Widely reported in the media today is the leak of an internal Nokia 'memo', penned by Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop. It lays out the problems facing Nokia, most notably around its software strategy, and argues that Nokia is "standing on a burning platform" with a choice to be made about the future. And what is that choice? That's what we'll be finding out on Friday, when Nokia holds its Analyst and Financial event (Capital Markets Day).
While the BBC News App in the Ovi Store is little more than a web shortcut to open up the mobile site in your browser, it’s a good decision to make an application like this available. Yes, it doesn’t take much to type in “B B C” in the browser, but providing an icon on the screen and in the Ovi search engine, reinforces the idea of content on the phone. It’s also a potential first step to a dedicated BBC News application to sit alongside the iPlayer integration in the UK.
Without word of mouth, the success of an application depends on getting into an App store, and making it easy to find. The approval process of application stores is a frequently complained about issue in the developer world, and the Ovi Store is not immune from these complaints. Therefore, if you are a developer looking to get into the Ovi Store, there are a few things you should bear in mind... Read on to find out.
Users of the third party Mail for Exchange service, NuevaSync, may be interested to know that they have added a new feature allowing for read-only synchronisation to mobile phones. Currently, the feature is only available via the NuevaSync Labs page, as it is still in development. This feature will be useful to anyone using NuevaSync and finding that their device is duplicating or modifying data in other undesirable ways. Users have fine control over read-only access, being able to set it on a per-data-type basis, for each device they are synchronising with NuevaSync.
Open up the Ovi Store client on your Symbian^3 smartphone and you should have a mandatory update available, which offers 'full Arabic Support, better installation support for Qt-based apps and numerous fixes', plus a new blue/green startup screen, miscellaneous other small fixes and, significantly, for all phones of all vintages, an upgrade (at Nokia's end) to their Search algorithms.
The Nokia Bicycle Charger accessory is now available in select markets. It can be bought from Nokia's online shops and other select retailers; the Nokia UK online shop is selling it for £25. The accessory uses pedal power to recharge the battery in your phone. It works by attaching a dynamo to the wheel that generates power as you move. Those using the accessory will need to maintain a speed of at least 4 mph and no more than 31 mph to provide sufficient energy for effective charging.
In just two weeks, Mobile World Congress 2011 will be kicking off in Barcelona. Nokia will be there and has just announced details of its talks, exhibitions and press briefings. On each day of MWC someone from Nokia will be speaking, including new CEO Stephen Elop and Mary McDowell. Nokia will have three exhibition stands, for NavTeq, Qt and Nokia Siemens Networks. Nokia will also be hosting a developer day at the AppPlanet event. Finally, Nokia will be showing off its deveice portfolio and Ovi services at the Pepcom Mobile Focus event.
Even though we first reported on the standardisation of mobile phone chargers two years ago, the International Electrotechnical Commission has finally published its IEC International Standard IEC 62684, entitled "Interoperability specifications of common external power supply (EPS) for use with data-enabled mobile telephones". This final push has partly been made possible by the IEC signing a "memorandum of understanding" with the USB Implementers Forum. The standard has been based on specifications from fourteen companies: Apple, Nokia, Research in Motion, Emblaze Mobile, Huawei Technologies, LGE, Motorola Mobility, NEC, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, TCT Mobile (ALCATEL), Texas Instruments and Atmel.
Two separate stories showing Nokia’s global efforts continue to deliver for the company, this time in China. First up is the agreement with SINA and Tencent to provide location based services via Ovi Maps, closely followed by last week’s report from IResearch that 65% of China Mobile’s users are regularly using the Ovi Store. Links and comment below.
After the publication of Nokia's 2010 Q4 results, there has been much fevered discussion across the Internet about why Nokia, with (ex-)Microsoft's Stephen Elop at the helm, may turn to other operating systems for its phones. The alternative operating systems in the spotlight being Android (Q4's biggest seller) and Windows Phone 7. Here at All About Symbian, we have been considering these options and finding that they just do not stand up to a reasoned analysis. An article entitled "Should Nokia Be Looking At Android or WP7? Not Yet", over at Gigaom, broadly agrees with our appraisal of the options.
Canalys, a market research company, today published its figures for "Q4 2010 global country-level smartphone market data", which show Android (33.3 million) overtaking Symbian (31.0 million) as the biggest smartphone platform, with Apple (16.2 million) and RIM (14.6 million) in third and fourth places respectively. The figures will not be without controversy as there are differing estimates to both sales and overall market volumes from different sources. Nonetheless, the figures underline the huge growth in sales of Android based devices in 2010.
Figures are now in, according to IDC, for overall phones sales worldwide for Q4 2010, for all manufacturers (we're still waiting for further breakdown into smartphone stats, though see Rafe's own chart in the Nokia Q4 results story for his (usually accurate) take on this. Quotes and a table below. Summary: Nokia down 2% year-on-year, but still selling almost as many as the companies in second, third and fourth places put together, Apple slip to 5th, but still almost double Q4 sales, YoY.
There's an exhaustive and interesting look, nicely pitched, by long term AAS reader Eugen Diskin here, looking at 16 (count 'em) reasons why the mood of bloggers, analysts and users all seem against Nokia right now. There are some good points in here, some left valid but most vigorously defended. You'll have to excuse the occasional broken English, the author isn't a native speaker - but well worth ten minutes of your time over coffee this weekend.
Nokia has released its Q4 2010 results, reporting an operating profit of €884 million (down 23% Year-on-Year), with net sales of €12.65 billion (up 6% YoY). Nokia's device and service division's profits were €1090 million, up 10% from Q3. Margins in devices and services were 11.3% (down 4.1% YoY and up 0.9% QoQ).
Nokia sold more than 5 million Symbian^3 devices. Total converged devices sales (mainly Symbian-powered smartphones) were up, at 28.3 million, compared with 20.8 million units in Q3 2009 (up 36% YoY) and compared with 26.5 million units in Q3 2010 (up 7%, QoQ). Worldwide smartphone market share was 31%, down 6% sequentially and 9% year on year, due to the overall smartphone market growth, estimated up by a huge 63% YoY. [Post updated with extra charts and quotes]
O2 has launched "O2 WiFi", offering free WiFi to anyone, whether or not they are an O2 customer. O2 now takes the view that the service can be better paid for by advertising on the hotspot landing pages rather than getting revenue from specific subscribers. In Q1, 2011, O2 is rolling out 450 free hotspots and by 2013 they 'aim to have approximately 15,000 hotspots'.
