Which is precisely why Leap Motion released this video showcasing its impressive Windows 7 and Windows 8 integration:

With Leap Motion, you can now do everything available in Windows for multitouch functionality — without actually touching anything. The company promises that operating system-level functionality and web browsing capabilities will work out of the box, no software or driver installations required, and will be simple to use.

“We want our users to have a magical experience, with easy and natural movements in the air leading to amazing interactions,” co-founder David Holz said in a statement. “Leap Motion’s mission is to break down the barriers between people and technology.”

The demo shows a user navigating Windows 8′s home screen tiles via in-air gestures, selecting and rearranging tiles, opening a web browser, and surfing sites while zooming sections for a closer look, all without touching a mouse or a touch-sensitive screen. In addition, previewing one of Leap Motion’s intended uses as a controller in the media room or kitchen, the demo shows how simple it is to scroll through Netflix, select a movie, and begin watching. Or to draw a scene in one of the Leap Motion apps, then rotate it in 3D.

The Leap Motion device is tiny, about the size of a pack of gum. It senses both of your hands and all 10 of your fingers with 200 times the sensitivity of the Xbox 360 Kinect. The company recently announced OEM bundling with select computers from ASUS, and an even more interesting deal with HP that will see the hardware melt away into the computer itself, embedding Leap Motion’s functionality into laptops to make them gesture-enabled right out of the box, without any hardware components to plug in.

And there’s more to come:

“We’re looking to embed our tech into watches, and smartphones, and glasses, and everything,” Leap Motion’s COO Andy Miller told me a couple of weeks ago.

All I want to know is: Where’s the Mac OS X demo?

Image credits: Leap Motion

Microsoft corporate VP Tami Reller said today that the next major update to Windows will be called Windows 8.1 and that it will be available for free before the end of the year.

“We feel very good about the direction we’re heading in with Windows 8,” Reller said today at the JP Morgan Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference in Boston. “Windows 8.1 is an update. Since launch, we’ve continued to deliver many product updates. This is more substantial than a daily or a weekly update.”

The update was originally code-named Windows Blue, but it looks like Microsoft has finally seen fit to call it Windows 8.1. The update will be available to download via the Windows Store. Not only will the update come to Windows 8 devices, but it will hit Windows RT devices as well.

A preview version of Windows 8.1 will be available to the public on June 26 at the start of Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco.

As for broader availability, Reller said 8.1 will be available “later this year” and that the company is sensitive to holidays. Microsoft wants Windows 8.1 loaded on devices available for purchase during the holidays.

Reller did not mention any new features that 8.1 will include, but earlier reports have said Microsoft will bring back a version of the Start button on the desktop and an option to boot directly to the desktop.

Additionally, Reller mentioned during her talk that the Windows Store now has 70,000 apps. That’s a pretty impressive number given that Windows 8 only launched last October.

Screenshot via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Microsoft still faces criticism for its Windows 8 operating system, but despite that, the software giant has sold more than 100 million licenses in its first six months of availability, and important updates are on the way.

“Windows 8 is a big, ambitious change,” Microsoft CMO and CFO Tami Reller wrote in a blog post. “While we realize that change takes time, we feel good about the progress since launch, including what we’ve been able to accomplish with the ecosystem and customer reaction to the new PCs and tablets that are available now or will soon come to market.”

The 100-million milestone for Windows 8 is particularly important for Microsoft because its shows momentum even in an environment where PC sales are down. Back in January, Microsoft said it had sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses. At six months in, Windows 8 is actually keeping pace with Windows 7′s initial sales.

Reller also confirmed that the much-talked-about Windows Blue update to Windows 8 would arrive “later this year.” Windows Blue will likely be called Windows 8.1 or something similar, since Blue is simply a codename. Two things that have been rumored to be coming in Windows Blue are a boot-to-desktop option and a Start button on the desktop that takes you to the Start screen.

“[Windows Blue] will deliver the latest innovations across an increasingly broad array of form factors of all sizes, display, battery life, and performance, while creating new opportunities for our ecosystem,” Reller said. “It will provide more options for businesses and give consumers more options for work and play. The Windows Blue update is also an opportunity for us to respond to the customer feedback that we’ve been closely listening to since the launch of Windows 8 and Windows RT.”

In terms of delivering new form factors and sizes, the next thing we expect to see are cheaper 7-inch and 8-inch tablets running Windows 8 and Windows RT. Recently, Amazon accidentally leaked the first small-screen Windows 8 tablet, the 8.1-inch Acer Iconia.

Image via Microsoft

“The mobile PC industry is undergoing significant change,” NPD senior analyst Richard Shim said in a statement. “The rapid rise and establishment of white box tablet PCs … is putting pressure on traditional notebook PCs … resulting in cannibalization by tablet PCs.”

NPD’s latest report suggests that tablet shipments will grow 67 percent this year to 256.5 million and will reach a massive 579.4 million in 2017. In contrast, laptop or notebook PCs will decline 10 percent over the same period, dropping from 203.3 million to 183.3 million.

But there are two bright spots for laptops.

Source: NPD

Global mobile PC shipments – 2012-2017

First, the portion of the notebook market that is touch-enabled will grow 48 percent in 2014, from almost nothing in 2012 to close to 100 million in 2015 and increasing each of the following two years. That’s driven by the increasing importance of touch in computing platforms of all kinds, the need for laptop manufacturers to innovate, and also by Intel’s proclamation that third-generation Ultrabooks using the chip-maker’s new Haswell processors must include touch.

And second, the premium ultra-slim laptop market — such as Ultrabooks and Apple’s MacBook Air — will account for two-thirds of touch-enabled notebooks in 2013, and 80 percent by 2017.

Missing in action, however, is Windows 8.

“Thus far, Windows 8 has had a limited impact on driving touch adoption in notebook PCs, due to a lack of applications needing touch and the high cost of touch on notebook PCs,” Shim says.

The biggest driver for touch and tablet adoption, NPD says, is white-box tablet manufacturers. Increasingly, small, regional brands are building Android-based tablets — especially in China — and distributing them in emerging markets where laptops have never really gained a foothold. These white-box brands accounted for a full third of tablet shipments in 2012, and NPD expects that percentage to remain steady over the next few years.

The key take-away for PC manufacturers?

Differentiate by building form factors that are not traditional PCs and are not traditional clamshell laptops. The challenge, of course, is reduced price, reduced margin, and increasing regional competition.

It’s enough, perhaps, to make the big manufacturers wish for the good old days of the netbook.

Image credit: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Microsoft still isn’t divulging official Surface numbers, but it looks like it’s at least making a (tiny) dent in the tablet market.

Microsoft shipped 900,000 Surface tablets for the first quarter, accounting for 1.8 percent of the tablet market, according to IDC’s latest tablet numbers. Altogether, Windows 8 and RT tablet shipments across all manufacturers hit 1.8 million during the quarter.

Those numbers are slightly less than Strategy Analytics’ latest figures, which noted that 3 million Windows tablets were shipped for the quarter. The true numbers likely lie somewhere between those two figures.

