In an effort to sell television studios on his company's forthcoming Xbox One game console and media center, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer personally paid a visit to Hollywood last week.
Unable to gain much traction against Apple's iPad so far, Microsoft is cutting the licensing fees for its mobile-targeted Windows RT operating system, hoping that if manufacturers are able to make less expensive devices, the platform could show signs of life.
In an attempt to draw interest away from Apple's iPad, Microsoft has set up a tablet comparison page that falsely presents the iPad as having a smaller screen than a Windows tablet with less screen area.
A recently aired Microsoft ad pits a tablet running the company's Windows 8 against the iPad, with the spot featuring an unlikely narrator: Apple's Siri virtual assistant.
Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled its next-generation home game console dubbed the "Xbox One," a device that aims to go beyond gaming and become the center of a consumer's living room entertainment experience.
Given that Apple now sits on well over $144.7 billion in liquid resources, there's lots of discussion about how the company could or should be spending it. What Apple is already doing with its cash is actually more interesting.
Gains made by Google's Android platform chipped away at the smartphone market share of Apple's iOS in the first quarter of 2013, while Microsoft's slow-growing Windows Phone managed to surpass BlackBerry in the battle for third place.
Google's YouTube on Wednesday sent a cease and desist letter to Microsoft requesting the company remove the made-for-Windows Phone YouTube client app from its store, citing a number of reasons for the takedown, one of which being an inability to garner advertising revenue.
Reaching for any way to regain share lost to Apple and other competitors, Nokia on Friday revealed a new version of its flagship Lumia handset, redesigned and exclusive to Verizon, capping off a week in which it also looked to tackle the low end of the smartphone market with $99 phones.
Microsoft would love for Apple to bring iTunes — one of the world's most popular software offerings — to its Windows 8 "Metro" platform, but executives at the Redmond giant say Windows 8 users shouldn't expect a touch-friendly version of the application any time soon.
Microsoft on Tuesday updated Office for Mac 2011, the long-in-the-tooth productivity suite tailored to machines running Apple's OS X, with bug fixes, features and compatibility with the Office 365 subscription service.
An all-out patent litigation war between the biggest players in the smartphone industry, including Apple, Samsung, Motorola and Microsoft, has yielded very little for all parties involved.
Even as Microsoft's Windows 8 reached a milestone in passing 100 million licenses sold, the software giant is preparing to rework its latest operating system in order to address the realities of a drastically changed computing market.
Over the last six months, Apple earned $22 billion on revenues of over $98 billion, while selling 85 million iPhones and 42 million iPads globally. The profits Apple is now earning in mobile dwarf the best mobile profit performance records set by Nokia in 2008 by more than a factor of three. Why are Apple's competitors not beating back its advances?
Microsoft is said to be planning to introduce its second generation of Surface tablets with smaller displays this June, but the company is reportedly taking a "cautious" approach after the initial models got off to a lukewarm start.
Apple's iPad fell to 39.6 percent of total worldwide tablet shipments in the first quarter of calendar 2013, according to the latest market data from research firm IDC.
Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 platform may have stumbled out of the gates, but that hasn't stopped the software giant from poking fun at smartphone industry-leading rivals Samsung and Apple in a new commercial touting Nokia's Lumia 920.
Apple's iPad offerings continue to dominate the tablet segment, but tablets running Windows 8 have had a small impact, accounting for one in fourteen tablets shipped in the first quarter of 2013.
Nokia is expected to unveil its response to Apple's iPhone 5 at a newly announced Lumia smartphone media event set for May 14 in London.
The set-top box segment occupied by Apple TV and others may get a lot more crowded in the coming weeks, as Microsoft has announced a date for the unveiling of its next generation Xbox console, while Amazon is rumored to be pondering a step into the TV arena as well.
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Neil Hughes
Kevin Bostic
Daniel Eran Dilger
AppleInsider Staff
Sam Oliver
