All About Symbian - News Headlines

News Headlines - Industry

Nokia plans changes to its manufacturing operations

Nokia has announced planned changes at its factories in Komarom (Hungary), Reynosa (Mexico) and Salo (Finland), to "increase efficiency in smartphone production". These three factories will now focus on "smartphone product customization" and device assembly is expected to be transferred to Nokia factories in Asia, where the majority of component suppliers are based. Around 4000 employees will ultimately be lost.

# Posted by Steve in Miscellaneous, Industry at 9:57 UTC, Feb 8th || Comments

Worldwide phone and smartphone stats, Q4, 2011

Most of the numbers are now in for Q4, 2011 and, while some are estimates, we now have a pretty good idea of the state of the mobile industry for the last quarter. Phones grew 6% year on year, smartphones by a whopping 63%, with the latter now at 36% of the overall market. The top three companies were the same by either metric - Apple, Samsung and Nokia are way ahead of the rest.

# Posted by Steve in Links of Interest, Industry at 8:51 UTC, Feb 2nd || Comments

1.5 billion Series 40 phones, plus half a billion Symbian too

The news that Nokia just handed over its one and a half billionth Series 40 phone was interesting - and impressive - and got me thinking and fact-checking. Just how many Symbian-powered smartphones have been sold, in total, i.e. in the last decade? Turns out it's now well over 500 million, i.e. over half a billion Symbian smartphones have already been sold and are... out there in the world somewhere. Some thoughts below.

# Posted by Steve in Miscellaneous, Industry, Editorial Thoughts at 9:05 UTC, Jan 28th || Comments

Nokia Q4 2011 - in the heart of transition

Nokia has released its Q4 2011 results, reporting an operating loss of €954 million, with net sales of €10.0 billion (down 21% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's profits were €203 million. Margins in devices and services were 3.4% (down from 12.7 % on Q4 2010 and up from 3.1% in Q3 2011). Total smartphone device sales were 19.6 million, compared with 28.6 million units in Q4 2010 (down 31% YoY) and 16.8 million units in Q3 2011 (up 17%, QoQ).

# Posted by Rafe in Industry, Editorial Thoughts at 12:55 UTC, Jan 26th || Comments

Sisvel acquires over 450 Nokia patents

Sisvel International, a specialist company in managing intellectual property and maximizing the value of patent rights, has bought more than 450 patents originally filed by Nokia. 350 of these cover essential parts of the 2G (GSM), 3G (UMTS/WCDMA) and 4G (LTE) technologies. The other 100 or so cover video encoding optimization technologies. The acquired patents remain subject to certain prior agreements and Nokia is pre-licensed for all the patents as part of the acquisition.

# Posted by Steve in Industry at 10:15 UTC, Jan 14th || Comments

A snapshot of the UK High Street - Symbian almost non existent

Feeling a little like a TV undercover 'mystery shopper', I picked a UK provincial town and worked my way through their High Street phone outlets. I wanted to get a snapshot of how Symbian was (or wasn't) being represented in the place from which most people acquire phones in this nation. In the process, I was somewhat shocked. However much as some geeks like to attribute failing Symbian sales per quarter to 'technical deficiencies' or 'lack of apps' (both of which are somewhat over-exaggerated), there's a far simpler explanation...

# Posted by Steve in Miscellaneous, Industry, Editorial Thoughts at 7:13 UTC, Jan 9th || Comments

Symbian OS still on top, according to StatCounter

Thanks to a reminder from WebProNews, it's instructive to look again at the smartphone world via StatCounter, a pro service embedded on many web sites which tracks the browser and OS used to access them. And, reflecting the still enormous installed base of Symbian-powered smartphones across the world, Symbian still (for web access, at least) still dominates the world, at 31%. The full graph is below, along with some comments.

# Posted by Steve in Miscellaneous, Links of Interest, Industry at 9:09 UTC, Dec 30th || Comments

25 Years of Innovation - by Nokia

Nokia has put up a super-glossy four minute reminder of its innovations over the last 25 years, from the first mobiles through the advanced audio telephony codecs today - it's a good watch (embedded below) and is a reminder, among other things, of the sheer number of telephony patents stacked up at Nokia HQ (remember that Apple had to pay up earlier this year?).

# Posted by Steve in Links of Interest, Industry at 11:17 UTC, Nov 21st || Comments

Q3 smartphone stats now available, Symbian slipping, but still ahead of iOS

Smartphone sales statistics are now out for Q3, 2011, thanks to Gartner. Sales of Symbian-powered smartphones in the quarter were down 10 million from last year's total, at just under 20 million, but still notably higher than sales of Apple's high profile iOS devices. Sales of Android-powered devices were the strongest, at just over 60 million in the quarter. Some quotes, comment and a table below.

# Posted by Steve in Links of Interest, Industry at 10:01 UTC, Nov 15th || Comments

Q3 world phone stats, courtesy of IDC

Figures are now in from IDC for the world phone market in Quarter 3, 2011, showing the market flattening in the USA and Western Europe as saturation sets in. However, the proportion of smartphones in the overall mix continues to rise. Nokia is still king in terms of sheer numbers, selling over a hundred million phones in the quarter, although Samsung is catching up relatively quickly. IDC's stats table is quoted below, though we don't yet have a breakdown of smartphone-only sales.