While Microsoft is clearly just getting started with the Surface devices, its numbers seem particularly poor compared to Apple’s 19.5 million iPads shipped in Q1, as well as Samsung’s 8.8 million units shipped. Surface shipments were likely hurt by their limited availability and the late release of the Surface Pro, which started shipping in February in the U.S. and Canada.

PC shipments also dropped precipitously in the first quarter, and IDC wasn’t shy about blaming Windows 8 for the decline.

The Surface Pro made up most of the Surface units shipped, according to Strategy Analytics. I found the Pro to be a far more useful device than the Surface RT, mostly due to its speedy Intel processor (which can also run older Windows programs).

If you needed further evidence that tablets are more than a mere computing fad, just look at the latest numbers from Strategy Analytics.

The firm found that the tablet industry more than doubled in the first quarter — reaching 40.6 million units, up from 18.7 million last year. This was a significant quarter since we have more than two major companies backing tablet platforms, and consumers have plenty of inexpensive tablets to choose from.

In particular, it’s worth paying attention to Microsoft’s figures. The company is finally on the map in the tablet industry, with 3 million Windows tablets shipped, which includes both Windows 8 and Windows RT (Surface) devices. While that only makes up 7.5 percent of global tablet market share, it’s a notable figure, since Microsoft didn’t even have a tablet strategy last year (we can exclude the handful of Windows 7 tablets nobody bought).

Apple, not surprisingly, is still leading the tablet industry. The company reported 19.5 million iPads shipped for the quarter, up from 11.8 million last year. But Apple should also pay attention to how much Android slates are gaining on the iPad. Strategy Analytics reports that 17.6 million Android tablets were shipped in Q1, up from 6.4 million.

Now Apple and Google are basically neck and neck for the top spot in the tablet world. Android made up 43.4 percent of the global tablet market for the quarter, while Apple held 48.2 percent, falling around 15 percentage points from last year.

For the most part, it was small and cheap tablets like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire that helped Android gain so much ground so quickly. At $329, the iPad Mini is still significantly more expensive than $200 Android tablets.

Apple’s big problem? Android tablets will continue to get cheaper and there will be more of them to tempt consumers. Apple, on the other hand, will be stuck iterating the iPad and iPad Mini over the next few years (likely at the same prices).

At this point, it looks like Android will end up dominating tablets pretty soon — something I previously thought would take years to do.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Microsoft stock, which is down a penny today, jumped from under $30 to over $31 almost immediately overnight, and has climbed almost 11 percent over the last month. That’s part of a fairly steady rise over the last quarter which has added over $30 billion in value to the company.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Ubben said that Microsoft “is a dominant software company … and in the long term it will win out,” and that in five years, Microsoft’s investments in web and cloud could transform the company into the largest cloud company in the world. Just five days ago, Microsoft announced general availability of its Windows Azure Infrastructure Cloud — a cheaper cloud than Amazon and Rackspace. 

The company has had challenges with Windows 8 adoption which some have blamed for historically slow PC sales in the last quarter, although it is investing more in Windows 8 for tablets and smaller touch devices.

In any case, Microsoft appears to be doing something right. At least, if you can trust Wall Street.

Microsoft will likely bring back the Start button in the next version of Windows, but it won’t be the Start button users have known for years.

Ever since the launch of Windows 8 late last year, many users who have been put off by the Start screen have been asking for the Start button back. They’ve also been asking for the ability to boot to desktop. Microsoft will likely include these two things in Windows 8.1, which will arrive later this year.

But The Verge reports that this new Start button will simply take users to the Start screen (see above) rather than provide all the functions of the old Start button. This would be an extremely lame move, a tease that doesn’t actually help users who relied on the Start button in older versions of Windows.

While this news may be dismaying for some, there are already several Windows 8 apps that act as a full Start button replacement, letting you open apps and find files through an interface similar to what was on Windows 7. These apps include Pokki, Start8, and Classic Shell, and they also allow you to boot directly to the desktop.

To remedy the lack of a Start button on my end, I’ve been using Pokki on my Windows 8 desktop and it works quite well. It lets me shut down the computer, access apps, and boot directly to the desktop, which I primarily use. I hardly ever see the Start screen and only go to it if I want to use a Windows 8 app like Netflix.

Microsoft plans to include the option to boot to the desktop instead of to the Start screen in the next version of Windows, according to The Verge.

One of the biggest complaints about Windows 8 since its launch last October is how the OS pushes you to use the Start screen. Many PC users simply want to use the desktop. The ability to boot to the desktop and bypass the Start screen entirely will likely be included in Windows 8.1 a.k.a. Windows Blue.

Some recent rumors also suggest Microsoft is considering bringing back the Start button, another thing users have been clamoring for. (That said, I find these rumors a lot less convincing than the boot-to-desktop option because the Start screen is so important for touch-enabled devices.)

What’s mildly funny about all this is that there are already apps for Windows 8 that let you boot directly to the desktop, including Pokki, Start8, and Classic Shell. Those apps also give users a Start button replacement that let you open apps and find files through an interface similar to what was found in Windows 7.

But even with those apps available, it’s important for Microsoft to make these types of changes in the OS itself because this is what many core Windows users want (especially mouse-and-keyboard stalwarts). It seems fair to give these users more choices in Windows.

Screenshot via Microsoft/YouTube

We’ve already written about how much wisdom came out of the VentureBeat Mobile Summit boardroom sessions, but let’s talk about something specific: mobile monetization, which is rightfully a subject on the minds of just about every developer.

Making money on mobile is tough — but it doesn’t have to be. According to Darya Trushkina, business development vice president at Game Insight and Narr8, developers can ensure their games and apps make cash by paying attention to what tactics work and where the industry is headed in the future. Below, we take a look at a few key lessons.

Invest in Windows 8 (seriously!)

The Windows 8 ecosystem is small right now — tiny, even — but it won’t stay that way for long. And that’s a mighty big opportunity for developers just starting out.

My Country is one of the most successful games on Windows 8 so far.

“For developers looking to make the biggest breakthrough, I would suggest considering Windows 8. iOS and Android are both way overcrowded. The cost to get into top visibility spots is too high for any small developer to get into,” Trushkina said.

Basically, because there’s not much competition on the platform, any game that gets released won’t be fighting for exposure. And Microsoft has demonstrated that it’s very much interested in giving Windows 8 apps free promotion, which cuts precious dollars off developers’ marketing budgets.

It’s a strategy that’s so far worked pretty well for Game Insight’s My Country, which hit Windows 8 in March and has already reached over 350,000 users. “From early numbers we see there’s great potential to make money from this platform. Windows 8 has a really good chance to become one of the big ecosystems,” Trushkina said.

Think global, but know your markets

As any company that’s ever sold a product in multiple markets can confirm, what works in the U.S. probably won’t work as well elsewhere. And mobile games are no exception to that.

Source: Flickr: istolethetv

Different cultures require different monetization strategies.

“You can’t create the same game across countries. They need to feel like game was created just for them. The same items you sell in the U.S. wont sell the same way in Japan,” Trushkina said.

