Nokia has announced that it has signed a patent license agreement with Apple, ending all patent litigation between the companies. The financial structure of the agreement consists of a one-time payment payable by Apple to Nokia and ongoing regular royalties to be paid by Apple to Nokia. The exact amounts involved are confidential, but the "agreement is expected to have a positive financial impact on Nokia's recently revised outlook for the second quarter 2011", so the sums must be very substantial.
At Qualcomm's recent Uplinq conference, Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, gave a keynote in which he described the decision process that led to Nokia's February 11th smartphone strategy shift and outlined the five key elements of the third mobile ecosystem that Microsoft and Nokia are building. In this news story we have transcribed the key passages and here you will find Elop's answers to many of the most commonly asked questions about Nokia's new strategy and vision for the future.
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on Windows Phone Mango, here is the seventh episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week it's a nostalgia fest as we remember devices we've owned and that we think have helped shaped the industry. 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's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Rich Green, is to take an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons. Green joined Nokia in 2010, and was brought into its leadership team in February 2011, reporting directly to new CEO, Stephen Elop. As CTO, Green was charged with overseeing the direction of technological advancement in both Nokia's software and hardware groups. Henry Tirri, head of Nokia Research Center, has been appointed acting CTO.
Here's an interesting one. Nokia and SPB are working together to bring a client for the popular Russian social network, VKontakte, to Symbian handsets. The network, spookily reminiscent of Facebook, has all the features you would expect, including personal pages, privacy controls, photo and video hosting, groups, comments... and now SPB are bringing that to the handset.
Bloomberg Businessweek has published an in-depth article, titled 'Stephen Elop's Nokia Adventure', which describes how Nokia's new CEO is trying to turn the company around. It covers his first 8 months at the company and looks at the story behind Nokia's new strategy. There's a lot of interesting detail about the decision making behind Nokia's smartphone strategy, which took place in the first few weeks of 2011.
Yesterday at the D9 conference Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, quashed recent rumours that Nokia was set to be acquired by Microsoft. In response to a question about whether Microsoft was interested in buying Nokia's hardware division Elop said that, "the rumours are baseless", reinforcing an interview had had given to CNBC earlier in the day and statements that Nokia had released to the media.
How much data does your smartphone use? With the rise of capped monthly limits, this becomes an interesting question, even before you consider how much data you should put aside for when you are travelling abroad. Nielsen have surveyed a number of mobile phone bills in America to get the answer, and it's less than 600 MB a month (reports GigaOM).
Under the title of "Destination E7", Nokia's latest promotional stunt has been to give two Scots girls E7s and lend them a VW camper and set them the challenge of setting up a 'pop-up shop' in London (postcode E7, get it?) a week later, sourcing all their inventory along the way. Along with a cameraman, of course, to record the results for the embedded highlights video below.
Nokia today updated its outlook for Q2 2011, substantially downgrading previous forecasts. The company says it now expects net sales to be "substantially below its previously expected range of €6.1 billion to €6.6 billion" and that, "Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin could be around break even", against a previously expected range of 6% to 9%. Multiple factors are impacting Nokia's Devices and Services business, including competitive dynamics and a product mix shifting towards to lower end and pricing tactics by Nokia and certain competitors.
In an interview with the Nokia Conversations blog, China Edition, Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, said that "software updates to Symbian devices are expected until at least 2016", and that there is " a long history still to be paved for Symbian in the future". While Nokia has previously made it clear that Symbian investment would continue, the 2016 date is a definitive statement and may be further in the future than some have anticipated.
Yesterday Microsoft offered the media a preview of Mango, the next release of the Windows Phone platform. The release will deliver more than 500 new features, with an emphasis on communication, apps and the Internet. Mango will also see wider language support, the addition of 1500 APIs for developers and significant performance improvements. Mango is scheduled to arrive in the autumn and will be the version that Nokia uses on its first Windows Phone devices, scheduled to appear in 2012 in quantity.
