It's One of Those Bad MS News Days... (WP and IE Woes)

[jlzimmerman]

Windows Phone down in Europe as iOS continues reign in Japan | ZDNet

After edging over 10 percent during the latter part of last year, Windows Phone is in decline, according to the latest numbers released by Kantar from its smartphone sales report for the three months until the end of March.

Coming off a peak of 10.3 percent across the European economies of Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain, Windows Phone now finds itself down by 20 percent to 8.1 percent.

In surveyed countries where it had the largest appeal, Windows Phone is down by 2.2 percentage points over the first quarter of the year in the UK to 9.1 percent; from a peak of 12.9 percent in November 2013, Windows Phone has steadied to 8.3 percent of smartphone sales in France; and in Italy, the leader in Windows Phone uptake, the 17.1 percent seen at the end of 2013 has been reduced to 13.9 percent by the end of March.

However, in good news for Microsoft's mobile ecosystem globally, Windows Phone has increased sales across Australia, Japan, and the United States for the first quarter of the year.

Japan and the US saw a rise of around one percentage point since the start of the year, while Australia lead the world in improved Windows Phone sales by recording a lift of 1.7 percentage points since the end of December.

"Windows had a tough start to the year as a result of its entry-level Nokia models facing fierce competition from low-end Motorola, LG, and Samsung Android smartphones," said Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar strategic insight director.

Apple is continuing to enjoy a honeymoon in Japan following the availability of iPhones on the nation's largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo, in September last year. Kantar's data until the end of March points to iOS making up 57.6 percent of sales, Android claiming 41.5 percent, and Windows Phone at 0.9 percent.

"Even though the iPhone has now been available on Japan's largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo, for a number of months Apple still accounts for more than 40 percent of sales on the network," Sunnebo said. "The success of the iPhone is also filtering through to the iPad, with almost a quarter of Japanese iPhone owners also owning an iPad.

"With smartphone penetration in Japan lagging well behind Europe and the US, Japan will remain a key growth market for Apple."

The current stigma against phablets is making no impact in China, where Kantar reports that large screen devices made up 40 percent of smartphone sales in March, despite a general lack of 4G coverage across the country.

"As 4G infrastructure expands in China, the demand for data is going to be unprecedented, paving the way for carriers to boost revenues significantly through larger data packages," Sunnebo said.

For the first three months of the year in the US, Android gained 7 percentage points to sit at 57.6 percent, iOS dropped eight points to 35.9 percent, with Blackberry up 0.3 points to 0.7 percent, and Windows Phone sat at 5.3 percent, an increase of 1 percentage point since the end of 2013.

And IE haters are gonna love this one.
U.S. advises avoiding Internet Explorer until bug fixed | Reuters

(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Homeland Security advised computer users to consider using alternatives to Microsoft Corp's Internet Explorer browser until the company fixes a security flaw that hackers have used to launch attacks.

The bug is the first high-profile security flaw to emerge since Microsoft stopped providing security updates for Windows XP earlier this month. That means PCs running the 13-year old operating system could remain unprotected against hackers seeking to exploit the newly uncovered flaw, even after Microsoft figures out how to defend against it.

The United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a part of Homeland Security known as US-CERT, said in an advisory released on Monday morning that the vulnerability in versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer could lead to "the complete compromise" of an affected system.

"We are currently unaware of a practical solution to this problem," Carnegie Mellon's Software Engineering Institute warned in a separate advisory, that US-CERT linked to in its warning.

Versions 6 to 11 of Internet Explorer dominate desktop browsing, accounting for 55 percent of the PC browser market, according to tech research firm NetMarketShare. Google Inc's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox account for the majority of the rest of the traffic.

News of the vulnerability surfaced over the weekend as Microsoft said its programmers were rushing to fix the problem as quickly as possible. Cybersecurity software maker FireEye Inc warned that a sophisticated group of hackers have been exploiting the bug in a campaign dubbed "Operation Clandestine Fox."

FireEye, whose Mandiant division helps companies respond to cyber attacks, declined to name specific victims or identify the group of hackers, saying that an investigation into the matter is still active.