For example, Game Insight noticed that, in Japan, players go through content six times as fast as those in U.S, and Koreans are even faster. This forced Game Insight to scale their content creation based on the demands of gamers (more on that below).

Cultural differences even apply to what extent players are willing to pay for content. According to Trushkina, Japanese gamers are much more likely than Americans to pay for apps and in-app add-ons. The trick, however, is to ask for money early.

“Revenue-per-user rates are much higher in Japan than here. If you create high-quality content and customize it,  local users will enjoy it more,” Trushkina said.

Understanding Japan has been a big help to Game Insight, which regularly takes top spots in Japanese sales charts, which, as a foreign developer, is tough to do. “It’s kind of obvious but not many developers are not willing to put time and effort into localization. Translation is not enough,” Trushkina said.

Keep users interested with fresh content

Source: Narr8

Web comic app Narr8 offers initial comic episodes for free, but charges users for later ones.

If you want to retain your customers, you’ve got to keep them interested. This is why Game Insight releases new content for its games on a weekly or biweekly basis. “Users want more and more content, and they want different content. The challenge is to keep up with the market to produce content users want,” Trushkina said.

The real trick, however, is developing that new content for old titles alongside new content for new titles. While there’s no simple tip for maintaining that balance, the developers that pull it off will be able to increase their customer bases while retaining the users they already have.

Free-to-play works … if you do it right

If you’re a game developer trying to make cash solely off mobile banner ads, well, you’re doing it wrong.

“Mobile ads don’t work well on phones,” says Trushkina. Unlike most companies, Game Insight sells its games with no advertising and still does well on the platforms it creates for. Instead of relying on banners, Game Insight focuses on creating addictive games and attractive in-app purchases.

A similar strategy applies to comic reading app Narr8, which offers users initial comics free but makes them pay for later episodes. Basically, if you want to make the real money, let users in for free and get them addicted so that they never leave.

Know your platform

This might not come as a big surprise, but Android and iOS are very different beasts. “The differences start with their terms and conditions and go all the way to their app approval process,” Trushkina said, noting that this changes the way developers create apps for each platform.

Apple and Google also have different criteria for determining which apps reach the top of their charts, which for developers is one of the toughest things to understand. “Google’s algorithm for getting into top positions is changing all the time,” Trushkina said.

That’s a big deal considering how much developers already spend trying to attract more users to their apps. Not knowing which criteria have the greatest effect on placement makes it much harder to predict success.

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That might sound a little melodramatic, given that the recorded history of PC shipments only goes back to 1994. But with a drop of 13.9 percent — almost double the expected 7.7 percent — to only 76.3 million units, the first quarter of 2013 has been a disaster for traditional PC manufacturers.

Even a new version of Windows, once a guaranteed shot in the arm for PC shipments, failed to stimulate demand. Quite the opposite.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,” Bob O’Donnell, an IDC vice-president, said in a statement.

O’Donnell says that with its radical user interface changes, subtraction of the familiar Start button, and extra costs that come with Windows 8-equipped PCs that take advantage of its touch capabilities “have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices.”

Ouch.

In the U.S., this marks the tenth consecutive quarter of year-on-year declines, and quarterly shipments reached their lowest level since early 2006. Europe was down as well, and even growing China and the rest of the Asia Pacific region dropped 12.7 percent, the first double-digit decline in PC shipments there.

HP remains the top PC vendor globally, IDC said, but its shipments fell 23 percent year-over-year, and it was almost surpassed by Lenovo, which astonishingly had double-digit growth in a sinking market. Dell dropped 10 percent as well, and Acer, Asus, and Toshiba also dropped somewhat.

Even Apple, which has seen strong growth in recent years, particularly in laptops, had shipments decline 7.5 percent to 1.4 million.

IDC seems interested in blaming Windows 8, but the more likely culprit is surging sales of tablets, which some analysts are including in “PC” shipment numbers. In fact, some analysts believe that this year is the year tablet sales will outpace traditional PC sales, with quarterly sales of 55-60 million.

Given this quarter’s numbers, it looks like the crossover point could be as soon as the next three months. But whether that happens or not, big changes are in store for PC vendors:

“The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer,” David Daoud, IDC Research Director, said in a statement. “Vendors will have to revisit their organizational structures and go-to-market strategies, as well as their supply chain, distribution, and product portfolios in the face of shrinking demand and looming consolidation.”

photo credit: amygentle77 via photopin cc

Microsoft has dropped the resolution requirement for Windows 8 on tablets to 1,024 by 768, opening up the possibility for less expensive 7-inch or 8-inch tablets running the fledgling operating system.

While the company has released its own Surface tablets and Microsoft partners have released Windows 8 tablet/laptop hybrids, the smart play is to offer 10-inch and 7-inch experiences to hit every possible market. Apple, for example, offers both the iPad and iPad mini. Samsung, Google, and Amazon also offer a variety of tablet sizes. So it would be smart for Windows 8 to come to 7-inch screens to compete with the offerings of all these other players.

Microsoft quietly announced the changes in a “Windows Certification Newsletter” released March 12, but it was spotted by ZDNet on Thursday. Microsoft writes in the newsletter:

We’re changing the System.Client.Tablet.Graphics.MinimumResolution requirement to create a consistent minimum resolution of 1024 x 768 at a depth of 32 bits across all Windows 8 system form factors. The physical dimensions of the display panel must still match the aspect ratio of the native resolution. This doesn’t imply that we’re encouraging partners to regularly use a lower screen resolution. In fact, we see customers embracing the higher resolution screens that make a great Windows experience. We understand that partners exploring designs for certain markets could find greater design flexibility helpful.

At the lower resolution, Microsoft notes that the “snap” feature will end up being disabled to create a better experience. Manufacturers will need to disclose that snap is disabled.

Microsoft also used this newsletter to announce that Windows 8 tablet screen sizes peak at 17 inches and can be no larger than that.

Microsoft Surface photo via Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Windows Blue, the next version of Windows, has been leaked like crazy the past few days but Microsoft has taken its sweet time to publicly acknowledge that such a product exists. Well, today it finally did so, and on top of it, the company announced its next major Build conference for developers.

Microsoft has released a lot of major products in the past six months, including Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and the new Office 365/Office 2013, so the company needs to continue wooing developers to build apps and integrations for these products.

The Build conference will be held June 26-28 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Registration for the event will open at 9 a.m. PT on Tuesday, April 2 at www.buildwindows.com. Tickets will cost $1,595 for the first 500 to register and then $2,095 for anyone else.

“At Build, we’ll share updates and talk about what’s next for Windows, Windows Server, Windows Azure, Visual Studio and more,” Microsoft corporate VP Steve Guggenheimer said in a blog post today. “Build is the path to creating and implementing your great ideas, and then differentiating them in the market.”

Windows Blue is rumored to be released in public preview and then in full form this year, so the Build conference announcement pairs well with Microsoft’s acknowledgement of Blue. Ideally, Microsoft could use the Build conference to show off all the new features of Blue, give it a real name, and announce a ship date.

Steve Ballmer photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

While screenshots of Windows Blue — the next version of Windows — leaked yesterday, it appears the flood of new details is continuing. The Verge has posted a video walkthrough with an early version of Blue.

