Nokia's Ovi Store is continuing to grow at a rapid pace; it recently passed the 6 million downloads per day mark and now contains more than 48,000 content items, with approximately 1,000 news items being added each week. Symbian phones make up approximately 75% of the downloads (4.5 million), with Series 40 accounting for most of the remaining downloads (1.5 million). A total of 1.8 billion content items have been downloaded since June 2009.
A video of an internal meeting where Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, shows off Nokia's first Windows Phone device, has been leaked on the Internet. The phone, which is codenamed Sea Ray, is running Windows Phone Mango and has a design similar to the recently announced Nokia N9. The leaked video is available on technet.hu, an independent technology website, which is based in Budapest, Hungary.
There's a fascinating piece over on Nokia Conversations at the moment about a pilot study on how solar power can be 'harvested' to power the next generation of phones and smartphones across the world. We've already got a number of solar powered mobile chargers, the next step is surely to start adding the photo-voltaic cells to the backs of phones themselves?
Nokia has announced that it plans to integrate its NAVTEQ business with its social location (Maps) services and operations. The new Location & Commerce business unit, which will be headed by Michael Halbherr, is tasked with developing the next generation of social location products and services for consumers. It will also continue with NAVTEQ's traditional activities of building platform services for device manufacturers, developers and service providers, but will look to more fully integrate Nokia's deep data assets around consumer behaviour and related community data.
Following on from the intial announcement, Nokia and Accenture have announced they have finalised an agreement for Nokia to outsource Symbian software development and support to Accenture. As part of the agreement 2,800 Nokia employees, 200 less than originally cited, will transfer to Accenture when the deal is closed in October.
Nokia has the announced the dates for its big annual conference. Nokia World will take place on October 26th and 27th, at the ICC Excel venue in the East of London. The event will include keynotes, an experience (demo) lounge and developer focused activities. The timing of Nokia World makes it a likely candidate for the announcement of the first Nokia Windows Phone device, but we also expect to see other device and service launches.
Nokia made a number of important announcements today at its Nokia Connection event in Singapore. The Nokia N9, a MeeGo Harmattan smartphone, was announced. Equally important was the announcement that Qt would be at the core of bringing applications to the next billion users, indicating that Nokia intends to bring Qt to its mobile phone devices. Nokia also announced three new Touch and Type Series 40 devices.
Also coming out of Nokia Connections in Singapore today are some new accessories for your smartphone, giving you a number of options based around charging and audio. With speakers, home stereo adaptors, Bluetooth headsets and a fast charger for micro-USB devices.
At today's Nokia Connection event in Singapore Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, announced that the Symbian Anna software update for the Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7 would start shipping in new devices in July and would be available for all existing device owners to download by the end of August. He also announced that, over the next 12 months, Nokia intends to bring 10 new Symbian based smartphones to the market.
Nokia Connection, a regional showcase for Nokia's South-East Asia and Pacific customers, takes place tomorrow at the Marina Bay Sands hotel in Singapore. Keynote speeches, starting at 10 am Singapore time (3am UK time), will be given by Stephen Elop (Nokia CEO), Mary McDowell (EVP Mobile Phones), Marco Argenti (SVP Developer) and Marko Ahtisaari (SVP Design). The event's website notes that these will include the "global launch of brand new mobile devices and related services".
Google has presented an interesting survey on mobile usage to the Mobile Marketing Association forum in New York (reports Search Engine Land). Admittedly sponsored by Google itself, it combines two surveys on mobile habits and, surprisingly, includes Symbian. The two key points to take away are that more than half of smartphone users go online each day, and over 80% of people search for local information, and the vast majority of them will act on what they find.
Nokia and Elle have joined forces to find the next fashion correspondent. We're not sure how much of a crossover there is between the average All About Symbian reader and fashion followers, but we do know our audience is a diverse and talented group. And this is a good opportunity to mention the Nokia N8 pink (and see the embedded video for a chance to win one), which was recently announced by Nokia and is being used in the promotion.
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on the phones of yesteryear, here is the eighth episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week episodes focuses on international roaming, including the services we use for data and what the future might hold. 361 Degrees 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.
Nokia is currently in the process of closing its Nokia branded online stores in a number of countries. The online stores for France, Spain and the Netherlands have already closed and the majority of the others, including the UK, will follow in due course. Nokia has indicated that the closures are part of a company wide overhaul. While the closure of the online stores may be seen in some quarters as symbolic of Nokia current malaise, the reality is that their contribution to Nokia sales was negligible.
Nokia has re-branded its developer portal brand from Forum Nokia to Nokia Developer. At the same time the website has been redesigned, with an aim of making it easier to understand and navigate. The site operates overs six major areas: design, develop, distribute, devices, resources and community. Nokia Developer continues to support four key technologies: Java (Series 40), Web (Series 40 and Symbian), Qt (Symbian) and Windows Phone.
