The next round of Apple vs Nokia in the patent wars was announced yesterday. By my mind it goes something like this: Nokia reported Apple to the International Trade Commission; Apple subsequently reported Nokia to the ITC; the ITC announced they would formally look into Nokia’s complaint; and yesterday they said they would also formally look at Apple’s complaint. There’s more lawyer-y talk at the Reuters report of this latest step.
Not great news for Sony Ericsson as the BBC reports on their censure from the Advertising Standards Authority (the ASA) in the UK this morning. The complaints about the advertising of the Satio handset and its Facebook integration – due to firmware problems the Facebook functionality was not present or available in the handset, the ASA have labelled the advert as misleading. Sony Ericsson have now sorted the issue.
Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs confirmed to the Helsingin Sanomat that they are working with Nokia to have a Snapdragon processor running with Symbian by the end of this year (reports Stefan at IntoMobile). Snapdragon is of course the processor inside the Google Nexus 1, and provides built in GPS, BlueTooth, WiFi cellular radio chipsets.
According to the official Ovi blog, the deployment of Nokia Ovi Suite 2.1.0.87 started yesterday, containing "many new improvements, bug fixes and features", including Ovi.com and Mozilla Thunderbird contacts sync, video transfer and playback and support for device application updates. You can get the new version from within an older version(!) or from here. This replaces the old PC Suite and other variants.
A month ago, I pitched the (then) brand new Google Nexus One against the Symbian-powered Samsung i8910 HD, a very close match in terms of form factor and specifications, concluding along similar lines - there was little to choose between them. But with the advancement of the original Nokia N97, a i8910 HD comtemporary, with its new v21 firmware and with hardware issues now largely fixed, I wondered how the N97 would fare when gently pushed into the same hardware-accelerated playground....
One of the subjects that I like to keep coming back to is the lack of visibility that Nokia has in social media, not from content that the company creates itself (their official blog at conversations.nokia.com being one of the better corporate blogs out there), but the visibility created by reporters and consumers using and talking about the device. Because of where Nokia is geographically popular (or not), they've lost the adulation that other rival devices have. Read on for my musings....
In our latest AAS podcast, Insight 105, Steve and Ewan discuss the news and announcements from Barcelona, including the Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro, Symbian^3, Skype for 5th Edition, Nokia's Maemo/Moblin deal, Windows Phone 7 Series Pocket Pro Mobile (or something like that) and anything else which we thought of interest and relevance.
One of the more widely reported stories from MWC yesterday was the launch of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), with a number of networks and manufacturers (including Verizon, Orange, Samsung and LG) promising to “unite a fragmented marketplace by involving players from all related industries”. Sounds a dream come true, but like many similar initiatives, this is unlikely to succeed, I reckon. Read on.
Paul Boutin brings up an interesting question on VentureBeat today; why can’t Nokia sell phones to Americans?" Rather than a tear-down of the Finnish company, Boutin makes his starting point the geek-lust inducing Nokia 8110 that featured in The Matrix and details three area Nokia could address to conquer the continent.
Rafe and Ewan McLeod are hard at work bouncing around Barcelona, and they caught up with a number of companies at the MWC MobileFocus evening. One of those companies, Swype, promises a “faster and more efficient way of entering text on a touchscreen device”, as Rafe finds out in this Video Report with Mike McSherry and gets his hands on an alternative input system.
As expected by many, Nokia chose to concentrate on their services for their second event this morning at Mobile World Congress (the first was the Moblin/Maemo merger), announcing a barrage of stats, covering the Symbian-relevant Ovi Maps and Ovi Store, plus numbers for Life Tools, all summarised below. Nokia also announced a live pilot of their Nokia Money, designed to allow mobile payments throughout developing countries.
Nokia and Intel’s creation of Meego, from the Maemo and Moblin projects, is a big move, from both companies, and we’ll be covering the announcement and further thoughts over on All About Maemo. This should make Nokia’s strategy over the mid term a little clearer, and perhaps answers the question of what the future is for the Nokia Booklet. Apart from that pesky GMA500 graphics chip, Meego should run “out of the box” on the Booklet when it makes an appearance in Q2.
The Sunday Times has put together an interesting profile on Nokia, published on the eve of MWC. It looks at their position and market share, and takes a pretty even look at where the Finnish company is at the moment. It’s interesting that the story, while framed by the emerging markets of India, compares Nokia to Apple and the service cultures that are growing from each company.
Adobe are making a lot of noise at MWC with their Flash technology moving into the mobile space. Symbian have joined Adobe and their Open Screen Project, with a view to having the Flash Player on “future versions of Symbian”. With over 70 companies now working on the Open Screen Project, the dream of write once, run anywhere is still being kept alive.
The Symbian Foundation has today unveiled Symbian^3, with details quoted below. And, courtesy of the video-friendly chaps at Nokia Conversations (YouTube channel), we now have an impressive video 'design preview' of Symbian^3 in action. Remember, this is the OS and user interface that will be included in Symbian-powered smartphones in the second half of 2010. Highlights from the video, embedded at high resolution below, are multiple homescreens, 3D 'Coverflow' for music albums, 'single tap' direct manipulation UI everywhere, multitouch (pinching, splaying, to zoom) and live visual multitasking (Web OS/Maemo 5-style). It's quite a visual feast, so look below and enjoy.
