If the reports are true, adding a new Lumia flagship to Verizon’s lineup could offer a bump for both Windows Phone 8 and Lumia sales. Currently, Verizon offers just a single Lumia model: the Lumia 822, which is essentially last year’s hardware with updated Microsoft software. The Windows Phone 8 handset is free with contract and uses a relatively low-resolution 800 x 480 touchscreen, for example.

The Lumia 928, however, is expected to be an improved version of the Lumia 920, which debuted as an AT&T exclusive in November. Exclusive phone deals can vary, but many have six-month time frames; this adds more credence to a similar-looking Lumia flagship arriving in May. I’d expect Verizon’s Lumia 928 to have at least a 1280 x 768 display as that’s what the Lumia 920 offers. A newer dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon chip would likely power such a phone and Nokia is sure to use camera technology that touts exceptional pictures as well.

Even as a new flagship model phone, I’d be surprised if it costs more than $149 on contract with Verizon. The Lumia 920 debuted on AT&T for $99 as Nokia made a big push in the U.S. market. The company has improved its sales and average handset selling price, but to push out a Lumia 928 for $199 or more — unless there’s some radical new features or functions — doesn’t make sense to me; consumers could all too easily opt for an iPhone, HTC One or Samsung Galaxy S 4 at that price.

Right now, Nokia — and Microsoft, for that matter — are trying to build up not just Windows Phone sales. They’re also trying to broaden consumer sentiment and brand awareness in a country where 90 percent of smartphones are from the two A’s: Apple and Android.

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The smartphone situation is the complete opposite of the PC and tablet markets where Microsoft surprised many with the Surface RT and Surface Pro computers it announced last June. These machines compete directly against Microsoft’s long-time licensing partners such as Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, to name a few. It also may be why some of these companies are trying to break away from from Windows. HP introduced an inexpensive Android tablet in February while Lenovo now offers a Google Chromebook for the education market, for example.

Myerson’s comments don’t surprise me, even though we’ve heard rumors of a Surface phone for months. I don’t see what Microsoft can offer from a hardware perspective that its Windows Phone 8 partners aren’t already offering.

In particular, Nokia is building a wide range of superb hardware for the mobile platform; the direct result of a huge partnership with Microsoft it began in February of 2011. The flagship Nokia handsets meet nearly all, if not all, of Microsoft’s current Windows Phone 8 hardware requirements. There’s simply no reason for Microsoft to build a Surface phone at this point; it may make sense in the future if the company plans a vertical product design strategy.

Because of that, Myerson’s comments raise a different question in my mind: If the available Windows Phone 8 hardware is already good enough to keep Microsoft from designing its own, is the software simply not resonating with enough people at this point? The operating system is intuitive and fresh, but outside of Microsoft’s own horn-tooting, very little independent data shows that Windows Phone 8 is a raging success.

As Microsoft likes to say, however, its phone effort is a marathon, not a sprint. Perhaps later in the race the company will design and sell its own phone hardware. For now, there’s no need to wait for a Surface phone.

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Not every Windows Phone 8 model can take advantage of the HD video calling feature, but the software should also improve video quality on low- to mid-range smartphones while also smartly adjusting video quality based on connection speeds:

“We have significantly improved video calling quality for all users, offering VGA video on lower end handsets and 720p HD on higher-end devices including the Nokia Lumia 920, HTC 8X and Samsung Ativ S. And the app even intelligently determines the best quality available based on the speed of your connection. Additionally, we’ve added landscape mode for calls, and the ability to switch between front and back cameras for you to chat in the most comfortable way possible.”

Given that Microsoft purchased Skype for $8.5 billion in May, 2011, it shouldn’t surprise that the video calling software will be improved first for Microsoft’s own smartphone platform before iOS, Android or other mobile operating systems. Hopefully, however, these will see support for HD video calling in Skype over time.

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Mary Jo Foley spotted the Feb. 7 posting and notes that the development platform for the two is similar, although not quite the same. But the company is surely looking for improved platform sharing based on the posting:

“Are you excited about Windows Phone? Are you passionate about delivering the best possible experience to the developer community? Do you wish the code you write for Windows Store apps would just work on the Windows Phone and vice versa? If so, then this is the role for you! We are the team leading the charge to bring much of the WinRT API surface and the .NET Windows Store profile to the Phone.

We are looking for a highly motivated and technically strong SDET to help our team bring together the Windows Store and Phone development platforms.”

The end result would be to vastly decrease the effort that developers need to support both Microsoft platforms. Windows RT running on ARM-based chips throws a small wrench in the works, but as we’ve already seen on some Android devices using Intel chips, it’s not a major obstacle with the right tool set.

Developers wouldn’t be the only beneficiaries of course. Windows Phone 8 users that have favorite apps could extend that experience to a Windows 8 tablet, laptop or desktop.

If done right, the initiative could not only boost the available apps for Windows 8, but make such devices more appealing to Windows Phone 8 owners. And it may even sell some Windows Phones if Windows 8 users want a buy once, run everywhere Microsoft app experience.

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Microsoft says it could take a few hours for Spotify to show up in the store — here it is in the online Marketplace — as it rolls out across various regions. Note too that the app requires Windows Phone 8, so older devices running WP 7, 7.5 or 7.8 likely aren’t supported.

Spotify, which boasts 20 million songs, does offer a free trial on the new Windows Phone 8 client. To try the service, you need to create a Spotify account first, then log in on the app. Without a credit card or any other details, that gets you 48 hours of free music. To extend the trial to a full 30 days, Spotify says to follow the email instructions it sends after account creation.