Windows Blue is a code name for a major upgrade to Windows 8 that should offer new features and functionality. Microsoft hasn’t revealed much on its own, but from the leaks, we can tell that Blue could offer improvements and fixes for some of the the most glaring problems in Windows 8.

Microsoft will likely release Blue later this year.

The video walkthrough shows some of improvements in action, including changing the size of Live Tiles on the Start screen to large, medium, and small and snapping two Windows 8 apps side-by-side, with each app taking up 50 percent of the screen. (Right now you can only do a 70-30 split, and it’s highly annoying.) It also showed more personalization options so you can customize the Start screen with more colors, and it displayed more options available from the Start screen so you don’t have to go into the Desktop to change them.

Additionally, Windows Blue should offer new built-in apps that could improve the experience. New Windows 8-style apps include an alarm, calculator, audio recorder, and a replacement for Windows Movie Maker that edits videos via touch.

Check out the full video below for more.

A whole generation of gadgets are coming that marry mobile gaming and living room play. And the folks behind the Razer Edge want it to be the Lamborghini of these hybrid gadgets.

Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, the Razer is a beast of mobile PC gaming, and it is moving toward its launch in April. This mobile gaming machine is a tablet, a laptop, and a living room console that runs PC games and Windows 8 applications. Priced starting at $999, it’s not a cheap machine. But Razer chief executive Min-Liang Tan believes that it will appeal to the people who are true gaming fanatics.

The Razer Edge delivers a true PC gaming experience that exploits discrete Nvidia graphics that will probably enable it to run circles around other Android devices that are seeking to invade the living room. It will face competition from the likes of Valve’s rumored Steam Box, the Xi3 Piston, the Nvidia Project Shield, Green Throttle Games, and Ouya’s $99 Android console. These are all slightly different variations on a theme. And that theme is the disruption of life as we know it in both mobile and living room gaming. We’ll hear a lot about these devices at next week’s Game Developers Conference.

Of all those devices, the Razer Edge should be the favorite of Microsoft and Intel, because this machine is an authentic high-end PC. The base model sports an Intel Core i5 processor, a Nvidia GT640M LE graphics processing unit, 4GB DDR3 random access memory, and a 64GB solid state drive. The upgraded Razer Edge pro has an Intel Core i7 processor, 8GB RAM, and a 128GB or 256GB SSD. The system costs $999 for the base model, $1,299 for the 128GB model, and $1,449 for the 256GB model.

Tan first showed us the device as Project Fiona at CES in 2012. After that, the Carlsbad, Calif.-based company put the design up for a vote, and the crowdsourced advice from the community helped shape the machine into something else, said Brian Jang [pictured], the product manager at Razer, in an interview with GamesBeat. The community wanted to be no more than twice the weight of an iPad (the Edge weighs 2 pounds). They wanted detachable controllers, discrete graphics, and the capability to play Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 3 game, at the very least.

“This isn’t just for Angry Birds,” Jang said. “It’s hardcore PC gaming.”

The device has USB 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0, and four configurations. You can use it in a tablet mode, a keyboard in a dock mode, game controller mode, and docking station mode. It has a multitouch touchscreen so you can play Windows 8 apps, movies, and music. The keyboard in a dock mode turns the Edge into a laptop. That mode has a removable 40MHz battery. (The keyboard is shipping in the third quarter). You can also play it as a console system, with console-like controls on the side of the machine. And you can play it on your living room TV with an HDMI cable connection. Since it has 3 USB 2.0 ports and an HDMI port, you can play it on a living room TV with multiple players. The 10.1-inch display is 0.8 inches thick.

The machine has a battery life of about an hour, so you’ll probably need that a $69-extra extended battery, which gets you two to six hours. The docking station is $99, and the gamepad is $249.

I played the system in all of its modes in a recent preview. The machine can run a demanding game, the stealth-action game Dishonored, at 59 frames per second. It played the racing game Dirt: Showdown at 41 frames per second. The graphics ran in a fluid way. I saw the occasional “tearing,” where one part of the screen has to catch up with the rest of the screen when the scene is moving fast. But it wasn’t annoying, and you can adjust game settings to eliminate the tearing altogether. It makes some noise because it has a fan.

Overall, it’s a very cool device. But the price tag is going to limit the audience that will buy the machine like this. Here’s our video tour of the Razer Edge below. Check it out.

Razer Edge demo from VentureBeat on Vimeo.

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Microsoft plans to automatically push out its Service Pack 1 update to all Windows 7 owners starting today, the company said in a blog post Monday.

While Microsoft is peddling Windows 8 now, more than 630 million licenses of Windows 7 have been sold to date, so Microsoft still needs to keep an eye on those many users. Windows 7 without Service Pack 1 will stop receiving support from Microsoft in April 2013, so the company is preemptively moving any stragglers over to Service Pack 1 to ensure that they still get updates for security and other issues. Service Pack 1 users will get security updates for free from Microsoft until January 2020.

The Service Pack 1 update will be delivered through Windows Update and will reach all Windows 7 users over the next few weeks. It can take a bit of time to download and install, so be aware of that.

Microsoft recommends that Windows 7 users that don’t have Service Pack 1 free up some disk space and make sure their laptops are plugged in while installing. The company writes:

To ensure Service Pack 1 is installed without issue, customers should check for sufficient free disk space and that AC power is present on a laptop. If additional space needs to be created, we recommend using the Disk Cleanup tool to delete some files so that the service pack will install. If the service pack installation is interrupted, it will reattempt to install automatically after the next restart.

Windows 7 image via Wallpaper US

The photo-editing toolkit Aviary and chipmaker AMD announced today they’re partnering to give Windows 8 users and developers a better, faster set of photo-editing tools and features.

AMD Ventures put an undisclosed amount into the software startup, which enabled the development of Aviary’s new Windows 8 SDK that will “take advantage of unique AMD APU [accelerated processor unit] architectural advantages,” said company reps in a statement on the news.

Also, Aviary rolled out its first Windows 8. Aviary also has released its first Windows 8 app to show off the SDK, dog-food style.

Win8 developers will get access to a library of effects and filters for photo editing using the new Microsoft language C++ AMP.

That last bit stands for Accelerated Massive Parallelism and allows for computations to be performed in parallel on the graphics processing unit (GPU) cores inside the AMD chips instead of the central processing unit (CPU) cores. AMD says the whole shebang adds up to 16x-speed increases in processing photo editing changes. Hence the performance enhancements Aviary is so excited about today.

Aviary’s Photo Editor for Windows 8 is currently available in the Windows Store. With its current lineup of developer tools and consumer apps, the company says it’s processed 3 billion images from 35 million users to date.

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Big Data and Predictive/Real-time Analytics startups: Are you looking to jumpstart development & accelerate market traction? Sign up for the SAP Startup Focus program to receive technology, support, resources and community to help you develop new applications on SAP HANA, a cutting edge database platform. Get started here, and enter promo code “VB2013″ on the form.