# Posted by Steve in Miscellaneous, Industry at 10:57 UTC, Nov 1st || Comments

Nokia take on the New York MTA with NFC

Tucked away in the press releases from Nokia World was a small note that Nokia would be working with the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA). Given that the MTA announced this trial without mentioning the hardware partner earlier in the year, it's great to see Nokia has picked up a high visibility hardware trial (at least in business circles) in America.

# Posted by Ewan in Industry at 17:25 UTC, Oct 30th || Comments

Nokia Q3 2011 - on the road to recovery?

Nokia has released its Q3 2011 results, reporting an operating loss of -€71 million, with net sales of €8.980 billion (down 13% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's profits were €132 million. Margins in devices and services were 2.4% (down from 11.3 % in Q3 2010 and up from -4.2% in Q2 2011). Total smartphone device sales were 16.8 million, compared with 27.2 million units in Q3 2010 (down 34% YoY) and 16.7 million units in Q2 2011 (up 1%, QoQ). The results were ahead of expectations and suggest the company has started on the road to recovery.

# Posted by Rafe in Industry, Editorial Thoughts at 11:10 UTC, Oct 20th || Comments

Symbian still riding high worldwide, biggest real world Internet use

Yes, you can turn stats to prove almost anything and goodness knows we've seen enough of that from the tech media in recent years. So time for a shot across the bows with a look at that favourite stat from the 'superphone' brigade: mobile web browsing, sorted by smartphone platform. It'll be iPhone and Android all the way, right? Wrong. Hopelessly wrong.

# Posted by Steve in Links of Interest, Industry at 7:05 UTC, Oct 14th || Comments

Steve Jobs dies, his legacy lives on - even in the world of Symbian

As every other news outlet is reporting this morning, we awoke with the announcement that Steve Jobs had passed away after a long battle with cancer. Although not a Symbian story per-se, there's a lot about Jobs which affected the way the industry and even the world of Symbian in recent years. Here are a few short thoughts.

# Posted by Steve in Miscellaneous, Industry, Editorial Thoughts at 7:55 UTC, Oct 6th || Comments

Nokia completes transition of Symbian activities to Accenture

Nokia has completed the 'transaction to outsource its Symbian software development and support activities to Accenture'. The original announcement was made in April and the agreement finalised in June. As a result, approximately 2300 employees of Nokia will transfer to Accenture, 700 less than originally envisioned. Accenture will provide Symbian-based software development and support services to Nokia until at least 2016.

# Posted by Rafe in Software, Industry at 13:07 UTC, Sep 30th || Comments

Nokia 'aligning workforce', up to 3500 jobs lost by the end of 2012

Nokia's manufacturing capability is very distributed and very large - but it all got a bit smaller with today's announcement to close the facility in Romania by the end of 2011 and with the possibilty of future changes of focus in plants in Finland, Hungary and Mexico. In addition, there are closures of Nokia offices in Bonn and Malvern. See below for quotes from the press release.

# Posted by Steve in Links of Interest, Industry at 8:26 UTC, Sep 29th || Comments

Henry Tirri appointed as Nokia CTO, joins Leadership Team

Nokia has appointed Henry Tirri as Chief Technology Officer, he also becomes an executive vice president and becomes a member of the Nokia leadership team. Since Rich Green stepped down in June Tirri has been acting CTO; previously he was the head of Nokia Research Centre (NRC). Tirri will be based in Sunnyvale (California) and will report directly to CEO Stephen Elop.

# Posted by Rafe in Miscellaneous, Industry at 12:56 UTC, Sep 22nd || Comments

Nokia Car Mode application revs up with MirrorLink

Today, at the IAA (a car industry event), Nokia announced Car Mode, an application designed for the in-car use of Nokia smartphones. It offers simplified access to Nokia Drive (voice-guided car navigation with Nokia Maps), music and voice calling functionality. In addition, the application also supports MirrorLink (previously known as Terminal Mode), which allows for a rich connection between phone and car. The application, which has been developed in Qt, will be available for download from the Ovi Store in Q4 for Symbian Belle devices and the Nokia N9. Update: added screenshots of Nokia Car Mode.

# Posted by Rafe in Software, Industry at 14:55 UTC, Sep 13th || Comments

Microsoft Business Apps for Symbian Belle

Nokia today announced the forthcoming availability, in Q4 2011, of a number of Microsoft-developed business and productivity applications for the Symbian Belle platform. The update will include a number of new applications (OneNote, PowerPoint Broadcaster, Document Connection) and updates to existing applications (Lync 2010 and Exchange Active Sync), which will provide improved integration with Microsoft's business software and service offerings. Read on for more detail.

# Posted by Rafe in Software, Industry, Services at 19:16 UTC, Sep 8th || Comments

Nokia NFC plans emerge, with a new blog to follow

I was interested to see the starting of the "Near Field Connectivity Blog", under the auspices of Nokia's Developer program, along with some titbits about Nokia's plans for NFC and its devices. Read on for more links and quotes.

# Posted by Steve in Hardware, Links of Interest, Industry at 8:41 UTC, Sep 8th || Comments

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