Along with Infosync, we're wondering why Nokia, who previously have never raised an eyebrow at it, have decided now is the time to join The GSM Association, a trade association that exists to promote, protect and enhance the interests of GSM mobile operators. The offical PR line from Nokia is "[we have] decided to join the GSMA as an Associate member in order to further strengthen its relationships with mobile operators." Which leads you to wonder why they need to strengthen the relations with the carriers. After all , they have to buy their phones from somewhere, and Nokia's market share has been droppping. Could it be as simple as that?
Water, Water everywhere and not a drop to drink! It's time for your best Water related photos (taken on a Symbian Phone). Please upload your photos to the Photo Contest 16 page. Vote will start on 3rd October 2004 to pick a winner. Winners Photo is displayed on Main Gallery page and can select next category.
Opera may be seriously underestimating their market position with the announcement that one million copies of Opera for Symbian OS have been downloaded (says Opera's Press Release). They're not counting all the copies of Opera that come pre-installed by manufacturers, nor are they counting downloads from sites such as Handango or any of their partners. Congratulations guys!
Yes, read that again. Nokia are putting up a 9500 Communicator as one of the raffle prizes at our AAS Pub Meet. Come along on Monday October 4th if you fancy your chances on getting the 9500, or software and goodies from Allack, Cascata, Epocware, N-Gage User, Opera, Sendo and Symbian Press. Plus the Mystery Star Prize Bag... There's more prizes to announce in the near future - don't forget Nokia will be on hand to talk about the 9500 and 9300 phones, the AAS Staff will be around, and lots of interesting people as well. More details on the Pub Meet Page. Will we see you there?
George Samenuk, CEO of McAfee, is talking up mobile viruses to corporate buyers and their IT departments (The Feature reports). "What choice do users have? Do you want your business or government to go down because you didn't spend money protecting PDAs or 3G phones... This is a bet-your-job environment. You will lose your job if you don't have comprehensive, layered security solutions." So yet again, we have the Anti-Virus companies talk up the fear, uncertainty and doubt of handset viruses, with no word yet from any virus writers. Are we really on the brink of armageddon?
After years of using only the royalty free MMC card standard, Nokia has applied to join the Association that controls the SD card standard - membership is normally a pre-requisite for using SD Cards on an electronic device. MMC card support isn't going to stop overnight (especially with the embracing of RS-MMC), but this opens the way to better data exchange with over 700 other manufacturers. It should be noted that devices like the Sendo X already support SD cards, and the option in the Series 60 licencing would allow Nokia to licence back the SD technology from Sendo. There's an off the shelf solution if we ever saw one.
DemoMobile, the biggest "look at my company, please invest!" show in the world has finished for another year, and there have been a number of good products on show designed for the mobile phone. There was the tilting screen as a cursor, the number buttons as a touch pad, the take a picture of an advert and we'll scan online shops for it... the list is endless, but the problem is the same. They need support from carriers and handset manufacturers. The Feature rounds everything up.
Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Siemens and Sony Ericsson are looking at ways to bring the Broadacasting Services to you through your mobile phone. 'TV-Like' and Multimedia Content would be covered under the 'Mobile Broadcast Services,' work which started out under the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) previously.
The All About Symbian Pub Meet is delighted to announce that Nokia will be coming along to demonstrate and field questions on the new 9500 Communicator and 9300 Smartphone. Details on the pub meet are here, and don't forget we've also got the Prize Raffle, Meet the AAS Team, and a whole bundle of people who came over for the Symbian Exposium who'd rather be at the pub than set up their stall.
Nokia has announced it is to acquire Metrowerks' Symbian orientated development tools and license Metrowerks's key development tool technology (The Code Warrior IDE). Nokia intends to invest in the platform-specific technologies, and also add new features and support to the newly acquired tools. Metrowerk will act as a reseller of the tools for Nokia and continue to develop the core technology and CodeTEST(TM) Software Analysis Tools. Metrowerks' software is one of the leading developer tools for Series 60, Series 80, Series 90 and UIQ.
To go with the news of the Nokia 9300, Rafe, Ewan and the AAS Team are proud to launch a new sister site, All About Series 80. AAS80 (for short) is a dedicated site purely for Communicator owners. It will carry all the Series 80 content from All About Symbian in its pages, so you won't miss any news about your Super-Smartphone - in much the same way as All About N-Gage is dedicated to Nokia's Gaming Machine. Don't worry about loosing Communiciator content from AAS though, as we'll still carry every bit of news on the 'Mother' site.
Neil Wooding, the International Man of Mystery who runs Cascata Games, a North London based gaming company making in-roads over all the main portable computing / PDA platforms. Starting Cascata in 2002, Neil has had a long history in the mobile computing world beforehand, even to the point of interviewing a very young Ewan Spence for a job (needless to say, I didn't get it). So, it's time to turn the tables in another All About Symbian Interview.
