Microsoft's Mobile Software Gets HTC

Microsoft's new Windows Phone platform won instant support from major manufacturers on Wednesday when China's ZTE and Taiwan's HTC Corp pledged to launch smartphones running the software. The U.S. software giant had stepped up its push into the cellphone market a day earlier with the launch of the new Windows Phone software, code-named Mango. It hopes a host of new features will help it close the gap on smartphone leaders Google Inc and Apple Inc. Microsoft has struggled for years to gain support from mobile phone manufacturers. All vendors in total sold just 1.6 million Windows Phones last quarter, giving it a market share of below 2 percent. Google and Apple together control more than 50 percent of the smartphone market. Windows Phone got a major boost in February when Nokia, the largest phone vendor by volume, said it would swap its own Symbian platform for Windows Phone. On Wednesday ZTE said it would roll out smartphones running updated Microsoft software later this year in Europe, and in 2012 in the United States. And Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC plans to bring out some models based on Microsoft's new software, its Chief Executive Peter Chou told Reuters on the fringes of an internet conference in Paris. "We are very committed to Windows phone products," he said. Analysts said Microsoft needed all the support it could get from handset vendors. "Increased support and competition can only help Windows Phone. It desperately needs more aggressively priced devices and a substantial promotional push to coincide with the Mango release," said Geoff Blaber, an analyst with CCS Insight. ZTE, which is known for its agressive entrance into the telecom equipment market, could help to boost Microsoft's position among cheaper smartphones. ZTE expects to ship more than 80 million handsets this year, up by a third from last year's 60 million units, an executive told Reuters earlier this year. Key markets for ZTE's handsets include China, Europe and the United States. In the fourth quarter of 2010, ZTE became the fourth-largest handset maker by unit shipments globally, ranking behind Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and LG Electronics Inc, market research group IDC said.

Green Global Charger

Telecom firms to adopt green global charger Leading global telecommunications firms have agreed to introduce a universal charger that can be used for devices like MP3 players and tablet computers as well as mobile phones, the United Nations' ITU agency said on Monday. A detachable cable with standardised end connectors that can also be used for data transfer will come with the charger, avoiding the need for separate cables and reducing both cost and eventual waste, the agency said. The International Telecommunications Union, which groups governments and manufacturers in setting standards for the industry, said the decision to adopt the new system was taken at a meeting in Geneva at the weekend. Among companies already committed to the development, it said, were Telecom Italia, France Telecom's Orange, AT&T, Spanish group Telefonica, Swisscom and Belgacom, as well as the China Academy of Telecommunication Research. Others were expected to come in later, ITU spokesman Sanjay Acharya said. The new equipment will upgrade a universal battery charging system for mobile phones, also backed by the ITU and adopted as a universal standard by the industry's GSM Association in 2009. That decision, being implemented, will eliminate one of the most annoying problems for mobile phone users -- the need to have a separate charger for equipment produced by different manufacturers. It will also mean manufacturers no longer have automatically to supply chargers with new phones. The new system, the ITU said, will extend the advance to a wide range of lower-power devices including cameras, wireless headphones and GPS equipment as well as MP3s and tablets, which users will be able to power using the same charger and cable. Apart from saving energy with an ultra-efficient power adapter, the new chargers -- to be produced in billions over the next few years -- would be safer and use eco-friendly materials. It will also use a faster charging current to cut charging time. All these improvements, the ITU said, will enable a significant reduction of global energy use once upgraded chargers are in widespread use.