After a happy online jumble of "it's coming, it should be here today, it's here for me, is it in the Marketplace?" from various sites, tweets and Facebook status updates, you can finally pick up the Xbox Companion App for your Windows Phone... and iOS devices. Using your Windows Phone as an alternative controller (think of it like a TV remote rather than gaming controller), the app will allow you to search Bing, browse content from the Marketplace, and control media playback on the Xbox.
Everyone's favourite flight simulator for Windows Phone, Infinite Flight, just got itself a big update, v2.1 (changelog below), adding in two major new planes as well as a number of enhancements and fixes. You can grab the update yourself by going into 'Marketplace' on your Windows Phone and looking for 'Updates' at the bottom of the home screen.
After celebrating its first anniversary by passing the 35,000 app mark in mid October, the Windows Phone Marketplace has now passed the 40,000 app and games submission mark. Content is being added at the rate of 165 items per day. In the last 30 days, 85% of submissions were apps and 15% were games; 68% were free, 23% were paid and 9% were paid with free trial.
Revealed in one of the launch videos for the Nokia Lumia 800 were screens of the generic Nokia Maps for Windows Phone, the software that will be made available to all Windows Phone licensees as part of the agreement between Nokia and Microsoft. We've shown the relevant images below, along with the full video - suffice it to say that Nokia Maps is effectively Bing Maps on steroids, but keeping away from the real time sat-nav features of Nokia Drive.
Tucked away in the online manual for the Nokia Lumia 800 Windows Phone (now available online) are details of the Contacts Transfer application we spotted last week at Nokia World. This allows you to pair your existing phone over Bluetooth and transfer your contacts from the older phone.
One of Nokia's crown jewels in their software suite is Maps. Many have wondered where Nokia Maps will fit into the Lumia devices, as it will be one of the unique selling points of a Nokia Windows Phone. While Nokia Drive has been announced as available here at Nokia World with a focus on navigation and turn by turn directions. Nokia Maps will take a more social feel, highlighting personal favourites, points of interest and social interaction. And we've had an exclusive look at the latest beta.
How can you do music properly on a mobile device? Nokia are hoping that Nokia Music on the Lumia range of Windows Phone is the answer. The inclusion of MixRadio, (requiring no sign-up or registration, and available to all users) provides a music streaming channel, while the long-standing Gigfinder service also makes the jump to Windows Phone. It will also be the home of the Nokia Music Store, still one of the world's largest mobile music stories.
More than 35,000 content items (apps and games) have now been published to the Windows Phone Marketplace. Between 80 and 150 items are being added every day, of which 18% are games and 72% are apps. Just under 50% of these are free, 19% are paid with a trial and 30% are paid only. It took Microsoft just over a year to reach this milestone, a figure that compares well with competing application stores.
Because of the smooth roll-out so far, Windows Mango availability is being increased to half of the potential devices (reports GM Eric Hautala on the Windows Phone Blog). This will result in more data points across the mix of devices, manufacturers and network configurations, hopefully allowing the second half of the user-base to be Mango'ed in the near future.
