Archive for the 'Nokia' Category

Nokia has just announced the Mobile TV Headset (its first of this type, as far as I know), which receives DVB-H signal as a way to ” turn your mobile device into a conveyable television” while not having a web connection.

Of course, DBV-H is just not available everywhere, but there is coverage in countries like the Netherlands, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Finland (Helsinki) and India (New Delhi).

The Mobile TV Headset (which features dedicated keys for changing channels, in addition as music controls) is compatible only with Symbian^3 smartphones. Yes, there aren’t any Symbian^3 smartphones available yet, but by the time the headset hits the market, there will probably be ( the N8 is coming at the tip of this month ).

Nokia says that the Mobile TV Headset might be available within the fourth quarter of the year. Its price before taxes must be around €40 ($51).

Via Nokia

European retailer Germanos will launch two new dual SIM Motorola phones in October: Motorola EX115 and Motorola EX128.

Both handsets are unannounced, and they’re the first dual SIM Motorola devices to be available in Europe.

Germanos Romania says that the EX128 and EX115 can be launched on October 18.

Customers can already pre-order the two phones online, here and here .

The Motorola EX128 is a touchscreen handset so one can cost about €120 ($150). The Motorola EX115 has an average display and an entire QWERTY keyboard, and may cost only about €95 ($120).

According to CelularCafe , the Moto EX115 is usually called EX112, and it’d be available in Brazil, too, featuring GSM/GPRS, Bluetooth 2.1, 3.5mm headset jack, and a 3MP camera.

With Nokia , Pantech , and now Motorola entering the dual SIM phone market, Samsung could have some serious competition – although, for a long time as a minimum, it’s going to still be an important dual SIM handset maker (it has launched more than 10 models earlier).

Nokia has started searching for a new CEO since July, and now the company has finally found one.

The really interesting part about it is that the most recent CEO seriously isn’t from Finland, and not even from Europe. He’s Stephen Elop, a Canadian-born computer engineer who, formerly, was President of Microsoft’s Business Division.

As Microsoft puts it , the Business Division and Stephen Elop were ” chargeable for the Microsoft Office system of programs, servers and software-based services, Microsoft Dynamics, business applications for small and midsize businesses, large organizations and divisions of worldwide enterprises and Microsoft’s Unified Communications, products that offer complete software-based communications tools to business.”

Before Microsoft, Stephen Elop worked in top positions at Adobe Systems, Macromedia, Juniper Networks, and even a firm called Boston Chicken, Inc. (don’t be fooled by the name, the company activated inside the computer networking industry).

At Nokia, Elop shall be Chief Executive Officer starting September 21. The company’s current CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, might be released from function on September 20 – he’ll, however, ” continue to chair the Board of Nokia Siemens Networks in a non-executive capacity”.

OPK will receive severance payment and target incentive of about €4.6 million, plus ” the fair market value of 100,000 restricted Nokia shares.” I assume he won’t be too upset about all this, right?

Jorma Ollila, Chairman of the Nokia Board of Directors, justifies the naming of the brand new CEO this fashion:

“The time is true to accelerate the company’s renewal; to usher in new executive leadership with different skills and strengths as a way to drive company success. The Nokia Board believes that Stephen has the best industry experience and leadership skills to appreciate the entire potential of Nokia. His strong software background and proven record in change management can be valuable assets as we press harder to finish the transformation of the company. We believe that Stephen can be ready to drive both innovation and efficient execution of the company strategy with a purpose to deliver increased value to our shareholders.”

(not can we see Stephen Elop presenting Microsoft events, like within the photo above)

It’s really early to claim what the brand new CEO can bring to Nokia, but the company’s Board of Directors seems quite confident that he’s going to get the job done better than Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo. Will he regain lost market share? Will he bring a new game-changing smartphone, like the N95 was back in its days? Let’s wait and  find out.

Via Press release

Ever since Apple, and later Google started the smartphone revolution we are in the course of straight away, something has been bugging me.

It’s the manner the smartphone market trends are tracked,  described and discussed.

You know the drill – mobile upstart (iOS and Android) camps crowing how they have got already won the smartphone game, talking concerning the developer ecosystems, app and app download numbers, mobile web browsing trends and so on. And older smartphone/mobile incumbent camps (Nokia, RIM, and even Miscrosoft until a year ago)  – citing the hard numbers and market shares that show that, while they could have some problems, overall the incumbents are doing quite OK.

They can’t be both right, can they? I’m just beginning to figure this stuff out, but I feel that yes, they’re both actually right.

Two different device categories – smartphones and superphones

It’s because we are talking about two different device categories here. Smartphones and, for the shortcoming of better name yet –  superphones.

