It's Insight time, covering News, the MOSH ad-sponsored games, Adobe Open Screen Project and we (shock, horror) actually try to answer a user-submitted question, talking about whether Nokia could be more aggressive in the US market. Plus, Rafe reports back from the Nokia Design Studio Day in London. You can listen (and subscribe) to Insight number 23 here.
Nokia has announced that Real Time Traffic Information is coming to Nokia Maps, courtesy of ARC Transistance, the European network of automobile clubs. RTTI in Maps 2.0 (already in beta) should enable proper, dynamic routing that takes into account real world conditions. The full press release is below.
Rita over at Symbian Guru has been collating a fascinating exchange of comments centred around the Nokia N95 and its impact both inside and outside the company. Rita goes off into an extended basketball/rugby metaphor that I'm afraid I don't quite follow, but she does make great points about the different strategies employed by Apple and Nokia. The first plays things safe and tests to the limit, the second produces bleeding edge releases ahead of the competition and then fixes problems as they go. Fascinating contrast.
The Nokia Music Store is now available in France, with a pricing of 1 euro per song, 10 euros per album, or 10 euros a month to listen to all the store's tracks through a PC. As with the other Nokia Music Stores, tracks can be bought onto a PC and sideloaded onto a phone, or bought and downloaded directly onto certain phone models.
Nokia have announced a partnership with Sony BMG, allowing their catalogue of titles to be available with the Comes with Music program, due to be available in the second half of 2008. Along with Universal, Nokia now have two of the 'big four' music labels in the program. EMI and Warner are still absent, although Nokia makes a point of stressing that they are still 'in discussion' with many other international labels.
AAS Insight 21 (aka AAS podcast 70) sees Rafe and Ewan chatting at length about Nokia's Q1 results, Orange Partner Camp (Rafe was there) and the rise and rise of N-Gage, looking at FIFA 08 and Space Impact: Kappa Base. Ewan apparently reckons Rafe 'waffles' a bit in this podcast. I call it 'informed expert analysis', but then I know which side my bread's buttered on... Oh, and here's the RSS feed for you to subscribe for the future.
One for the paranoid this Friday, as the O'Reilly Radar reports that the A5 Hardware Project will be releasing a web service to crack the GSM A5/1 Encryption Protocol. Pick up a radio receiver (around $700) and the potential is there to crack and listen to a call while it is in progress.
Nokia has released official figures for Q1, 2008, revealing growth in 'Devices and Services' of 50%, year on year, net sales up 35%, overall phone market share of 39%, smartphones sales up 24% to 14.6 million in the quarter, with 10 million Nseries handsets and 2 million Eseries. Geographically, unsurprisingly, market share was down in North America, static(ish) in Europe and growing in emerging markets (e.g. China). Here's the full Nokia statement, tables and their own analysis.
Krisse delves into the economics and logistics of Nokia's upcoming Comes With Music system, explaining how it's possible in today's climate and then goes on to ask why other types of digitally protected content couldn't also be bundled in? Games? Applications? Videos? Thankfully, a line is drawn before we get to 'Comes With An Indian Takeaway'...
You were right to save your money and not go to CTIA in Las Vegas - everything you need to know about what was shown is represented in Rafe's comprehensive CTIA 2008 image gallery for free, with pertinent analysis and commentary where needed. It's all here, from tweaks to new Symbian OS-powered hardware, to software innovations, from WiMax and LTE to demos in the sky.
You may recall some months ago that the instant social messaging service Jaiku was bought and absorbed into the bosom of Google... and promptly went into hibernation. Well with spring on the way, boss Jyri Engestrom has blogged that Jaiku will rise again under the new Google App Engine. It's still being developed, but watch this space.
Following on Symbian's announcement last week, Nokia have also published plans to establish a research lab in Lausanne and Zurich, in association with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. This center will start by looking at pervasive communications, using all the human senses, user context and interaction with internet services... which sounds like a mix of Ovi's approach to bringing on board platforms such as Facebook and MySpae, but also extending the S60 sensor platform we're expecting to see later in the year.
It ran all weekend in London and proved to be another good seeding ground for mobile ideas. Ewan's been at the Over The Air event and reports back here. And didn't you just know it would end with a Doctor Who spoof and light sabre duels? Big kids? Hah.
You'll have heard of Mippin, the RSS-based web portal for your feeds and interests, we've featured it before. The same developers have just announced Mippin Maker, a "free service that creates a perfectly rendered mobile edition of the publisher’s web site and allows them to generate revenue". So you use Mippin's mobile rendering system for your RSS-compatible mobile site and you share the ad revenue. The link and full press release are below, if you're interested in following this up.