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Windows 8 has had a tough run, and the number of people taking issue with the OS keeps growing. Now Samsung executive Jun Dong-soo has taken shots at the operating system, blaming it for not improving demand for PCs.

“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Dong-soo, the president of Samsung’s memory chip division, said in a meeting with reporters in South Korea on Friday. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”

Ouch.

Samsung sells a number of Windows 8 PCs, including laptops and laptop/tablet hybrids.

To be fair to Windows 8, global PC sales have been declining primarily because of the rise of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. Still, the OS (which launched in October) did not help reverse the trend. Laptop sales in particular were quite ugly during the holiday season for 2012, with Windows notebook sales down 11 percent year-over-year.

Notably, Samsung doesn’t seem too impressed with Windows RT, Microsoft’s tablet-specific OS, either. Samsung is reportedly looking to stop sales of its 10.1-inch Windows RT Ativ Tab in Germany and other European countries.

Via The Korea Times

Samsung PCs running Windows 8: Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

What about native-only solutions?

Only 15 percent of developers would go native-only when building an app for multiple platforms, a stat that might be a little shocking to those witnessed Facebook famously and loudly abandoning HTML5 development last year in favor of a faster, smoother, better native app experience.

See the infographic: What developers do with HTML5

“Most developers were not impacted by that Facebook decision,” Kendo UI EVP Todd Anglin told me yesterday. “One thing that gets overlooked often in the Facebook news is that Facebook hasn’t abandoned HTML5 at all … just changed their use of it.”

In fact, the new Facebook app includes a lot of HTML5, Anglin said, adding that Facebook has said that HTML5 makes it faster to develop and maintain multiple apps.

Source: KendoUI

Developers who are actively using HTML5

HTML5 on the desktop

HTML5 on mobile is nothing new. But what about HTML5 on the desktop?

It turns out that HTML5 could be huge on the desktop, with 66 percent of developers interested in developing HTML5 apps for Windows 8, almost half interesting in building apps for Google’s Chrome OS, and another third thinking about developing apps for the emerging Firefox OS.

“It’s the final frontier for where HTML5 should go,” Anglin said. “And it begs the question … why don’t we think of this as an equal option for a PC?”

On a desktop PC, HTML5 would not be limited by a relatively puny mobile processor, either, meaning that developers could do even more with HTML5 video and interactivity. What that means, Anglin said, is that you could have a complete unified strategy for all mobile operating systems and desktop systems at one time … that uses the same codebase and the same developer skill set.

That’s fairly mind-blowing, considering where we’ve come from.

Source: KendoUI

HTML5 for the desktop

The ‘one + HTML5′ strategy

A growing strategic solution to the challenge of multiple platforms seems to be the “one + HTML5″ plan, in which developers build one app for a key target platform in native code — although it may also contain some HTML5 — and one app for all the other desired-but-not-core platforms in HTML5.

Typically, the “one” is iOS, although it could also be Android, and the HTML5 solution is for BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and any other desired platforms.

Still, given a choice, most developers would either do a pure HTML5 app for all platforms, or a hybrid app: HTML5 core, with native wrapping on each targeted platform.

Source: Kendo UI

Native vs HTML5 vs Hybrid apps

The hype cycle — HTML5 isn’t overhyped anymore

Only a quarter of developers now believe that HTML5 is overhyped, while almost half strongly believe it is not.

“Developers are now beyond the hype curve,” Anglin said. “Even though some developers think that  HTML5 is overhyped, that doesn’t mean they don’t think it’s a platform that is both usable and important.”

78 percent of developers now say HTML5 is appropriate for building mobile apps, and 68 percent say it’s appropriate for all developers building any kind of app.

iOS and BlackBerry: both hard to develop for

While iOS is a top platform, developers say it’s difficult to develop for. In fact, iOS ranked just under the notoriously challenging BlackBerry for development difficulty. Sixty-four percent of developers said that BlackBerry was challenging — and having developed two apps for the platform myself, I agree — while 69 percent said that iOS was difficult.

Objective-C is not the newest or widest-known language in the world, of course, and Apple does put a few hurdles in developers’ paths as well.

In contrast, half of developers thought that Windows 8 was easy to develop for, and Windows Phone 8 was not far behind. Android, meanwhile, was split: 26 percent said it was very easy, while 29 percent said it was very hard.

“What’s surprising to us is not that it’s difficult, but that’s it almost twice as difficult to work with as Android,” Anglin said. “We would have thought developers would rank Android equal to iOS or even harder, since there are so many more devices in the Android ecosystem.”

Source: Kendo UI

Mobile platforms: how difficult?

photo credit: brucelawson via photopin cc

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Could the fix for the underdeveloped Windows 8 app ecosystem be … Android?

That’s what BlueStacks says. The emulation company has released a version of its Android app-optimizing player for the Surface Pro, giving those using the PC-tablet hybrid access to thousands of Android apps.

BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma says that apps will be key to the success of Windows 8, and in turn, the Surface Pro. “For [devices like] the Surface to sell, [they] need not just a few apps but a lot,” he said. 

The Surface-optimized app is the latest in a series of big developments for BlueStacks, which launched in 2009 and has $14 million in venture capital.

In December, BlueStacks released a version of its app player for OSX so that Android software could run on Macs (even if those Apple fans didn’t especially want to).

Far more significant, however, is BlueStacks’s January deal with Lenovo, which agreed to preinstall the BlueStacks app player on Idea-branded desktops and laptops. Added to previous deal with PC makers like AMD, Asus, and MSI, the move should help give BlueStacks an customer base of over 100 million PCs this year.

Photo: Devindra Hardawar/VentureBeat

Microsoft sold a paltry number of Surface tablets in the last quarter — somewhere between 680,000 and 750,000 units — research firm IHS iSuppli told CNet.

The firm estimates that Microsoft shipped around 1.25 million Surface tablets in the quarter, which makes the low sales figure even more depressing for Microsoft. Additionally, IHS iSupply noted that return rates for the Surface were “very high.” (Those return rates aren’t surprising, given how much the Surface disappointed me in my review.)

“If you put the high return rate together with low sell-through [sales out] rate, that’s indicative of a problem,” iSuppli analyst Rhoda Alexander told CNet. She pointed to the steep learning curve of Windows 8 as one potential issue. I’d wager that many consumers have also been frustrated by the inability to install normal Windows apps, and the small number of Windows 8 apps available.

While the sales estimates aren’t exactly rosy for Microsoft, Alexander also notes that they’re similar to the results from some Android devices. (That’s not exactly a good thing, since most Android devices don’t sell well.) She also points out that the Kindle Fire had similar issues when it launched — but it has since gone on to carve out a decent chunk of the tablet market.

With the Surface Pro tablets on the horizon, which have Intel processors and can run full Windows apps, Microsoft may need to work hard to entice consumers who weren’t interested in the Surface RT.

Microsoft will offer a discounted version of Windows 8 Pro for students after the price of the OS goes up on Feb. 1, but anyone who wants to get in on Windows 8 can do so at an even lower price during the next two days.

While Windows 8 has been controversial, there are several reasons to buy the upgrade now, including faster PC performance and the fact that you don’t have to install it now. If you are a student, there’s no exception here — it’d be cheaper to upgrade now.