Yes, smartphones and superphones share some common characteristics – always on connectivity, ability to make phone calls and send SMS/MMS, access the net and  install third party software apps.  But the best way these devices  are used, are very different. As different as the iPads/tablets are different from laptops/netbooks.

The main function of a smartphone – is a cellphone.  You employ it primarily to do voice calls and send/receive short text mesages via SMS/MMS.  Yes, your smartphone can do so much more things – take pictures,  browse the net, play music, stream audio/video from the online, make use of varied third party apps.  But you utilize those additional functions only  when you really want it, or there‘s no more sensible choice then a device to your pocket, or when there‘s some  particularly interesting mobile service/app that requires your attention – e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, or other status updaters.   But they may be secondary functions in your smartphone. And, as a result of design limitations – small displays, crammed keypads/keyboards, button navigation,  etc; – using those additional „smart” capabilities is a chore.

On the opposite hand, your smartphone is a great device for the stuff it was meant to do – calling and texting.

Your address book and make contact with history is barely a physical button click away,  you can speed dial those important to you with two/three clicks, with one hand, without even gazing your handset. If it happens to have full QWERTY keyboard, the texting experience, probably, is excellent. And despite the fact that you’ve got a standard  phone keypad, predictive T9 input often works like a charm. Your smartphone usually is a completely frugal data user, and doesn‘t need a dear  plan with big or unlimited data allotments. And it has a good battery life, so you don‘t should worry about your phone dying in the midst of the day, because some apps just had to be constantly connected to the web.

Superphones, nonetheless, are usually not phones anymore. They’re truly small mobile computers to your pocket, with phone/texting as just another app among many. The user experience – big displays, (multi) touch , superb browsers,etc;  – is optimized to transfer big screen PC  interaction models to the restrictions of mobile device that may fit to your pocket. While the entire experience doing various things for your superphone is somewhat worse then doing those same things to your laptop, it‘s not much worse, and is basically ok for the extensive use on the go.

And we do use our superphones as a small computers that they may be. Browsing the online, tweeting and posting pictures to Facebook while sitting at  cafe, watching movies  on a plane, downloading, trying and quickly forgetting  dozens of apps… Rather like we used to do  with all those Web 2.0 services not some time past, or  various freeware and shareware PC apps before that.  And it‘s a pleasure to accomplish that. With a superphone I think way more connected and entertained then once I only had my smartphone. I find myself whipping it out and checking Twitter timeline, feed reader and/or favorite websites, when I‘m in a slow moving line or looking forward to a physician’s appointment. I never worry that I won‘t have anything to read/do while on a bus ride. And I know that each one the data I want is solely a click away and straightforward to  find, when I‘m on a business journey in a wierd town.

But there are some trade-offs that we came to simply accept for having a small computer in our pockets.

First is the actual „phone” component of the device. Some do it better, some do it worse, but since mobile telephony is simply another application for your superphone, overall calling and texting experience is often worse on it. You would possibly not notice it much when you are a moderate or casual user. But if you end up used to  blind-type 50 SMS messages a day , Nexus One or iPhone is probably not an strategy to you

Then there‘s a battery life. I will usually go for several days without charging my smartphone. And I never had to stress if I‘ll last in the course of the day with it, in spite of how much I used it. With a superphone, constant worry about it‘s battery life has become a fact of life.  Plugging it in whenever I will be able to, just in case , is a habit now, while only two or three bars of battery indicator while i‘m out somewhere without an access to charger, gives me chills.

And  the need for  unlimited, or a minimum of high allotment, and pretty expensive data plans. Yes, it’s good to  get by with only very limited cellular data and  Wi-Fi hotspots. But where‘s the thrill in that? To totally utilize the recent capabilities  the superphone delivers, you  have to have a plan that permits you to use net connectivity while you  feel love it. And that suggests some serious additional monthly costs.

Why we need  to track smartphones and superphones separately

When Steve Jobs announced iPhone, Apple didn‘t just make an easier smartphone. They have got invented a new device category –superphone. Identical to they did with the iPad three years later. But because iPad is so different from the laptops it has evolved from, and because we already had this tablet computer category cleary  defined and tracked before iPad came along, we know that tablets are a new/different device category , and we track tablet market trends accordingly, as competitors are scrambling to catch up.  We do not lump them into a single portable computer category which includes laptops, netbooks and whatnot.

Unfortunately, because Apple decided to market it‘s iPhone as a smartphone, and everybody else blindly followed their line, we’ve got this big confusion on our hands. According current mobile taxonomy – Nokia C5 is a smartphone and HTC Desire is a smartphone too. Aside from the facility to install third party apps, how much in common do these two devices have?  With such different devices lumped into one pile, everybody is following the datapoints that paint a prettier picture for them and screaming that their apples are significantly better then the oranges in adversary camp.

But whenever you separate them into two distinct categories – smartphones and superphones – it all starts making sense. In a roughly traditional Clayton Christensen‘s innovative disruption sort of way, only a piece in reverse.

