Symbian supremo David Wood's new blog continues to pop up some interesting entries. Here, he talks about this week's Mobile Monday event, focussed on a topic close to my heart, 'Enabling Location in Applications', with relevant links and quotes. I was particularly interested to see the high profile of Skyhook's Wi-Fi location system, something which had hit my radar earlier in the week.
Nokia's Mobile Games Innovation Challenge is a contest to find the best new concepts for mobile gaming on either N-Gage, Symbian or Java. It's open to all professional game development companies, even the smallest ones, and the top three ideas will receive prize money to develop their ideas. Nokia doesn't want any actual code, they just want a text outline of an innovative unpublished game idea and optionally some mockup screenshots and/or video too. The contest closes on the 20th of August.
Over at the semi-official Nokia Conversations, there's an interesting post today, responding generally to iPhone mania and talking a lot of sense. It also refers to a pet subject of mind, i.e. whether a user wants to use one or two hands (or thumbs) for their phones.
Following on from the initial Symbian Foundation announcement Nokia today announced that a further 9 companies are endorsing the plans for the Symbian Founation. The comapnies are mobile operators 3, América Móvil and TIM, semiconductor manufacturer Marvell and services and software providers Aplix, EB, EMCC Software, Sasken and TietoEnator.
Part rant, part apologetic, part FAQ, in this article I reply directly to a long and interesting email fired in by a Mac-owning, iPhone fan at my championing of the Nokia N95 (8GB) in Smartphones Show 62. Not your typical troll, Nikolay makes some good points in his missive but hopefully I make some equally good ones in return!
Ewan's on a train speeding down from bonnie Scotland but he's still found time to set up a Friday rant. Ewan reckons there's a gap in the market for a network operator to set up a 'no surprises' all inclusive 'flat rate for everything' plan. Your comments welcome, this one could run and run.
Telenor and Nokia today announced a cooperation on mobile services using the Ovi service platform. Specific Nokia devices will be customised with services such as Nokia Maps, N-Gage, Telenor Music Store and Mobile TV with more to come in the future. Ovi services will be launched in the second half of 2008 and will be offered to Telenor customers in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Hungary.
The Office of the CTO (OCTO) at Nokia is a key stone in Nokia's innovation and vision efforts (self described as a network of researchers and though leaders). CTO.nokia.com is a recently launched site which is intended to help to spread OCTO's vision of the mobile future and engage the outside world. It is a sister site to research.nokia.com and will feature editorial content from Nokia and selected third parties.
Nokia today announced the European Commission has given unconditional approval for Nokia's planned acquisition of Navteq. Nokia has now received all the necessary regulatory approvals and expects to close the deal in the next 5 days. Nokia is acquiring Navteq for $8.1 billion.
Warner Music Group become the third of the so called 'Big Four' music labels to sign up to Nokia's "Comes With Music" program. Sitting alongside Sony BMG and Universal, this accounts for between 65%-70% of the total music market depending on which figures you use. Only EMI are outside of the program now - and once they come on board expect a big PR push from the Finns.
In another of our regular podcast interviews, Ewan Spence talks to David Wood, EVP Symbian, on some of the finer details on the Symbian Foundation. Launched ten years to the day after the announcement of Symbian, Wood discusses a number of issues around the new strategy of the Symbian partners.
In the wake of today's news of the Symbian Foundation being set up, UI company UIQ have announced plans to layoff of 200 employees (reports BLT.se). Currently the majority of the 375 staff are employed in the Ronneby offices, with the balance of staff in two foreign offices in London and Budapest. These offices will probably close. Further details will be announced by UIQ this afternoon.
This is officially huge, and in many ways. It's a breaking story on Reuters right now, more here through the day I suspect... "Finnish cellphone maker Nokia Corp said on Tuesday it was buying out other shareholders of handset software firm Symbian, and opening the software for royalty-free use. The net cash outlay from Nokia to buy the approximately 52 percent of Symbian shares it does not already own will be about 264 million euros (208.5 million pounds)." There are now official Nokia press releases here and here.
Rafe and Ewan are joined this week by Ricky Cadden as they take on the week's news and hot topics (recorded before Monday's announcements, but don't let that put you off) in Insight 29, a.k.a. AAS podcast 80. They cover the 'Evening with S60' in Boston, the LG KT610 clamshell, iGoogle and the new Google Reader for S60, Cloud Computing and Social Services, plus more N-Gage musings. Oh and they covered some new update from an American manufacturer in Cupertino...
