Microsoft’s Windows and Windows Phone roadmap reportedly leaks

Images of Microsoft’s product roadmap for partners have leaked onto the web. The documents were posted on Twitter by Maartin Visser, who discovered the them on the Microsoft Partner Network. The purported roadmap reveals new details regarding the next versions of upcoming products, including Office 15, Internet Explorer 10 and Windows Phone. Microsoft’s IE 10 could be out by mid-year according to the roadmap, possibly around around the same time as the Windows 8 Release Candidate. Office 15 is expected to enter its beta-testing phase midway through 2012 and become available in the early part of 2013. Window Phone will see “future investments” somewhere around the third quarter of this year, possibly indicating an Apollo launch. A second image can found

Microsoft wins its biggest cloud computing client

LONDON (Reuters) - Microsoft announced its biggest-ever customer for cloud computing - software that it hosts on behalf of clients and delivers over the Internet - after winning a contract to provide free services to a major Indian education body. Microsoft, which was built on the sale of expensive software that is installed on individual computers, has been forced by competition from Google and others to branch out into the fast-growing world of cloud computing. The U.S. ...

Investors losing faith that Nokia can stop the rot

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Ailing cellphone maker Nokia has the cash to survive seven quarters like the last, but investors are losing faith that it can break the vicious circle that keeps customers and in turn application developers from its new phones. Chief Executive Stephen Elop, who joined from Microsoft in 2010, gambled last year that ditching Nokia's homegrown Symbian phone software in favor of a largely untried version from his old employer would put the company back in the driving seat. ...