"It's a campaign of targeted attacks seemingly against U.S.-based firms, currently tied to defense and financial sectors," said FireEye spokesman Vitor De Souza on Sunday. "It's unclear what the motives of this attack group are, at this point. It appears to be broad-spectrum intel gathering."

In addition to possibly switching to an alternative web browser, US-CERT advised businesses to consider using a free Microsoft security tool known as EMET, or the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit, to thwart potential attacks. Security experts say EMET is helpful in staving off attacks, but businesses are sometimes reluctant to use it because it can cause systems to crash due to incompatibility with some software programs.

 

[Muessig]

As far as the WP usage statistics go, you can pretty much put that down to being because there's been little to no new hardware releases in any market across 2014 yet. I think as soon as the 930 and 635 release you'll see those statistics go back up again.

With the IE bug, do we know this definitely affects the IE11 version on WP? If it does I think we'll see a small update that'll patch this problem pretty sharpish.

 

[Laura Knotek]

As far as the WP usage statistics go, you can pretty much put that down to being because there's been little to no new hardware releases in any market across 2014 yet. I think as soon as the 930 and 635 release you'll see those statistics go back up again.

With the IE bug, do we know this definitely affects the IE11 version on WP? If it does I think we'll see a small update that'll patch this problem pretty sharpish.

Windows Phone is not affected by the security bug. See the list of affected products here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/library/security/2963983

 

[Zapella Tiago]

It's pretty normal. Because of announce of new hardware's.

Same thing happen when WP. 7.5 and WP8.0 was announced.

 

[Sport Driver]

With WP is problem that they're is no consistent flow of devices. They present devices and than leave it like that. However this should change wit now OEMs. Hopefully .

Sent from my Nokia Lumia 820 using Tapatalk

 

[neo158]

The drop in market share is more than likely down to people waiting for new devices than people deserting the platform.

The IE bug has been patched already, it's on Windows Update.

 

[prasath1234]

Drop is due to the release of moto g in European markets.

Sent from my C2305 using WPCentral Forums mobile app

 

[Michael Alan Goff]

As far as the WP usage statistics go, you can pretty much put that down to being because there's been little to no new hardware releases in any market across 2014 yet. I think as soon as the 930 and 635 release you'll see those statistics go back up again.

With the IE bug, do we know this definitely affects the IE11 version on WP? If it does I think we'll see a small update that'll patch this problem pretty sharpish.

As the problem is exploited with a now older version of Flash, WP is safe.

 

[bionicgt]

I think they announce a handset and release it like sebveral months later, look at Samsung and Apple, they don't take too long in bettween releases, they're so slow!!! ...

 

[Bartdog]

someoine enlighten me... is Chrome considered a safe alternative by most? My daughter has had terrible virus problems with chrome. I told her to just stop using it.

 

[Laura Knotek]

someoine enlighten me... is Chrome considered a safe alternative by most? My daughter has had terrible virus problems with chrome. I told her to just stop using it.

How about Firefox? That's what I use in both Windows 8.1 and Linux.

 

[anony_mouse]

Firefox and Chrome are not affected by this bug.

A big problem with Windows Phone (which apparently isn't affected by this bug) is that only one browser core is allowed. If there is a problem with IE, all WP users are in trouble. Nice one Steve!

 

[Michael Alan Goff]

Firefox and Chrome are not affected by this bug.

A big problem with Windows Phone (which apparently isn't affected by this bug) is that only one browser core is allowed. If there is a problem with IE, all WP users are in trouble. Nice one Steve!

Theoretically they're unsafe. If the only attack vector is a plugin, and it seems like it is, then WP is safe.

 

[Jas00555]

Well, Nokia was most of the WP user base and after multiple headlines of "Microsoft to buy Nokia" would you buy a Nokia phone? It's just like how Blackberry lost tons of potential sales by putting up a for sale sign. Plus (just like I said 3 months ago when Nokia's sales were down) Nokia has STILL not put out a flagship to gather headlines, just niche products.