With the MWC and now GDC events under our belt, Ewan Spence draws from all the clues that Nokia has been dropping and comes up with a connected, converged epiphany into the future of gaming. The unification of smartphone functions, social networking and gaming is just around the corner, perhaps. Personally, I can't see any real showstoppers.
Nokia is calling on mobile developers with new ideas to take part in its Mobile Games Innovation Challenge, and at least one winning game will be published by Nokia on its new N-Gage platform (which is based on S60 3rd Edition). Entries will be accepted from the 3rd of April 2008, so if you're interested it might be worth starting work now. Established developers and publishers can already apply to publish commercially on the platform, or find out more on the N-Gage developer site.
Ewan continues to ponder on the ramifications of Mobile World Congress. How will the next year or so pan out and who will be the winners and losers? More importantly, in which direction is the smartphone industry heading?
Mobile World Congress 2008 certainly hasn't been a washout - there have been announcements right, left and centre that are definitely of interest. But there haven't been any slam dunk launches that have got the whole show floor talking, argues Ewan. For those, you'll have to wait until MWC 2009...
Is 'sharing' a good marketing angle for the mainstream? In typically controversial fashion, and with a good sense of Web 2.0 in the real world, Ewan isn't so sure. What fraction of Nseries phone buyers, for example, are really going to get to grips with sharing online and geo-tagging?
Symbian chose to wait until MWC before releasing their own Q4 results for 2007 and the full press release is quoted below. There's also a video webcast to stream if you want to see Symbian's CEO and CFO go through the numbers in person. Standout highlights include the fact that Symbian OS now powers around 7% of all phones being sold worldwide (up from 5%), with just over 22 million Symbian OS-powered smartphones shipped in Q4/2007.
Also just announced at MWC was the 6210 Navigator, bringing the older 6110 Navigator up to date with 3.2 megapixel camera and latest styling. Maps 2.0 will be built-in and there's an N95-style accelerometer to help out, in addition to the full S60 application package/platform. Photos and more details below the break.
The Nokia 6220 Classic has also debuted, and this is going to be the 'regular' device that surprises everybody. It's got an impressive spec for a mid range phone, including a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss-lensed camera with Xenon flash (yes, really), HSPDA connectivity and an assisted GPS for location aware services. It also hooks into the Ovi services as well.
Sony Ericsson just announced the G700 and G900 UIQ 3-powered 'touchscreen organisers'. The G700 has a 3.2 megapixel camera, while the G900 has a 5 megapixel camera and Wi-Fi, but otherwise they're very similar. Read on for more details, analysis, photo links and specs.
Fed up with announcements about "leveraging the Web 2.0 growth cycle to grow market share in the YouTube generation"? Ewan's a little sceptical about some of the press releases that get issued at this time of the industry year, and I don't blame him. What are we looking for from the hardware and software companies and what are we dreading seeing?
Mobil.cz is reporting that next week, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung will announce the G810, a new S60-powered phone. The rumoured G810 specifications are dimensions of 104x52x18mm, with a 2.6 inch QVGA screen, 5 megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom, built in GPS, 150MB of internal memory and microSD card slot, GSM and UTMS (with HSDPA) cellular connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, USB, and WiFi. These specifications would suggest it will look to compete with Nokia's high end Nseries devices such as the N95. Read on for more.
