Weekend Recap: Microsoft and taxes, VLC for Windows Phone, Lumia 535 in India, and more

This week has been quite interesting in the world of Microsoft. We’ve covered a lot over the past week and chances are you most likely missed an important piece of news. Let’s take a look back in a feature we call “Weekend Recap,” highlighting the popular stories from the past week.

Earlier this week, we learned that Microsoft will be at the Mobile World Congress event taking place next year. MWC 2015 will be held in Barcelona between March 2-5, and Microsoft may take this opportunity to show off Windows Phone 10 running on next-generation hardware, or at least a preview of the OS and some of the new features.

Bing has become an expert at cooking, as we discovered earlier this week. Cooking the perfect meal is no easy task, but finding the perfect recipe is no piece of cake either! Microsoft looks to change that with its homegrown decision engine by integrating popular recipe sites like AllRecipes.com and Food.com.

VLC has been ‘coming soon’ to Windows Phone for a long time now, but there is now a light at the end of a very long tunnel. Earlier this week via Twitter, the lead developer working on this project asked for beta sign ups. Unfortunately there were only a 10,000 spots and they went immediately. VideoLan also teased us with a video of the app running on Windows Phone.

Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against the IRS for failing to comply to a details request about a third-party agency who is investigating the Redmond giant’s tax behavior. Microsoft is looking to find out details about this special contract between the third-party agency and the IRS. Speaking of taxes, Microsoft was hit with a $140 million fine for tax evasion in China too.

Following the announcement from Microsoft and Dropbox on November 4th, Dropbox has finally rolled out an update to their apps for Android and iOS. This update adds integration with Microsoft’s Office productivity suite. 

On November 12th, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella paid his first visit to Switzerland and spoke during a “Mobile First, Cloud First” event which featured more than 400 IT decision makers from various Swiss companies. Nadella once again elaborated on the new Microsoft vision, as well as spoke briefly about Windows 10 and company partners.

At a press event this past week, Microsoft launched the budget-friendly Lumia 535 in India. The handset is the first device from the software giant to come with the new Microsoft branding on board. The handset is available right now for Rs. 9,199 ($148).

Microsoft released a new video advertisement this week focusing on the Windows Store and all the apps you need. You can check out that video below.

We reviewed the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro Windows 8.1 Hybrid PC earlier this week, taking a look at Lenovo’s latest and most expensive iteration of their Yoga hybrid thus far. Check out the review here.

Story of the week

This week’s biggest story deals with the Xbox One and PS4 console war. During Black Friday 2014, Microsoft’s Xbox One outpaced the PS4 in terms of sales. 

Microsoft’s aggressive strategy for the holiday season is working. The company’s gaming console Xbox One has outpaced Sony’s PlayStation 4 in the Black Friday sales, according to sales and research firm InfoScout. The Xbox One accounted for 53 percent of all console sales whereas Sony’s PlayStation 4 could only capture 31 percent of the market.

That’s all for this edition of Weekend Recap. Stay tuned for yet another exciting week of Microsoft news.