VentureBeat

Robbie Bach has to put on a happy face when he talks about all of his children. Of all of the businesses in his Entertainment & Devices group at Microsoft, Windows Mobile is one of the toughest businesses to run. It has more than 20 million units in the marketplace, but it’s up against competitors such as Apple, Nokia, and pretty soon Google. This is the third and final edited transcript of a recent gathering between Bach and a small group of reporters in San Francisco.

Q: What brought you down here?
A: We do events where we bring in folks from the venture capital companies and startup firms they’re investing in. We had 40 or 50 people there. I came and laid out our mobile strategy. People from our team met with the companies. We talked about where there were opportunities. It builds relationships for us. We maintain those connections. I also met with our IPTV business. That continues to go very well. That’s a place where the next three or four years are going to be very exciting.

Q: The end goal was to develop relationships and M&A?
A: That is one possibility. It isn’t an explicit goal. A lot of time, they want contacts, to see where Microsoft sees the market going, or technology.

Q: What do you tell them about the mobile strategy in light of Android and the iPhone?
A: We support diversity and choice. As those Windows Mobile phones come on to the market, we want people to have great iconic experiences. There are multiple styles of phones to give people choice. We talk about the importance of services and how independent software vendors and we can expand services in mobile. The third thing we talked about was Microsoft expanding from a business and enterprise mobile company to being a consumer mobile company. Read the rest of this entry »

Navigation 2.0 arrives today with Dash Navigation’s Dash Express GPS navigator (global positioning system). The gadget represents a new generation of smarter car navigation devices because it has two-way communication between Dash and the user.

One-way GPS systems from the likes of Garmin, Mio Technology, Magellan, and TomTom and can only be so helpful to you. They can show you where to go, using satellite signals to fix your location as you drive. You can search the on-board memory of the devices for “points of interest” that you may want to visit, like the city hall in a town. Some of them even send you traffic conditions over a one-way radio for a fee of $5 a month or more.

But Dash connects your gadget back to the company’s servers over cell phone (the nationwide GSM/GPRS network of Jasper Wireless) or Wi-Fi wireless Internet connections.

Dash uses “crowdsourcing,” where its own fleet of users communicates back their positions, speeds, and other data (including traffic reports from Inrix in Kirkland, Wash.) so that Dash can calculate traffic on both freeways and major side streets. This is a big advantage over other kinds of GPS navigation systems, and Dash recently decided to cut its price from $600 to $400. It goes on sale today at Amazon.com.

“There is an element of Web 2.0 meets GPS here,” said Mark Williamson, director of services for Dash. “Others get you from point to point. We can tell you what is around you.”

My colleague Matt isn’t so fond of the Dash Express, which I will acknowledge has some drawbacks. One of the problems is that it costs $12.99 a month to use some of the best features beyond GPS navigation. The question is whether users are going to care about all of the slight advantages that Dash has over other dumb GPS gadgets. Read the rest of this entry »