The Much awaited Xobni Mobile for BlackBerry has been launched and made available for blackberry users by Xobni.

According to the company, the app “reinvents the address book”, which automatically creates rich profiles for every contact, a person can ever communicate with, regardless of whether they’ve been manually added to the native address book.

Xobni Mobile for Blackberry can be downloaded via the Xobni website and very soon it will also be available on Blackberry App World. Xobni is also launching Xobni One, a service that links information between Microsoft Outlook and mobile versions of Xobni for a more comprehensive and up-to-date address book.

According to Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte, Xobni Mobile automatically builds and maintains the fastest, most complete and smartest address book a person would have ever used.

The launch is expected to be an important milestone for the company, and the company has made it even more compelling by powering it with Xobni One. This new service will prove out to be the foundation for all their future products.

Xobni Mobile is compatible with the Blackberry Tour, Curve 8900, Bold and Storm handsets.  The cost of standalone app is $9.99, however Xobni Mobile with Xobni One costs $6.99 plus $3.99 per month or $39.90 per year.

Tom Shoes, a foot ware company which is known for donating a foot ware to disadvantaged children every time you buy one, has joined hands with Microsoft Advertising for a multichannel campaign featuring mobile.

On April 8, the company is all set to organize an event called One Day Without Shoes to create awareness about the debilitating foot disease  which  infects poor people who often go without shoes.

While Microsoft Advertising will be donating its online, in-game and mobile advertising assets and expertise, JWT is providing the creative work.

According to the founder and chief shoe-giver of Toms Shoes, Santa Monica, CA, it is great that a company size of Microsoft is not only taking note of the Toms One for One movement but is also helping them to achieve their goal to have thousands of people participate in One Day Without Shoes Shoes on April 8.

In his opinion, being able to connect with the supporters through their mobile devices takes their movement one step further, engaging them in their brand and allowing them to get involved through a different channel.

The campaign includes homepage takeovers, including Fox Sports and MSNBC, placements across Microsoft’s mobile and in-game properties, as well as strong viral and social media elements.



Tagged with:
 

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: It has been revealed that the new operating system of Windows Phone 7 will not support user-replaceable memory cards. However, Microsoft has also made it clear that it will work with phone makers to ensure that Windows Phone 7 handsets pack enough memory for applications, 3D games, and media storage. Phones may also have microSD cards embedded in them but they will be locked in place and inaccessible by end users.

Besides, it has also been revealed that Windows Phone 7 won’t permit true multitasking like the iPhone and third-party applications won’t be able to run in the background, and those using VoIP will be limited.

According to Charlie Kindel, who is in charge of Microsoft’s Windows Phone developer strategy, Apps that run arbitrarily in the background create an end user experience where battery life and responsiveness of the system becomes inconsistent and the company is focused on getting a set of experiences right where it didn’t have to support multitasking.

Tagged with:
 

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Earning over four percentage points of market share, Google’s Android OS has emerged as the only mobile platform experiencing significant growth in the US during the three months ending in January.

Even after an increase in the market share to 7.1% from 2.8%, Android continued to occupy the fourth place. Microsoft’s share of the smartphone market shrank four percentage points to 15.7%. The loss has been attributed to the gain in the Google’s share.

Sale of the iPhones has been stalled with just 0.3 percentage point’s increase in the Apple’s share to 24.8%. However, even after the loss, Apple maintained the second spot behind RIM, whose market share grew from 41.3% to 43%.

Fall in the share of Palm continued with a loss of 2.1 percentage points but it also continued to hold its fifth place with a 5.7% share.

Tagged with:
 

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Android smartphones incorporated with the Bing search engine will be rolled out by US vendor Motorola in China by the end of this month. Bing search and map functions will be added by Motorola to its Android-powered smartphones, as part of a global alliance just signed with Microsoft. A new widget that also includes the Microsoft search engine along with a pre-loaded Bing bookmark on its mobile browsers will be included by the company.

A new feature on the Android handsets for China was announced by the company in the month of January in the wake of the Google-Chinese censorship debacle. The new article would have enabled the users to select their own search provider, including local search champion Baidu.

The first customized Android device supporting Wi-Fi and WAPI, the Motorola XT701 was launched by W-CDMA operator China Unicom earlier this week.

Tagged with:
 

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The subscribers demand has been cited as a reason behind the abrupt end of a year old exclusive search deal of T-Mobile USA and Yahoo and the latter’s replacement with search giant, Google. The revelation has been made by  T- Mobile USA executives.

The dropping of Yahoo for Google has lead to a major shift in control of the U.S. mobile search market away. Currently, AT&T is working with Yahoo, Verizon has partnered Microsoft and Google has deals with two mobile operators, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Tagged with:
 

LG’s first Windows Phone 7 smartphone having a codename Panther is expected to be launched by the end of October this year. The model falls in the second category devices defined by Microsoft because of its sliding keyboard.

LG has been showing signs of urgency for the launch of their first Windows Phone 7 device. According to the sources, the previously leaked QWERTY-packing Series 7 running device goes under the codename Panther.

However as informed previously, the LG panther meets the Microsoft’s Chassis 2 requirements. A few other prominent features of the model includes LED flash, 5 megapixel camera, microUSB and 3.5mm audio connectors.

Tagged with:
 

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The recent announcement by Microsoft that Windows Mobile 6.5 devices cannot be upgraded to Windows Phone 7 Series has made all the recent buyers of Windows Mobile 6.5 devices like HTC’s HD2, regret their purchase. It has been made cleared by the company employees that the minimum hardware requirements for the new Windows Phone 7 Series operating system is not met by Windows Mobile 6.5 devices.

According to Natasha Kwan, General Manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business in the Asia-Pacific region, the phone doesn’t have the required three face buttons (it has five) and according to Tony Wilkinson, Business Operations Director for Microsoft Australia, it lacks certain other hardware components.

The lack of HD2’s hardware components reflects a bigger gap between WinMo 6.5 and Windows Phone 7 devices. Windows Phone 7 Series will require heavy-duty 3D graphics hardware that doesn’t exist in any WinMo 6.5 device yet.
Microsoft has set the bar high for 7 Series devices because of the fact that the HD2 runs a powerful 1Ghz processor and still didn’t make the cut.

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Dr. Jai Menon, current CIO, Bharti Enterprises and Director Technology & Customer Service, Bharti Airtel, has been promoted to the rank of Group Director – IT.

In his new role, Menon is required to establish security standards, build alliances with the likes of IBM, Google, Apple and Microsoft besides steering the various businesses of Bharti Enterprises on the IT front.

Amrita Gangotra, currently heading the IT operations at Bharti Airtel as CIO – Mobile Services, has been announced as Director – IT, Bharti Airtel (India and South Asia) and will report to Sanjay Kapoor, CEO.

Tagged with:
 

www.WirelessFederation.com/news It has been revealed by the officials from Microsoft Australia that Windows Phone 7 using devices would have only three main form factors.

The details of the chassis program much rumored last year has also been confirmed by them.

Full-touch screen devices using a 1GHz processor or even faster is the characteristic of Chassis 1 and it is the first to reach the shipping target late in 2010. Chassis 2 devices will be similar to common Windows Mobile phones and will sport a touch screen and a sliding QWERTY keyboard.

Not very much detail has been given for Chassis 3 but it is said to involve handsets with fixed-in-place keyboards.

Tagged with: