Weekly Roundup 7-21-2007

This week the Zune officially crossed the one million units sold mark.  Too bad the iPhone did that in about one week. Will this increase efforts for Microsoft to come out with a  Zune phone to compete? Who will get the exclusive? Hopefully someone like Sprint with that has a better data network.

In another blow to the entertainment division of Microsoft the head of the division Peter Moore left to head up EA Sports.  He says it was to be closer to family, but the fact that XBox just took a billion dollar hit in extending the warrantees of its boxes due to wide spread hardware problem is to be noted.  Add to it XBox sales seem to be slowing with only 700,000 moved this quarter. Other consoles cutting prices (even if its is just to move discontinued models) will Microsoft follow suite to move more boxes?

Despite the lackluster XBox sales Microsoft announced this week they had an annual revenue of 50 Billion. That is quite a lot of money.

Microsoft finally shared some news about SP1 this week and basically they said that only select testers will see the early beta of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista that blogs had been discussing last week. They don't have an ETA on a public beta, just that it wouldn't be soon.

Speaking of Service Packs one of Mary Jo's infamous sources are saying October for Windows XP SP3. 

In a time where information is hard to pry out of Microsoft about anything, even a service pack, at MGX they laid out a plan to get to Windows "7" which is the codename for the next generation Windows Client.  They are planning a three year development cycle which should but it to us around 2010. It will be in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

Last, but certainly not least, Microsoft shipped Windows Home Server to OEM's and System Builders.  They said to expect to find it in channels in a couple of months. I can't wait to get my hands on it, after running via the beta I don't think I can manage without it now. No word yet on if the beta testers will get a copy. Considering they had over 100,000 testers it would seem likely that only a subset will be getting a copy.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

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