Vimeo App Lands On Windows Phone Devices

It’s taken a rather long time to happen but today Vimeo has announced the launch of their official smartphone application for Windows Phone users. Enabling Vimeo users to watch and manage your existing videos, watch videos from your Vimeo inbox.

As well as comments and add videos, watch later queue, or videos you have liked, easily like, comment on, discover new and fascinating featured videos, quickly search for videos on Vimeo, pause and resume uploads, replace existing videos.

Together with edit titles, descriptions, tags, privacy settings, and credits, share via Facebook, Twitter, email, or SMS and add videos to your Groups, Channels, or Albums. Vimeo explains:
“We packed all the best parts of Vimeo into one app for your Windows Phone. Now you can upload, manage, and watch videos from anywhere. And whenever you need more inspiration, you can browse great videos that match your interests in our member-curated Channels and Groups.” For full details jump over to the Windows Phone Marketplace for details and to download the new Vimeo Windows Phone application for free.

Video Your of Vimeo's Windows Phone App:

Windows Phone 8 Details Leaked

It would appear that some details have been leaked on the next generation of Microsoft’s mobile platform, Windows Phone 8, the platform is apparently codenamed Apollo, something we have heard before, and it will be released after the Windows Phone Tango update.

The details were revealed in a video from Microsoft’s Windows Phone manager Joe Belifoire, and the video was intended for Microsoft’s partners at Nokia, although they guys from Pocket Now seem to have got access to the video.

According to the report, Windows Phone 8 will support multi-core processors, a total of four new screen resolutions and the addition of removable SD card storage. Windows Phone 8 will also offer support for Near Field Communications (NFC), and it will come with some sort of contact less payment system which Microsoft calls the ‘Wallet experience’. It looks like the individual mobile carriers will be able to control Microsoft’s NFC payment system,. by a secure element on the devices actual SIM card or by the build in hardware of the device.

Microsoft also intends to have Windows Phone 8 fully integrated with their next generation PC operating system, Windows 8, and developers will apparently be able to use the same code that is used in Windows 8 for Windows Phone 8, with heavy overlapping in security, multimedia, networking stacks and more.

So this would mean that Microsoft intends to release Windows Phone 8 at the same time as Windows 8, and as it is expected before the end of the year we suspect we will see Windows Phone 8 before the end of 2012 as well.

Windows Phone 8 (Apollo) Leaked & Detailed:

Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million to use Windows Phone

Nokia just posted its hugely anticipated Holiday quarter results and summed up its financials for 2011. Not surprisingly, the company posted a huge loss of nearly $1.4 billion (1.07 billion euro), but what’s even more interesting - Nokia is getting paid by Microsoft to make Windows Phones.

Nokia received a $250 million “platform support payment” from Microsoft, just because it is making Windows Phone devices. Nokia also notes that this is the first from a series of payments from Redmond, but it seems that Microsoft has to up that sum to make up for Nokia’s huge loss.

Previously, Nokia’s CEO and ex-Microsoftite Stephen Elop, said that the Finns are to get billions, not millions in support funds from Microsoft.

“Our broad strategic agreement with Microsoft includes platform support payments from Microsoft to us as well as software royalty payments from us to Microsoft” Nokia said. ”We have a competitive software royalty structure, which includes minimum software royalty commitments.”

This hints that additionally the Finns might be paying less for royalties than other Windows Phone makers, which could turn out to be a very irritating discovery for other WP handset makers. Nokia has shipped "well over 1 million" Windows Phone devices up to date, but it stayed mum on sales of its other high-end platform MeeGo.

Nokia keeps weird silence about MeeGo, could it be because it outsold Windows Phone?

Nokia has just released its financials for the last quarter of 2011, and the whole of the year, and it’s an extremely exciting read. Interestingly, that’s not because of what it says, but becuase of what it doesn’t.

Nokia kept a weird silence about sales of its MeeGo platform, represented by the Nokia N9, which cannot go unnoticed. At the same time, the Finns did not give out sales of Windows Phone in the same period. Could it be because MeeGo with only the Nokia N9 outsold Windows Phone in Q4 2011?

Nokia has left the door wide open for speculation by keeping mum on the details. Here’s the only mention of the N9 in the report:

“The increase in our Smart Devices volumes in the fourth quarter 2011 was primarily driven by the broader availability throughout the quarter of the Nokia N9 and the shipments during the quarter of the Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 in selected markets, as well as increased seasonal demand for our devices.”

Notice that the Nokia N9 is mentioned first. Now, to give you some wider context on why we theorize about such a possibility: after spending billions on development Nokia suddenly announced it’s marginalizing its MeeGo effort and will release one last handset. This was the N9 which went on sale last summer. Back then, some nay-sayers doubted the future of the Nokia Windows Phone and asked Elop what would happen if the N9 sold better than Windows Phone. Elop then gave a very controversial answer, especially considering his position as CEO of Nokia by saying that even in that case, the company would not promote sales of its MeeGo smartphone.

On the other side, there was Windows Phone, which the company is promoting extremely vividly by spending millions, plus getting platform support of $250 million from Microsoft. It’s only logical to assume that Nokia wants to paint the best picture possible for its Windows Phone figures. Proving that is the fact that Nokia made an exception for Windows Phone shipments. Nokia reported “well over 1 million” shipped handsets, but unlike all of the report which focused around Q4 2011, this figure is for a wider period, “up to date.” We should also note that the figure does not represent actual sales to customers, but units shipped to retailers, which are yet to be sold.

What do you make of Nokia’s weird silence about MeeGo? Could the N9 have outsold the Nokia Lumia range or is it an overkill to assume something like that? Drop your two cents below.