Tech giant Microsoft on Thursday announced the availability of Windows 8.1 Preview, its next update of the Windows operating system, at the company’s developer-focused build conference in San Francisco.
Highlighting the new apps in the latest OS, the US-based firm said that Windows 8.1 Preview apps include Facebook, Flipboard and NFL among other apps.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Windows Corporate Vice President Julie Larson-Green and other company executives gave demo of the firm’s latest offering focusing on key areas like personalisation, Bing, etc, it said in a release.
“Windows 8.1 will bring unprecedented opportunity for developers in India and across the globe enabling them to develop applications on the Windows platform,” Microsoft India General Manager DPS Joseph Landes said.
Besides, Windows store has been redesigned in the latest OS to engage customers, which includes more merchandising opportunities for apps and better “discoverability” based on an individual’s preferences, as well as new search controls from Bing in the user interface, the release said.
App listings have a new layout with refined navigation and more related content, it added.
Microsoft also announced that shipments of Windows Phone grew six times faster than the rest of the smartphone market over the past year, it said.
With the release of Windows Phone 8, customers are now downloading more than 200 million apps per month and generating more than twice the daily app revenue, it added.
Microsoft acquires Yammer
Meanwhile, Microsoft, on the first anniversary of acquisition of enterprise social network Yammer, said that the registered users have grown by more than 55 per cent to nearly 8 million and paid networks rose by more than 200 per cent year over year.
Yammer on Thursday announced integration with online influence tool, Klout, which allows Yammer users to publish their public Klout scores and expertise directly on their Yammer profiles.
In addition, Yammer administrators can elect to turn on a deeper integration with Klout to produce internal, Yammer specific Klout scores for employees based on their activity within a company’s Yammer network, it added.
In the coming months, Microsoft will release a number of Yammer, SharePoint and Office 365 updates to deepen connections between services and enable greater collaboration, the release said.