After Feb. 1, students will be able to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $70, which is much cheaper than the $200 price to upgrade to Pro. The base price of regular Windows 8 will cost $120 after Feb. 1.

Microsoft will also host a “Windows Campus Tour” that will kick off February 18th and visit over 150 university campuses across the U.S. The deal on Windows 8 student pricing will extend to 49 additional countries by March 19.

Windows 8 has sold more than 60 million licences to date, but Microsoft has not revealed how many of these copies have been activated.

How has Windows 8 treated Acer? Not particularly well.

Acer president Jim Wong says that the Windows 8 launch did essentially nothing for Acer’s PC sales. “The whole market didn’t come back to growth after the Windows 8 launch. That’s a simple way to judge if it is successful or not,” Wong told Bloomberg.

Wong’s comments come as the entire PC market is getting stomped by the menace that is tablet computing. The so-called post-PC era is ruining companies like Acer, which is on the verge of reporting its second annual loss.

But it’s not all doom-’n'-gloom. For Acer, a big boost came from its Chromebooks, which accounted for roughly 10 percent of Acer’s PC shipments in the U.S. That turnout has been encouraging enough that Acer plans to offer the devices in other markets as well.

But that doesn’t exactly solve Acer’s Windows 8 problem, which is so significant that Acer doesn’t plan to release any Windows RT devices until this summer’s back-to-school season.

The development is a bit of a vindication for Acer, which seems to be institutionally opposed to anything Microsoft attempts. Acer CEO JT Wang said last August that consumers just weren’t interested in the operating system, and, more notoriously, told Microsoft to “think twice” about creating the Surface.

Perhaps it’s Acer that should think twice — in this case about working with Microsoft.

Technology really pushed humanity forward this week. IBM released findings of its latest gel invention that can attack bacteria in a completely new way. It has the potential to save lives, and even fight uncurable diseases such as HIV.

But did y’all see Chrissy Farr go on that OK Cupid blind date? Because that was hilarious.

So, maybe not all our technology favorites this week pushed the humanitarian envelope, but we’ve got some awesome stories that you’ll be sad you missed when the daily grind of a new work week starts.

Check them out and if we leave you wanting more, you can always hop on over to our Editor’s Pick tag, where our top, awesomely reported stories wait for your attention.

Now on to this week’s cream of the crop!

IBM vastly improves delivery of nanomeds that kill bacteria where antibiotics fail

In 2011, IBM researchers and a research group in Singapore showed off a new kind of synthetic, biodegradable nano particle that doctors could use to attack bacteria cells that are resistant to antibiotics. Now, the same group of researchers have made the “nanomedicine” much more practical by delivering it in the form of a cream or gel that you can rub on wounds or inject into infected regions.

Call them nanomeds. They could save your life one day.

Why I’m dumping OkCupid’s blind dating app

OkCupid CEO Sam Yagan wants to bring back a vestige of the past: the blind date. So we decided to give OkCupid’s new app, Crazy Blind Date, a whirl.VentureBeat teamed up with ABC7 News reporter Jonathan Bloom for this project: Chrissy Farr would go on an actual blind date, and the San Francisco network affiliate of ABC would interview her date on the spot. Check out how the date went.

5 reasons you should buy Windows 8 now

While it’s easy to hate on Windows 8, it’s time to stop nagging about the changes and buy the upgrade before it gets way more expensive.

Windows 8 has sold more than 60 million licenses to date, but Microsoft has not revealed how many of these copies have been activated. Still, these are generally good numbers, and it is keeping pace with initial Windows 7 sales. Microsoft has invested a lot of time and money into Windows 8 and will continue to update the software to make it run better.

Myspace’s newest problem: Credibility

Strapped for cash and fighting for relevance, the relaunched Myspace already has enough problems. But it looks like the company and its music-focused revamp have another, potentially bigger issue: credibility.

Life after Epic: Getting to know Cliff Bleszinski (exclusive interview, part one: his past)

Turns out people want to hear what Cliff Bleszinski has to say. Every word. The brash and outspoken 37-year-old developer is certainly polarizing enough to warrant such attention. You might hate him for his pretty Barbie-doll wife and his two hot-rod Lamborghinis that cost more than most people’s annual salaries. You’ve probably spent more than a few hours of your life, however, totally lost in games like Unreal Tournament and Gears of War. Games that he helped create.

Dog reading newspaper image via Geoff Livingston/Flickr; Gel image via IBM; OK Cupid app image via ABC7; Microsoft 8 image via Microsoft/YouTube; Myspace image via Tom Cheredar; Cliff Bleszinski photo via Cliff Bleszinski

While it’s easy to hate on Windows 8, it’s time to stop nagging about the changes and buy the upgrade before it gets way more expensive.

Windows 8 has sold more than 60 million licences to date, but Microsoft has not revealed how many of these copies have been activated. Still, these are generally good numbers, and it is keeping pace with initial Windows 7 sales. Microsoft has invested a lot of time and money into Windows 8 and will continue to update the software to make it run better.

Related stories:
Windows 8 stuns, amazes, and sometimes lets us down (review)
Tips and tricks for getting started with Windows 8

Some of you have firmly made up your minds that you’re not upgrading to Windows 8. Fine — you’re stubborn, and you’re not doing it. Eventually, you’ll be like those people who are still running Windows XP, roughly 34 percent of the world.

But if you’re on the fence about Windows 8, here are several compelling reasons to buy it now.

And here are five reasons that could change your mind:

1. The base price of Windows 8 will jump 300 percent on Feb. 1

As noted in the intro, the cost of Windows 8 goes up substantially soon. On Feb. 1, a licence of Windows 8 Pro jumps from $40 to $200. Microsoft is also offering a less feature-packed version of Windows 8 on that date for $120. So you can get the best possible version of the software now for $40, or you can pay $120 later and get fewer features.

2. You don’t have to install it now

Another compelling reason to spend that $40 now? Purchasing the Windows 8 update doesn’t mean you actually have to install it. Windows 8 is a 2GB download, and you can simply leave it on your desktop for whenever you feel like updating. But since the price jump happens on Feb. 1, you have an incentive to at least buy it now and upgrade it later after more updates are added.

3. Windows 8 will make your computer faster

Microsoft hasn’t done an amazing job of communicating this, but Windows 8 has a lot of under-the-hood improvements that will make your laptop or desktop run faster. An extensive study by PCMag indicated much faster bootup times, higher benchmark scores, and speedier web browsing. Basically, Windows 8 can make a big difference in the performance department — even on some old PCs.

4. Windows 8 is not the monster you think it is

We’ve been a little harsh on Windows 8 at times. We have a few misgivings about the OS as a whole and think some average users will hate the changes. But while the OS is clearly designed with touch in mind, you can use the OS on a desktop PC or laptop as long as you mostly work out of the desktop. You can also install a Start button replacement like Pokki or RetroUI.

Another thing to consider — if you’re a Windows 7 power user, you just use the desktop to work anyway. If you continue to use the desktop on Windows 8 and avoid the new Start menu, your experience will be pretty similar. Heck, even a 3-year-old can use Windows 8.

