Nokia today released its Q1 2009 results. Nokia had net sales of EUR 9.3 billion, down 27% year on year and down 27% sequentially (down 24% and up 25% at constant currency). Nokia sold 13.7 million converged (S60) devices, down from 14.6 million in Q1 2008 and 15.1 million in Q4 2008, of these 5 million were Nseries and 3 million were Eseries. An individual device highlight was the 5800 which sold 2.6 million units. Nokia's industry outlook sees similar device volumes and market share for Q2, but expect overall conditions to improve in the second half of the year
Fans of my ad-hoc, freeform encyclopaedia of trivia should note that the 2009 edition, v2.4 of Trivopaedia is now online, in Mobipocket or iSilo versions for all PDAs and smartphone platforms. There's also a raw, 1MB, uncompressed online version, should you feel the need. If you fancy help tidying up the code or adding data, please get in touch!
Well, the dates for this year's Symbian Smartphone Show have been set, as has the venue. 27-28 October, at Earls Court 2, in central London (the same venue as the 2008 event). Mark it in your diary NOW. But, curiously, the name itself hasn't been finalised yet. With the new status of the Symbian Foundation, David Wood muses on the official SF blog and asks for suggestions for the name and indeed the general themes for the event. Why not chip in?
It's time for another editorial bemoaning the fact that as Symbian OS gets older, and fancier ways are added for the manufacturers to transition between screens, some of the greatest functionality is removed. This week I want to point out the sorry tale of taking screenshots on your smartphone. Settle down for another 'once upon a time'...
The Phones Show 79 went live just now, with some extended news, thoughts on the T-Mobile G1 and a demo of Slingplayer Mobile on the N95 8GB. Comments welcome as usual.
In this developer feature we preview Nokia's upcoming Developer Summit 2009, which being held in Monaco at the end of this month. It is the first event that brings all aspects of development for Nokia devices together and Srikanth Raju, head of marketing for Forum Nokia, offers some insight.
It may not have Xenon flash, but the Nokia N86 8MP does have a camera with the next level of performance: a bigger, better sensor, variable (and wider) aperture, wide angle optics and faster shutter speeds. In theory, this means, among other things, that it will cope much better in low light situations without needing to use flash at all. Using photos from the latest N86 8MP prototype and comparing them to those from the current imaging king, the N82, I explore the theory below. [Text amended 11.30am]
Nokia Easy Meet is a mobile collaboration tool, which has been put together by NRC (Nokia Research Centre) as a research prototype, and made available to end-users via Nokia BetaLabs. Easy Meet allows you to easily share and view content around a given subject (meeting). For example, it could be used to share a PowerPoint slide slow during a voice conference call. The advantage of Easy Meet, compared to many other solutions, is that mobile users are able to fully participate in the viewing and sharing of content.
Following on from today's review, word reaches us from Mojo's Studio that Twittix has been updated to v0.92. The interesting addition is the "introduce" feature which lets you point two of your Twitter friends to each other. The full change list is here
In All About Symbian Insight 66 (AAS Podcast 124) we talk about the N-Gage platform's newest addition - Worms World Party. Then there's discussion of Google Maps 3.0.1, BBC TV streams, device colours. We finish with a discussion of the joys of older devices. You can listen to AAS Insight 66 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia Photo Browser, a recent beta / preview release from Nokia's Beta Labs for S60 5th Edition, is now available for most S60 3rd Edition (Feature Pack 1 and 2) devices (e.g. N95, E71, N85, 6220). Photo Browser is an alternative way to view the photos stored on your phone. The current beta may, in the future, become part of a future update to Nokia's Gallery application.
Google Maps for Symbian on S60 (3rd and 5th Edition) has received a major update to version 3.0.1.4 (from 3.0.0.x). There are UI changes, notably to the context 'pop-up' menu (when you press in the D-pad), this has been restyled to match the application's other dialog elements. There are also many under-the-hood changes to how Google Maps works on S60 phones, see below for the full published changelog [added April 13th].
