-evolving needs of customers at the core of cloud innovation,” said Mark Hill, vice president, Enterprise Partner Group, Microsoft. “This alliance with HP not only broadens Microsoft’s geographic reach, it gives customers maximum flexibility to choose a cloud computing solution that meets their organization’s specialized messaging and collaboration needs.”

HP and Microsoft have delivered technical innovation together for more than 25 years. They offer joint solutions that help organizations around the world improve services through the use of innovative technologies.

www.microsoft.com

Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.

“Today’s consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device,” said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President in Nokia’s Devices software organization. “Nokia’s software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole.”

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Mobile TeleSystems and Microsoft Corp today announced their co-operation to deliver new mobile communications services for MTS customers. The collaboration is aimed at extending the range of products in MTS’ market-leading portfolio of value-added services.

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