IDC has released its set of smartphone shipment figures for Q1 2011. They show that just under 100 million smartphones were sold last quarter. Nokia led the way with 24.2 million smartphones, followed by Apple (18.7m), RIM (13.9m), Samsung (10.8m) and HTC (8.9m). All manufacturers had increased shipments year on year, but by widely varying amounts. Nokia was the weakest (+12%), with RIM (+31%), Apple (+114%), HTC (+229%) and Samsung (+350%) all showing stronger growth.
Our very own Ewan Spence has been moonlighting over at the Ovi Daily App blog, here producing a review of Grim Joggers, the latest glossy take on the 'running' genre of game, here for Symbian^3 phones. He pronounces it "well programmed", "reactive" and "great fun". Expect another ODA guest review from Ewan later this month.
Nokia's Chairman, Jorma Ollila, is to step down next year, reports Reuters. At Nokia's Annual General Meeting, held yesterday, Ollila, confirming what he said last September, announced that he would stand down in 2012 and that the search for his sucessor has already started. Ollia was CEO of Nokia from 1992-2006 and became the Chairman in 1999. He recently oversaw the appointment of Stephen Elop as the new CEO of Nokia, replacing Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.
Following on from last week here is the second episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian. The second episode covers the recent Connected Creativity event, which explored some of the themes around the future of television and media consumption.
Forum Nokia today quietly released the Symbian^3 SDK 1.0, targeted at developers using native code (Symbian C++), Java and web technologies (WRT) to create applications for the Symbian platform. The version 1.0 release adds support for VGA resolution (E6), the updated browser (7.3.1.1) and a number of additional APIs (OpenWF support, SQLite 3, updated XML parsing and others).
Nokia today announced the release of the Qt SDK 1.1. The final release version of the SDK is based on Qt 4.7.3 and Qt Mobility 1.1.3. It's an important milestone which effectively marks the first fully mature version of Nokia's complete Qt offering on mobile platforms. Applications which use Qt 4.7, including those written purely in QML, can now be uploaded to the Ovi Store; the first few of these are already available to consumers.
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer appeared on stage at RIM's BlackBerry World to announce a partnership between the two companies to bring Bing services to Blackberry devices. Bing Search will be deeply integrated into the platform and Bing Maps will become the default mapping service. In part, this will make BlackBerry device a de facto part of the Microsoft-Nokia location services ecosystem.
Coming from S60 5th Edition's touchscreen keyboard, which had no intellgence whatsoever, the capacitive/predictive/correcting keyboard in Symbian^3 seems like a revelation, even if there's no multitouch yet and even if some of the defaults are wrong out of the box. But it's interesting to note that there's a still a way to go, as evidenced by this terrifically interesting piece on the team behind the intelligent virtual keyboard in Windows Phone 7. Can some of the lessons learned here help the team tasked with improving the Symbian virtual keyboard?
Thanks to a promotion currently running in Nokia's Ovi Store a number of high quality ('HD') games are currently available for free in Ovi Store, for Symbian^3 devices (Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7). The games available include Angry Birds Rio, Assassin's Creed, Avatar, Fruit Ninja, Settlers HD, SIM 3 HD, Worms HD and more. The promotion is only running in select European countries including France, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
As a big fan of the long running Desert Island Discs radio programme, I was interested to see that its entire archive is now up for grabs in smartphone-friendly form on the Web, with over 500 of the shows fully downloadable in MP3 form. Thousands of guests, tens of thousands of music picks and a huge amount of auto-biographical chat, all in MP3 form. Screens and links below. Download and enjoy.
Thanks to Sergejs for not only videoing Damian Dinning's talk on mastering the N8's camera, at the recent iReporter do in London, but also doing some editing to reduce the best bits into a more palatable 8 minute version, embedded below. Of course, there has been no shortage of N8 camera tips here on AAS over the last six months, but seeing tips in video form is always an accessible way of learning.
You may remember, almost three months ago, that I featured news of an innovative URL-to-application wizard: AppMe, claiming to create an installable Symbian application (for use on a homescreen shortcuts bar or simply in the main app menu) from any Internet page. It worked, too, though the wizard itself was desktop browser-based and a little rough around the edges. Well, AppMe is back, it's slicker, it's more rounded, it has its own mini 'app store' and it's now mobile too. More below.
ZingMagic just 'zinged' their most popular board game conversions, with 'V' (as in five) versions of Chess Pro, Chinese Chess Pro and Checkers Pro, all also available in free ad-supported and paid for versions, for touch and non-touch Symbian-powered smartphones. There are extra variants, graphics and skill levels all round. Details, background info, links and some screens below.
I am pleased to be able to introduce you to the first episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian. The first episode covers the trend for the specialisation of converged smartphones, with specific discussion around the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play.
Nokia and Accenture today announced plans for a strategic collaboration, which will see Nokia transfer its Symbian software activities to Accenture. As a result, around 3,000 Nokia employees will transition to Accenture. Accenture will then provide Symbian-related development and support services to Nokia. In the future, Accenture will also provide future smartphone ecosystem services around the Windows Phone platform to Nokia.