5. Windows 8 apps have a ton of potential

Although it might be good to avoid the Start screen much of the time and work out of the desktop, eventually Windows 8 will have lots of compelling full-screen apps. Some great apps are already in the store, and more will be coming down the pipeline as more people use Windows 8.

Windows 8 image via Microsoft/YouTube

Microsoft’s soon-to-be-released Windows 8-running Surface Pro may cost an internal organ plus a year’s servitude, but price relief — at least on other Windows 8 tablets — sounds like it’s coming soon.

“We’re working closely with chip partners and OEMs to bring the right mix of devices,” Microsoft’s chief financial officer Peter Klein said today on the company’s earnings call, adding that Microsoft is looking to “expand the product lineup” and provide “a greater variety of devices at a bigger variety of price points.”

Surface Pro, which Microsoft plans to release Feb. 9, comes in $900 and $1,000 versions. The original Surface, which runs a stripped-down version of Windows called RT, is available in $500 and $600 models.

“We think of Surface as one part of the overall Windows 8 story,” Klein said. “It highlights interesting innovation, and demonstrates tightly integrated software and hardware.”

Klein admitted that Surface has seen “limited distribution this quarter,” but he said that Microsoft’s “goal is to expand that” and is looking “forward to continuing the growth of that business.” Unfortunately, Microsoft did not break out any details on Surface sales in its earning release or the following conference call for analysts, preferring to speak mainly in generalities.

But analyst estimates of Surface sales for the holiday quarter have been in the 600,000 to 1,000,000 range … or about 3 percent of Apple’s sales of iPads in its recent record-breaking quarter. In other words, Microsoft desperately needs more models and better price points: A Surface Pro can cost more than a MacBook Pro, or double what many Windows 8 laptops run.

It wasn’t clear from Klein’s initial comments whether Microsoft itself might release more Surface models to potentially fill lower price points, or only work with OEMs. A Microsoft spokesperson I talked to after the call clarified that Microsoft is primarily addressing any need for lower price points on Windows tablets by working with OEMs.

Klein did not, however, reveal any timing for the announcement and release of new models.

photo credit: methodshop.com via photopin cc

Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system is about to become a lot more expensive. An upgrade of Windows 8 Pro will go from costing $40 in a promotional offer to a much more expensive $200 at the beginning of February.

Microsoft offered up an upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for $40 to try to get consumers more interested in the OS. It claims 60 million licenses of Windows 8 have been sold to date, but we don’t know how many of those copies have actually been activated.

While the price of Pro jumps up considerably, Microsoft will offer an upgrade to a more basic version of Windows 8 for $120. That’s still quite a bit more money than the $40 offer — and you get less features.

The company outlined the new pricing in a blog post today:

Windows 8 upgrade editions will be priced as follows starting in February:

• The Windows 8 Pro upgrade edition will be available online and at retail for $199.99 MSRP (U.S.).
• The Windows 8 upgrade edition will be available online and at retail for $119.99 MSRP (U.S.).
• The Windows 8 Pro Pack will cost $99.99 MSRP (U.S.).
• The Windows 8 Media Center Pack will cost $9.99 MSRP (U.S.).

If you have any interest in Windows 8 at all, we’d strongly consider the upgrade offer for $40. But that will end at the end of January, so you better make up your mind soon. You can upgrade over at Windows.com.

Microsoft also used today’s announcement to remind folks that bought a Windows 7 PC between June 2 and Jan. 31 that if they want to upgrade to Windows 8 for $15, they need to register before the end of the month.

Apparently a lot of people miss having the Start menu in Windows 8. SweetLabs’ Pokki app, which adds a Start menu and app launcher to the Windows 8 OS, has attracted 1.5 million downloads to date.

Pokki for Windows 8 launched back in mid-October and hit 500,000 downloads on Dec. 20. In just a few weeks, the app has tripled in popularity with 1.5 million downloads. And people are using it — SweetLabs said that users open the Start menu an average of 10 times a day.

“We think this is a decent indicator that Windows 8 users see value in having a Start menu, in particular our Start menu,” SweetLabs co-founder Chester Ng told VentureBeat. “When we launched the Pokki Start menu, we had the hypothesis that Windows 8 users would enjoy it more if they had easier access to their stuff. We’ve seen a tremendous uptake that validates that original hypothesis.”

Microsoft said that Windows 8 has sold 60 million licences to date, but we don’t know how many of those copies have been activated. Still, if all of those copies had been activated, Pokki would still have an incredible install base.

To celebrate the milestone, SweetLabs has updated Pokki with a refreshed interface and a brighter color scheme, which you can see in the photo above. The company said the app now has a more accurate search function. Ng puts the changes in two major categories:

• The interface has had a facelift. — “It comes down to simply making it look better. We’re leading with a light color. It’s cleaner and more readable.”
  
• There are more customization options. — “We’re giving users more control over their experience. For example, you can now replace the Pokki acorn icon with a Windows icon, which a lot of people were asking for. You can also disable hot corners.”

SweetLabs still has plans to monetize Pokki by offering paid apps that can be accessed from the app. Ng said that paid apps will likely be tested “some time this quarter.”

San Diego-based SweetLabs has more than 70 employees and has raised $21.5 million from investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, Google Ventures, Intel Capital, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.

Pokki via SweetLabs

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Ben Rudolph might have the toughest job in technology.

Not only is he fighting two massive market leaders that together control the mobile market, he’s also fighting public perception. Android and the iPhone currently own 95 percent of the U.S. market for smartphones. Windows Phone is the almost-invisible little line in circle graph, with 2.7 percent. At least it’s now in third place, as RIM’s BlackBerry continues to fade.

Rudolph relishes the challenge, and he’s thrown himself fully into the fight, talking to literally thousands of iPhone and Android users in campaigns like Microsoft’s Meet Your Match viral videos, where he meets ordinary people and shows them how Windows Phone meets — and maybe exceeds — what their current phones do.

It’s odd to see Microsoft as the underdog, but that’s the reality in mobile. And according to Rudolph, that’s what makes it fun.

I chatted with Rudolph during his long Seattle commute home. Here’s the interview:

VentureBeat: Give us the 30 seconds on what you do…

Ben Rudolph: My official title is very long. It’s director of Windows Phone evangelism. Effectively, I spend my time helping people to find the perfect device. I oversee a lot of the experiential marketing stuff and all the smoked-by-Windows, which was the competitive ad campaign we started about a year ago.

I do a lot of stuff for social, Twitter, Microsoft’s and Windows Phones’ Facebook pages. I talk to a lot of people.

VentureBeat: So in other words, you have a pretty fun job.

Rudolph: I think I have arguably the best job in the company — I play with all the new toys before they come out and awesome stuff just randomly appears in my office for me to fiddle with. It’s like Disneyland for me.

VentureBeat: Let’s talk about Windows Phone. What are some of the most surprising features of Windows Phone when people see it for the first time?

