Nokia today released its Q4 2008 results. Nokia net sales of EUR 12.7 billion, down 19% year on year and up 3% sequentially (down 18% and up 1% at constant currency). Nokia sold 15.1 million converged (S60) devices, down from 15.5 million in Q3 and 18.8 million in Q4 2007, of these 8 million were Nseries and 3 million were Eseries. Nokia's industry outlook for 2009 estimates mobile device volumes to decrease by 10%. The results are set against the background of the global economic slow down.
Much has been written about Monday's inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, and how it will be represented in political history. It's also going to be looked on as a key moment of the digital age. With millions of people descending on the Capitol in Washington all carrying a smartphone, there is a huge repository of imagery, video and both public and private messages, texts and emails for historians to pour over. Read on for my thoughts.
Nokia today announced that it has signed pan-European licensing agreements for its Comes with Music download service. This includes agreements with Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, CELAS/EMI Publishing and a number of national collecting societies (France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Norway). The announcement underlines Nokia's commitment to its music services and will enable Nokia to extend the reach of its unlimited download music service.
Twitter itself seems to be going from strength to strength, the micro-blogging platform that thinks big. Twim is a brand new Java-hosted but very S60-friendly Twitter client, letting you do everything from the comfort of your phone, and Ewan's been trying it out. Here's his Twim review.
In All About Symbian Insight 56 (AAS Podcast 109) Steve, Ewan and Rafe discuss the news of the two N79 variants (Eco and Active), touch on the LGPL license option for Qt before discussing hands-on experience of the Nokia E63. In the second half of the show we talk about the issues around music DRM and consider the perfect mobile user experience.
According to a report on mobiletoday.co.uk, Sony has refused to let Sony Ericsson use the PlayStation brand on its phones. Sony Ericsson (a separate company jointly owned by Sony and Ericsson) apparently asked Sony for permission to use the "PlayStation" name as a sub-brand on their devices, in much the same way they have already used Sony's "Walkman", "Cybershot" and "Bravia". Sony said no, allegedly. (via Eurogamer.net)
Our smartphones have a lot of features in them, yet this is causing a divide. When we as power users look at a new device, we're expecting our favourite features to be there, yet this depth of power can be daunting to new users. A survey from Mformation (see here on the BBC), linked to earlier by Tzer2, reports high numbers of users having problems with setting up a new phone and accessing the available services. Read on for my take on the issue...
In a move that should be regarded as sound business sense from one of the largest companies in the world, Google will be closing the Jaiku and Dodgeball services in the near future. While I don't want to dwell on those specific cases (although both have been sidelined by the Mountain View company since they were purchased), it's an interesting warning signal for those of us who wish to live in the clouds and rely on hosted web services.
[updated] Nokia PC Suite version 7.1 (v7.1.18.0, to be exact) is now 'official', in that every man and his dog is being reminded of its existence via normal PC Suite update checks. Version 7.1 includes the following extra functionality: arranging the contacts on your phone into contact groups, starting a phone call to a contact, and having full access to your phone's Calendar in a special new view. If the auto-update doesn't work for you, here's the download page.
Nokia, in a strategically significant move, has announced that it will add a LGPL 1.4 (Lesser General Public License) open source licensing option for the Qt UI and application framework from the release of Qt 4.5, which is scheduled for March 2009. The new licensing is more permissive as it allows the use of Qt for proprietary commercial development at no cost, thus offering greater flexibility to developers. Read on for more.
How many of you have heard of the Sectera Edge smartphone? It runs Windows Mobile, it's made by General Dynamics (the people behind the F-16 Falcon fighter) and it's about to get a whole lot of publicity. Why? Because the feature set is perfect for one smartphone user – Barack Obama. But what can the President of the United State's choice tell us about the mobile market?
Nokia's subscription music service, Comes with Music, seems to be struggling to pick up momentum. The major problems are around educating users in the details of the offer and the limited availability in terms channel availability and handsets. However worthy of note is that Carphone Warehouse has reduced the price of the Nokia 5310 Comes with Music Edition to £82.18.
