At Qualcomm's recent Uplinq conference, Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, gave a keynote in which he described the decision process that led to Nokia's February 11th smartphone strategy shift and outlined the five key elements of the third mobile ecosystem that Microsoft and Nokia are building. In this news story we have transcribed the key passages and here you will find Elop's answers to many of the most commonly asked questions about Nokia's new strategy and vision for the future.
Yesterday Microsoft offered the media a preview of Mango, the next release of the Windows Phone platform. The release will deliver more than 500 new features, with an emphasis on communication, apps and the Internet. Mango will also see wider language support, the addition of 1500 APIs for developers and significant performance improvements. Mango is scheduled to arrive in the autumn and will be the version that Nokia uses on its first Windows Phone devices, scheduled to appear in 2012 in quantity.
Nokia is continuing to push the photo capture abilities of the Nokia N8. In the HD Horizons project, sponsored by Nokia, Jason Hawkes, who has specialised in taking aerial photographs for twenty years, has been capturing UK landscapes and landmarks from the air. We've got access to some of the early images, which offer a remarkable demonstration of the N8's capabilities.
Every year Ewan disappears to South by South West (SXSW) in Texas with his podcaster's hat on - and every year we give him something interesting to road test. This year, the kilted road warrior is taking his turn with the Nokia E7 Communicator and in this final video in the series (embedded below), he is reunited with Emu and he chats about DM and Email being aimed at different communities, plus he relates how the Americans were wowed by the E7 (no, really) and he summarises his time with the device.
Every year Ewan disappears to South by South West (SXSW) in Texas with his podcaster's hat on - and every year we give him something interesting to road test. This year, the kilted road warrior is taking his turn with the Nokia E7 Communicator and in this fourth video in the series (embedded below), he looks at Layar, Dropbox, USB on the go and a novel way of charging your smartphone. All delivered in inimitable chatty Ewan style.
Every year Ewan disappears to South by South West (SXSW) in Texas with his podcaster's hat on - and every year we give him something interesting to road test. This year, the kilted road warrior is taking his turn with the Nokia E7 Communicator and in this third video in the series (embedded below), he looks at Food, File Formatting and Finland. All delivered in inimitable chatty Ewan style.
Every year Ewan disappears to South by South West (SXSW) in Texas with his podcaster's hat on - and every year we give him something interesting to road test. This year, the kilted road warrior is taking his turn with the Nokia E7 Communicator and in this second video in the series (embedded below), he looks at social networking on the device. All delivered in inimitable chatty Ewan style. Fans of Emu will be delighted to learn his feathered friend has now joined him in Austin, having taken a longer flight (it's a lot of flapping to get to the USA) and may well appear in an upcoming video....
As I write this, Jason Hawkes, one of "the world’s most respected aerial photographers", is flying round some of the UK's most stunning (large) locations on a 5 day 'shoot', attempting to capture some innovative aerial photos using just the Nokia N8, to show what can be achieved with "the phone that's always with you". Well, yes, if you also have a helicopter chartered, in this case! Embedded below is an intro video to the project, plus some quotes from the press release. We'll have more from the 'HD Horizons' project in a week or so's time, complete with some of the photos captured on Jason's N8.
Thanks to Jay for highlighting a video demo of NFC on the C7 over at Mobile World Congress. Every C7 has a NFC chip but there's no software to drive it, at least not yet. What's demoed below is a prototype interface, showing how to find out more about a product that you 'touch' with your C7. Early days, obviously, though with Samsung also really getting into NFC for their 2011 smartphones as well, you have to think that this could be the year NFC emerges into the real world.
Two days after its investor-focused Strategy and Financial meeting, much covered in previous stories, Nokia held a more consumer-focussed press conference just before Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. While the overall message was no different to Friday's event, Nokia did provide some additional details on its short-term Symbian plans. These include a wave of new devices and significant software updates for Symbian^3. [Story updated after Rafe got back from the event]
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).
Marko Ahtisaari, SVP of industrial design at Nokia, was one of the guest speakers at this year's LeWeb Conference. He covered topics from dominant designs of smartphone user interface and collective intelligence with mobile devices. He outlined why he sees that there's plenty of work to be done in the world of mobile user experience, particularly in having mobile devices actually demand less of our attention. In his view, iOS is "beautifully elegant and fantastically constrained", while Symbian and Android actually share the same design pattern but differ greatly in their business models. Read on for a in-depth account of the speech and Q&A session.
Many of us have used Pizero's themes on our S60 phones for years - just published over on the Symbian blog is a short video interview (also embedded below) with the man himself, Michele Cerretta, who was manning the theming kiosk at SEE 2010. Bear with his English, and let his themes speak volumes?