Disruptive power of Superphones

When separated into two distinct smartphone/superphone categories, the changes happening in mobile device industry at the moment look a whole lot like a classic Clayton Christensen’s innovator‘s dilemma .

Incumbients, like Nokia and RIM , who have invented and perfected the smartphone game, continue to rule the smartphone market. New challengers – Apple, Google – having invented  a new superphone market niche/category, continue to dominate and grow there with new ways of doing things, new competitive advantages and business models.  While the old incumbients, after first ingnoring the emerging new market, now struggle to catch up with the challengers on a new superphone turf.

Where the standard disruptive innovation process in mobile industry is reversed – is that disruption here started at the head.

Usually, disruptive innovations occur at the low end of the industry, where profit margins are slim and, at the start, the challengers start nibbling at them with different, cheaper, but usually inferior way of doing things. Incumbients easily abandon the low end to challengers, for better more profitable opportunities at the pinnacle. They start moving upmarket, allowing the upstarts to perfect their business models and processes at the low end, create new markets and chase the incumbients from below. By the time the incubient wakes up, it‘s usually game over, and once industry dominating firms get relagated to niche luxury suppliers at best, or go belly up at worst.

But things are different in mobile  – disruptive change here started at the very top. Within the most profitable market tier, and now it’s moving down market. So while the incumbients may have  missed this new disruptive change initially, they‘ve got their wake up call pretty quick, and now are pouring the resources to catch up, like crazy.

And, also, while  we may speak about incumbients and upstarts/challengers in mobile biz, this can be not a fight between huge established industry behemoths and scrappy startups. All players currently slugging it out for the domination within the next iteration of mobile device evolution are huge companies, with billions in revenues, thousands of employees, and a hundreds experience and resources to  put into play.

It can also be  still very early within the game. Thus far we’ve got only seen a number of rounds of this multi-round fight. We‘ve seen Apple create a new Superphone category, take over and entirely dominate it for the first two years. Then Google  entered the game , and claimed their own big piece of the superphone pie. We‘ve seen incumbients like Nokia and Microsoft try and bring their old smartphone business easy methods to superphones, and totaly fail.

Microsoft always type of wanted to create their own superphone,  but  never knew how. When shown the light, they completely abandoned their old dead end smartphone efforts,  and are now able to to dive into a fight with fresh new Windows Phone 7 OS. Nokia, nevertheless, managed to keep a good grip and even expand their traditional smartphone market, and can also be on the brink of enter superphone  fight with Meego OS, and, even perhaps Symbian^4 devices next year. RIM is additionally doing pretty well in smartphones, and is slowly looking to leverage their strong presence there to eventual success in superphones.

It is much too early to tell how this superphone fight will play out, and anyone who says he knows who the winners are is stuffed with BS. Apple and Google are clear winners of the first couple of rounds. But seriously look into how Google Android managed to upstage iOS in less then year, starting from nothing. All it took – was a powerful commintment by one carrier within the U.S. and couple of handset vendors making a couple of interesting devices.  With a large number of new players getting into the fray: Microsoft, Nokia, HP/Palm, Samsung/Bada, to only name a couple of, eventual outcome is impossible to tell.

One thing is of course though. This may occasionally be one hell of a fight, and it‘s  great fun to be covering it.

And, please, will we call to mind some better name for these superphones. I cringe each time I need to use it. But the alternatives I heard are even worse.

Three days after Nokia announced it has replaced CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with ex-Microsoft man Stephen Elop, the Finnish giant has unveiled that it’s changing its head of Mobile Solutions, too.

Anssi Vanjoki took over Nokia’s Mobile Solutions back in May, saying this was “the most exciting jobs inside the business”, and promising to get “Nokia back to being no 1 in high-end devices.” Now, lower than five months after, he announced he’s resigning, although he has a ” six months notice period and he’s going to continue in his current tasks for the time being” – this can allow Nokia to go looking for someone to interchange Anssi.

Anssi Vanjoki motivates his choice by saying:

“I felt the time has come to seek new opportunities in my life. Collectively, I am one hundred per cent committed to doing my best for Nokia until my very last working day. I am also really waiting for this year’s Nokia World and sharing news about exciting new devices and solutions.”

Nokia World is starting tomorrow and, as mentioned before, it’s the place where the Nokia E7 shall be unveiled as the company’s second Symbian^ smartphone.

Anssi Vanjoki mentioned ” new devices”, so there will be a minimum of another handset announced alongside the E7. Maybe the MeeGo-based N9 ? I don’t think so, but let’s wait and notice.

I don’t know who will replace Anssi Vanjoki, but some thing is definite: things are changing at Nokia. Let’s hope it’s for the easier.

Via Nokia