Rudolph: The single biggest surprise is how different it looks and feels. I mean, it’s not a hidden feature, but it’s really that Start screen with the tiles. If you’re used to an iPhone or an Android phone, or even a BlackBerry, you’re used to the same sort of U.I. where you have all these little apps, and you go into an app and you do something, and you close the app, and you go into another little app, and you do something else.

So having a screen of tiles, when people see, they’re like, wow, there’s a lot of stuff going on. And then you put it in their hand, and you show them how their stuff comes alive on it, how their favorite people can be pinned to the Start screen, how their restaurants or movies can be on the Start screen, how everything’s flipping over with real information … all of a sudden when it’s in their hands it makes sense to them.

It comes alive, and it feels like the most fun jigsaw puzzle you’re ever going to put together. Because it’s the pieces of your life, it’s the stuff you care about: Your favorite sports teams, the news sites you go to. Your favorite people. Your favorite color. All that stuff comes together on that Start screen.

So it’s a very different way to do a smartphone. But when people see it, they dig it.

VentureBeat: One of the most interesting things about Windows Phone, and maybe the new Windows 8, too — I’m not a Windows guy; I use an iPhone and have an Android as well — is that it’s a differentiated operating system with a kind of different … ethos. That’s what makes Windows Phone interesting to me, actually.

Rudolph: I think you’re right. It was a completely different way of looking at how to build a smartphone. Not this app-centric model. Apps are great. They’re important. We’ve got lots of them — like 125,000 or something like that — but to be able to put it together in a way that makes sense around the experiences and the stuff you actually do, rather than just the apps you want to use — it’s just really cool.

And I love the fact that now with Windows 8 and Xbox, we’ve got this consistent look and feel across the whole company.

Now you pick something up — you pick up a Windows 8 PC — and it looks like the phone. You pick up the phone, and it looks like your Xbox dashboard. You play the Xbox, and it looks like your desktop. It’s all coming together, and it’s a really neat thing.

VentureBeat: So a phone is probably the most personal device, right, of all the electronics that you’ve got. Is it hard to get people to switch to a new type of phone?

Rudolph: I don’t think it’s hard to switch. Like anything else, when you try something new, you got to learn it, explore it, find all the settings. But what’s interesting, I find, is that people who are switching, or even getting a smartphone for the first time … because it’s built around the stuff that you want to do and the stuff you care about, it’s very intuitive.

I don’t need all of Facebook all the time; I just want to be able to see what my wife and my best friends are up to. So I pin my wife to my Start screen. I pin a group of my best friends, and I just get those chunks of Facebook.

So once you break out of that paradigm model of using apps for absolutely everything, once you understand that that’s not the only way you have to do something, the tile starts to make a lot of sense, and you start pinning and unpinning, and you’re off and running.

VentureBeat: So who’s the most resistant? Is it someone who’s maybe a feature phone owner or an iPhone owner who’s been an Apple user their entire life, or is it an Android owner?

Rudolph: It’s funny. Feature phone users are actually very receptive. If they’re ready to buy a smartphone, they’re ready to buy our smartphone.

There are a lot of people who have a very heavy emotional attachment to their phones, but it’s not specifically to the phone, it’s what the phone does, and the things that you accomplish with it.

So I’ll use iPhone as an example, because there are people who bought iPhones when they first came out and bought every iteration since then, and they’re like “I love my iPhone. I’d never leave my iPhone.” And then I ask why, and they show me all these apps and pages and pages of games, and all these little icons on their screen, and then I stop and I say “OK, you love all those things,” and they go “Oh, yeah, I love them all. It’s really important to me.”

Then I ask, “What do you do on your phone. What do you actually do?” And they say, well, “I e-mail. I talk to my mom. I use Facebook. I take pictures of my kids.” And then I say — what if I could show you a phone that can do all those things, but easier and better?

And generally speaking they’re like “I don’t know … I’m kinda used to this.” And then you show them something like the camera button on the Windows phone. You just hold the button and the camera turns on. Or you show them that you just want to look for a restaurant, you just hit the local scout button, and it pulls all that stuff up. You don’t have to learn anything or do anything — you just tap a button and then go — that’s pretty cool.

And the camera on the Lumia 920 is a perfect example.

You show someone the quality on that and they go, well, I want that one. I took this great picture of my son, next to his jack-o-lantern. It’s basically dark outside, but you can see his pajamas, and the funny face he’s making, and you show people that and they say: I want to be able to take pictures like that on my phone.

VentureBeat: So this is kind of a new challenge for Microsoft, isn’t it? For so many years, even decades, Microsoft has been in the dominant position — still is, in the desktop world — but now its an underdog. That’s a different challenge for Microsoft. How’s that work? How does that feel, to come in as the newcomer, the challenger?

Rudolph: It’s actually a lot of fun, primarily because the product is so good.

What we’re realizing is that a lot of people haven’t seen Windows Phone yet. And if they’ve seen it or heard about it, they haven’t touched it. So it’s a really interesting challenge where we’ve got this tremendously good product that gets amazing reviews — the experts get how good the operating system is and we get awesome reviews — but for ordinary people, it’s an interesting awareness challenge: How do we get more people to understand that that there is a Windows phone, that the Windows phone is different, and that when they try it they’re going to love it?

So for me it’s all about getting phones into people’s hands, because from personal experience — and I’ve personally interacted with thousands of Android and iPhone users — they’re all skeptical when they first walk up, and they all leave going: that sounds pretty cool.

So it’s a big challenge, but that’s what makes it fun.

VentureBeat: So on a device level there’s a lot to like. What about the ecosystem level, where Apple and Google and maybe even Amazon have these amazing rich ecosystems — what’s the view like from the Microsoft side on ecosystems?

Rudolph: We built our business by building a great ecosystem. That’s one of the reasons that Windows continues to be the dominant force in the PC market; we work with developers really really well, and developers like working with us, with over 125,000 apps now.

And we’re building a consistent experience across all the devices.

Office is on our phone, and it can be on your PC, and can get it as a service. SkyDrive works across everything now, Xbox music … so we’re building an ecosystem that’s very tightly integrated where you can get your stuff anywhere you are but still retains the soul of Microsoft, which is that we built this amazing platform, and you can build amazing things on top of it.

There are lots of people building really, really cool stuff, just for Windows Phone.

VentureBeat: Anything else?

Rudolph: Not really, but do you have a device to play one, a Windows Phone?

VentureBeat: No, I don’t.

Rudolph: Well, then we need get one to you. Because once you touch it, once you play with it, and get to know it, then I think it’ll make a lot more sense to you.

photo credits: mbiebusch via photopin cc, mbiebusch via photopin cc, Nicola since 1972 via photopin cc, mbiebusch via photopin cc

Microsoft has sold 60 million Windows 8 licenses. This announcement came today from Chief Financial and Chief Marketing Officer for Windows Tami Reller at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Windows 8 was released to the public in October to mixed reception to the OS itself as well as Microsoft’s future as a company. According to a study conducted by NPD Group, which conducts consumer and retail research, Windows notebook sales declined in 2012. But Reller said these sales are “roughly in line with where we would have been with Windows 7,” as reported by ZDNet.

Read more about Windows 8 on VentureBeat.