Opera Software has signed an agreement with Microsoft to become the default mobile app store on the Nokia Symbian feature phones and Nokia X platform devices. From the first quarter of next year, the Nokia Store app will redirect to the Opera Mobile Store for the Nokia Series 40, Series 60, Symbian, Asha, and Nokia X.

With the agreement, Opera will be the third largest mobile app store in the world after Google Play and the App Store. Over 40,000 developers contribute to the Opera mobile store ecosystem, which has close to 300,000 apps and sees about 70 million downloads every month. Opera recently surpassed 50 millions users in India and has become the third most downloaded app in the country.

Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software, told Tech in Asia: “We are the third biggest independent mobile advertising company after Facebook and Google. With our strong user base, the mobile app developers can advertise their apps to a larger audience and also make the best of our billing integration which lets users buy apps even without a credit card.”

Nokia Symbian, Asha, and Nokia X device owners will get to use the web-based Opera mobile store to browse, discover, and download apps. However, users on the Nokia X platform, which is based on the Android Open Source Project, will have a slightly different experience. The tweak is needed in order to deliver a typical Android smartphone experience to these users.

The migration of the Nokia app store to Opera is expected to finish by the first half of 2015. The Nokia store will no longer be accessible following the move.

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As Microsoft continues sloughing off the Nokia brand name on phones, the Nokia Store for feature phones will cease to exist.

Having already dropped the Nokia branding for its latest smartphone -- the Microsoft Lumia 535 -- Microsoft is set to shut down the Nokia Store in the first half of 2015.

The Nokia Store enables owners of Nokia feature phones, such as the Asha series, and Symbian and Nokia X phones to download apps to their devices. Based on the last statistics released two years ago, the store was serving up to 15 million downloads daily.

Users will, however, still be able to get access to apps via a deal with Opera Software. Starting in the first quarter of 2015, users will be redirected to the Opera Mobile Store, which currently has close to 300,000 apps.

The migration of users to the Opera Mobile Store is expected to be complete in the first half of 2015, when the Nokia Store shuts down.

Both Microsoft and Opera are "looking into methods to help developers move their content over, and this will be communicated to developers ahead of the migration," Opera said in statement.

As for phone owners who have paid for apps from the Nokia Store, Opera said the "the company will work closely with developers to find out the best solution for consumers."

Opera added that consumers should not delete a previously purchased app once the transition takes place, or they will need to buy it again.

This isn't the first time that Opera and Microsoft have collaborated. In August, both companies struck a deal to use the Opera Mini browser as the default browser for Microsoft's feature and Asha handsets.

cnet

(Reuters) - Satya Nadella, the Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) Chief Executive who ignited a firestorm of protest earlier this month by suggesting women should not ask for pay raises, said on Monday that men and women are paid equally at his company.

Nadella's statement, made at a presentation on cloud computing in San Francisco, runs counter to some limited data made public by employees, but is unverifiable given that Microsoft does not release details of its pay structure.

"I checked that it is something that we are enforcing," said Nadella, when asked about equal pay. "We are in fact in good shape. Men and women get paid equally at Microsoft."

Nadella said he was "humbled" by his experience on Oct. 9, when he told a conference celebrating women in computing that women should not ask for pay raises but trust in "karma" to give them the salary they deserve. The remarks generated negative headlines and widespread criticism on social media.

Nadella's latest comment is not backed up by numbers from job site Glassdoor, which show that men tend to earn more doing a similar job than women at Microsoft, although the data is based on a very small sample size of employees who choose to give pay figures to Glassdoor.

A male Microsoft senior software development engineer makes about $137,000 per year, according to Glassdoor, compared with about $129,000 for women. Only 29 percent of Microsoft's more than 100,000 employees are female, according to figures recently released by the company.

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that men earn 24 percent more, on average, than women in the tech sector. The American Association of University Women found that women were paid 78 percent of what equally qualified men received across the board last year.

However, one tech hiring site believes women are paid on a par with men. According to Dice, last year the average tech salary for men was $89,468 while women earned $81,214.

"On face value, it appears there's a gap, however when we compare for equal levels of experience, education and parallel job titles, the compensation gap disappears," said Courtney Chamberlain, a spokeswoman at Dice.

Maria Klawe, a Microsoft board member who has pushed the company to hire and promote more women, has said that the issue of equal pay is now likely to be discussed in Microsoft's boardroom.

Nadella acknowledged on Monday that there was room for improvement on the issue within Microsoft. "We have made some progress," he said. "We have a lot more to do."

(Reuters) - Microsoft Corp will unveil a new name for its best-known product on Tuesday when it offers the first official glimpse of its latest Windows operating system.

The project, known for the past few years as "Threshold" inside the software company and "Windows 9" outside it, will likely get an entirely new brand, or just be called Windows, analysts said, ahead of its full release early next year.

The name change is symbolic of a new direction and style for Microsoft, which is veering away from an aggressive focus on Windows and PCs, the hallmark of previous Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. The new, quieter emphasis is on selling services across all devices and is championed by new boss Satya Nadella.

The switch also represents a desire to erase the ill will generated by Windows 8, an ambitious attempt to redesign Windows with tablet users in mind, which ended up annoying and confusing the core market of customers who use mice and keyboards.

"Windows 8 was not a shining moment for Microsoft," said Michael Silver, an analyst at tech research firm Gartner. "Probably the biggest issue that lingers is the negative brand equity in the name."

Many users howled in protest over the death of the start-button menu and the introduction of a colorful grid of squares or tiles representing apps in what became known as the modern user interface, even though they could easily switch to a traditional desktop mode.

Judging by recent leaks online, which Microsoft has not tried to discredit, the start-button menu will come back in the next Windows, with an option of tacking on tiles if preferred.

But the problem of users having to toggle between the modern interface and the old-style desktop - for instance to use the full version of Excel spreadsheet software - has yet to be solved.

"The schizophrenic behavior between the modern user interface and the Windows desktop has got to go away," said David Johnson, an analyst at tech research firm Forrester. "They have to smooth that out."

Microsoft declined to comment on the new name, or what it plans to unveil on Tuesday.

The Redmond, Washington-based company has said only that it will have a "discussion" about where Windows is headed at a stylish event space in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The choice of wording and venue are key to a humbler, lower-profile Microsoft under Nadella, who is keen to rebuild respect in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley as it moves away from the PC and to play a bigger part in the mobile computing world fashioned by Apple Inc and Google Inc.

Nadella's slogan is "mobile first, cloud first," and although he will not be at the San Francisco event - he is traveling in Asia - that theme will be at the fore.

"This is a launching pad and catalyst for Nadella's holistic cloud vision over the coming years," said Daniel Ives, an analyst at investment bank FBR Capital Markets. "Windows 9 is a potentially game-changing product release for Microsoft."

Nadella is resigned to the fact that sales of PCs have leveled off, and with it sales of Windows. With the explosion of smartphones and tablets, Windows now powers only 14 percent of computing devices sold last year, according to Gartner.

His response is to focus on selling high-quality services - such as the Office suite of applications or storing documents in the cloud - to people on whatever device or system they are using.

"Microsoft is changing from a company that was Windows-centric to one that is services-centric," said Silver at Gartner. "It has to be that way. Windows revenue is likely going to decline, and Microsoft's task is to replace that Windows revenue with revenue from services on all sorts of platforms."

The challenge is to come up with killer apps and services users can't live without.

"Microsoft built their business on being very good at delivering what people needed in the moment, for example Excel in the 1990s," said Johnson at Forrester. "That's what Microsoft has to get back to, innovating and creating things that people find indispensable."