Not exactly current news, but perhaps this might cheer someone up who's having a bad day: digging through AAS's archives reveals a series of predictions made in June 2002 by a venture capitalist giving a speech at a mobile developers conference. You can read some of these gems below, and I think you'll agree it's pretty amazing how "on the money" his forecasts have been...
More stats out recently, this time from ABI Research, showing worldwide phone market share for 2008, just about the grandest metric of all, even if it does include devices right down to bargain basement level. Nokia tops the list again, with a world share of 38.6%, while Samsung reached 16.2%. Sony Ericsson, Motorola and LG are hovering at around 8%, with newbies RIM and Apple getting to 1.9% and 1.1% respectively. I wonder where we'll be at the end of 2009? Predictions on a postcard....
Nokia today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire bit-side GmbH. Bit-side is a small (39 employees) software and service development company that is privately owned. Nokia say the acquisition will help speed up its mobile development for Nokia Maps. Bit-side is known for its imaging (Panoman) and entertainment applications (Marble Revolution). It is also the development house behind a number of well received mobile applications including Plazes for the iPhone and Pixelpipe for Android.
Just a quick link of interest - 'Renegade Fanboy' has produced a well thought out analysis of Ten Mistakes that Nokia Made in 2008, calling it an 'automated wake-up call', and drawing on links and articles from around the world. More hits or more misses for Nokia in 2008? This one could run and run....
During a conference call discussing of Q4 results Nokia's CEO, Olli Pekka Kallasvuo mentioned that in the last 30 days of the quarter Nokia had shipped slightly more than half a million Nokia 5800 handsets. During this period the 5800 was only available in limited markets. Today it is the turn of the UK, the device also known as 'Tube' will be available from the Regent Street Nokia flagship store from 8am. See my Twitter stream for live blogging and my Flickr stream for live photos of the queues and experience. Read on for more including our PDF download.
Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (CEO) and Rick Simonson (CFO), discussed Nokia's smartphone strategy during today's Q4 earnings call. Nokia intend to further expand S60 on Symbian OS to new categories and market segments as well as continuing to push it on to lower cost devices. As a result they are expanding the S60 investment when compared to Series 40. Furthermore they believe the combination of Nokia's five services (Ovi) with a larger portfolio of such devices will see a change in the definition of smartphone. Read on for more details.
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.
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.
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)
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.
In All About Symbian Insight 55 (AAS Podcast 108) we look at the UK launch of the Nokia 5800 MusicXpress, talk about the 'Curse of Silence' vulnerability (stops SMS messages from being received on some S60 handsets), before discussing our first impressions of the Palm Pre. You can listen to AAS Insight 55 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
If you're a mobile game company interested in publishing your games on the N-Gage platform, you may want to check out their slightly updated Developer Application Process page. This page used to only mention becoming a first party developer. However, the application form now also says it can be used to apply to be a third party publisher, so presumably you can now publish your games on N-Gage without giving up ownership of them.
It seems that the Symbian Foundation has an interim web site up, with the main thing of interest being that you might like to apply for a job with it, in San Francisco or Finland. Fancy a change and a chance to influence the next five or ten years of mobile phone OS development? (via David Wood)
Following a board meeting on 29th December the board of UIQ Technology resolved to file for bankruptcy. This follows on from the news, in early November, that staff had been put on notice and a temporary transition period was being funded by Sony Ericsson. With that period over, with no alternative investor available and given the current economic climate the board had no choice but to shutter the company.
So how will did Nokia's Comes With Music project do over the festive period? While exact numbers haven't been released by Nokia (or The Carphone Warehouse, who were distributing the phones with the service), an interview in The Financial Times quotes someone familiar with the sales being "OK, but not earth-shattering."