Aside from listening to tunes on Windows Phone 8, you can create and share music playlists, download music for offline playback and explore what your friends are listening to on Spotify, regardless of what mobile or desktop platform they’re using with Spotify.

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I’m not surprised by the growth in iOS and Android devices; combined these two accounted for 89.7 percent of U.S. smartphones used in the quarter, per ComScore’s research. What is surprising, not to mention disappointing, is Microsoft’s decline from the prior three-month period. BlackBerry’s share fell also, but that was to be expected: The company’s new BlackBerry 10 devices are only just now becoming available.

Although it didn’t have a full quarter to work with — Windows Phone 8 devices launched in early November — Microsoft actually introduced the new operating system in the last quarter of 2012 and Nokia, arguably Microsoft’s most important smartphone partner, debuted a line of new Lumia phones during the same period.

I subscribe to the “smartphone race is a marathon, not a sprint” theory, but when the gun goes off, you need to jump from the starting line. That didn’t appear to happen last quarter; at least not in the U.S.

For its part, Nokia said it moved 4.4 million Lumia handsets in the final quarter of 2012. I don’t doubt that figure. However, even with competitive pricing that puts a Lumia in your pocket for less than the cost of an iPhone 5 or comparable Android device, the percent of Lumia’s sold is surely a small bit of that 4.4 million sales figure. With fewer Windows Phone models from HTC, Samsung and others, this may be a case of “as Nokia goes in the U.S. smartphone market, so too does Microsoft.”

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And don’t get me started on the approach taken by companies like Samsung and LG who reckon that, once you’ve bought their TV set, you’ll stick to their brand for handsets just so you can get easy streaming from one to the other. Most people don’t think like that, so hardly anyone uses the functionality. What a waste of the connectivity built into these TVs.

All of which is why I rather like the idea of Zapstreak‘s SDK, which has just come out of beta. I love the idea of pairing up the mobile device and television set – I want to use the zippy apps on my phone or tablet, not the clunky efforts built into my so-called smart TV – but I don’t want to be hemmed into some artificially walled garden. Miracast goes part of the way here, but even there you need special chips on either side.

The cool thing with Zapstreak’s SDK is that it allows Android apps to communicate with a wide variety of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, from TVs to gaming consoles and hi-fis – Zapstreak essentially provides a layer on top of the increasingly ubiquitous but severely underused DLNA standard, so anything that has that built in will work.

Variety

Zapstreak is a Polish company that’s had its SDK in beta since April, during which time it says it’s had around 100 developers giving active feedback. Here’s what co-founder Stefan Bielau has to say about that experience:

“It took a bit longer because there were various use cases on the way that we didn’t expect. For example we had a company from the U.S. that’s selling hearing aids and they have an app which is a text-to-voice app. They were interested in extending this setup for someone who doesn’t want to wear the hearing aid all the time at home, to listen to stuff through their home entertainment system.”

That’s a relatively obscure use case, though. A far easier one to grasp is this: imagine, as an Android user, visiting a friend with an Apple TV unit and streaming content from your handset to that receiver. According to Bielau, that can be done.

What’s more – and this may give the firm an answer to Google’s promised open protocol for streaming from Android devices – Zapstreak is also gearing up to release SDKs for Windows Phone 8 and iOS by the end of this year. Apple’s T&Cs don’t forbid doing that, Bielau noted, but Zapstreak’s going to check with Apple before it deploys anyway – this should be amusing, as it would theoretically mean the ability to stream from an iOS device to any DLNA-equipped TV without the need for Apple TV.

Developers using the SDK will need to pay Zapstreak $29 a month per dev account, rather than per app. However, Bielau said his team is considering making this a per-OS payment, once the Windows Phone 8 and iOS SDKs are out. Still, it’s pretty cheap, and the company’s also offering a 30-day free trial for developers who sign up early.

Interestingly, Bielau suggested that Zapstreak may over time evolve into a consultancy of sorts. The company is picking up some valuable data as developers use its SDK, such as information about which handsets are being used to cast to which TV models. This, he reckons reasonably, is something the OEMs might want to know.

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Unfortunately for me, I didn’t realize that and spent about a half hour this morning trying to set this up. Thanks to Dustin Randall on Twitter, who came to my rescue — as well as several others in the conversation — I now have access to the calendars all of my family members on the HTC Windows Phone 8X review unit that arrived earlier this week. Here’s how you can get multiple Gmail calendars on your own Windows Phone 8 handset:

1. In Settings, email + accounts on a WP8 handset, tap the add an account option and choose Google from the options.
2. Enter your full Gmail address, password and then hit next.
3. On the next screen, choose the “Email, contacts, and calendar” option and then tap the sign in button. NOTE: These three steps are standard for Google setup even if you don’t want to sync multiple calendars.
4. Open up Internet Explorer on the phone and navigate to http://m.google.com/sync
5. Sign in to your Google account on the web page to see any mobile devices associated with your Google account; for me that’s multiple iOS devices, old Nokia phones and, of course, the new Windows Phone 8 handset.
6. Find your Windows Phone 8 device and tap it.
7. On the next screen you should see a list of all Gmail calendars associated with your Google account. Choose the calendars you want on your Windows Phone 8 device and tap the Save button.
   

That’s it; within a minute or two, your handset should sync and you’ll see the multiple Gmail calendars on your phone. If you try to set Google up as an Exchange/Active Sync account the options to choose different calendars on the Google Sync site won’t appear, so make sure you choose Google during the account setup.

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• Speaking of HTC: they’ve settled with Apple on patents. 10 year license agreement.
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