At its Strategy and Financial Briefing event today in London, Nokia has outlined its "new strategic direction, including changes in leadership and operational structure to accelerate the company's speed of execution in a dynamic competitive environment". Some more quotes below, but in short this means a reorganisation into "Smart Devices" and "Mobile Phones", and adding a new OS platform to its portfolio, with Windows Phone becoming Nokia's "primary smartphone platform" and Symbian becoming "a franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value". More below, and more through the day, of course. Rafe's on the ground, see the other Coveritlive news item.
At a Strategy and Financial Briefing, which takes place at 10 am GMT on February 11th Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, is expected to outline his vision for the future strategy of the company. Rafe will be reporting live from Intercontinental Park Lane Hotel, London, where the event is taking place. You can follow our live coverage using this story or via our Twitter accounts (@aas and @allaboutmeego).
No, not that gravity. Gravity the much-praised social network client for Symbian. Here's an excellent 17 minute video interview (and written summary) with its creator, Jan Ole Suhr, taken at Nokia World 2010. Did you, for example, know that Gravity was originally intended to be a little freebie giveaway to attract visitors to Jan's other commercial products? The interview also answers whether Jan is worried about Nokia's new native Social application or about a future forced rewrite in Qt.
Nokia World 2010 starts today and the team is on the ground to bring you live coverage from Nokia's premier event. Over the next two days we'll be bringing you the key news, views and information. This news story contains our live coverage, where you can see the latest images and text updates; you can also interact with the team, asking questions and adding your own thoughts. Alternatively you can keep up to date by following our @aas account on Twitter, where we will be posting text updates and images.
In All About Symbian Insight 130, we start with an update on the ongoing Conspiracy for Good transmedia project. David Gilson then talks us through his first impressions of the Nokia C6. Rafe reports back from Nokia's N8 Developer Day in London, including details of the new Ovi Store client, which is expected to debut on the N8. Finally Steve leads a discussion on Q2's mobile device shipment numbers. You can listen to AAS Insight 130 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia has released their Q2 2010 results, reporting an operating profit of €295 million, with net sales €10.0billion (up 1% Year-on-Year). Nokia's device and service division's profits were €643 million, down 16% year on year. Margins in devices and services were 9.5% (down 2.7% YoY and down 2.6% QoQ). Converged devices sales (smartphones) were significantly up, at 24 million, compared with 16.9 million units in Q2 2009 (so up 42% YoY) and compared with 21.5 million units in Q1 2010 (up 12%, QoQ). As such, worldwide smartphone marketshare was 41%, stable sequentially and year on year. Full story and comments below.
In All About Symbian Insight 125, we welcome David Gilson to the podcast for the first time. This week we round up a lot of news including a rallying cry from Nokia's Anssi Vanjoki, details on SEE 2010, firmware updates for the E71, E66, N97 and N97 mini, SkyFire's market retreat, Nokia 5230 pricing and more. In the main part of the podcast David tell us about his experiences with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro, Ewan talks about The Big Roll in Paradise and Rafe reports back from a 3UK briefing. You can listen to AAS Insight 125 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
In All About Symbian Insight 123, the team discuss the news of the Nokia X5-01 and X6 8GB, which were launched at Nokia Connection in Singapore. Ewan gives us an overview of the Nimbuzz application, before Rafe explains that Symbian^3 is now functionally complete. Finally, Rafe and Steve discuss their thoughts on what they learned at the recent Nokia N8 hands-on event. You can listen to AAS Insight 123 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Around 36 hours ago, Apple unveiled its latest iPhone 4 to the world - excellent build materials on it, but I believe that they - and Nokia - and others - are missing an important trick: what happens when you take your oh-so-portable smartphone out into the world. A world where the birds are singing, the people are smiling and the sun is shining. And you can't see a blessed thing on your smartphone's display. Returning to a theme from exactly a year ago, I compare some recent device displays to prove a very, very important point.
During a recent visit to Nokia's Espoo (Helsinki) offices, I had the opportunity to look round Nokia's Experience Lounge, which showcases all of Nokia's latest products and services - from Ovi Maps and Nokia Messaging to the latest Nokia handsets. As an additional bonus, tucked away in one corner of the room, is a set of shelves that contain one of almost every Nokia phone model ever produced. So how to share this with loyal readers? Film a walkabout of course!
