Gartner has released a summary of its worldwide analysis for the mobile industry for Q2 2011 and it, as expected, shows that the in-demand Android smartphones have leapfrogged Symbian in the rankings. I've quoted the main tables below, but in summary, Symbian OS's marketshare worldwide is now 22%, with 23.8 million smartphones being sold.
Here's another in my series of interviews with some of the top developers and marketeers in the Symbian (and wider mobile) world. In this case, Jake Levant, from Fring, chatting about fring’s creation, its development, the philosophy behind its programming teams – and fring’s future.
Nokia has released its Q2 2011 results, reporting an operating loss of -€487 million, with net sales of €9.275 billion (down 7% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's losses were -€247 million. Margins in devices and services were -4.5% (down 14% YoY and down 14.2% QoQ). However, non-IFRS operating profit was €391 million (down 41% YoY and down 44% QoQ), with Devices and Services non-IFRS profit at €369 million, and margins at 6.7%. Total smartphone device sales were 16.7 million, compared with 24 million units in Q2 2010 (down 34% YoY) and 25.2 million units in Q1 2011 (down 31%, QoQ).
Yesterday Nokia released Qt Quick components 1.0 for Symbian, a UI component (widget) set for Qt Quick application developers and designers. The set provides a ready made set of QML based UI building blocks, that are designed to have the same look and feel as the standard (native) UI. The 40+ components cover the major UI elements including toolbars, buttons, sliders, lists, dialogs and many more.
Synchronica, a UK based company that provides mobile messaging solution, is to acquire Nokia's operator branded messaging business. This business provides a number of American operators with branded email and IM applications and services. In addition, under a professional services contract (outsourcing), Synchronica will take over the development of the related Series 40 client software and the messaging gateway, which is used by both Series 40 and Symbian devices.
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on roaming, here is the ninth episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week episodes focuses on Nokia; we look at its current situation and consider what next for Nokia? 361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian.
There's a fascinating piece over on Nokia Conversations at the moment about a pilot study on how solar power can be 'harvested' to power the next generation of phones and smartphones across the world. We've already got a number of solar powered mobile chargers, the next step is surely to start adding the photo-voltaic cells to the backs of phones themselves?
Nokia has announced that it plans to integrate its NAVTEQ business with its social location (Maps) services and operations. The new Location & Commerce business unit, which will be headed by Michael Halbherr, is tasked with developing the next generation of social location products and services for consumers. It will also continue with NAVTEQ's traditional activities of building platform services for device manufacturers, developers and service providers, but will look to more fully integrate Nokia's deep data assets around consumer behaviour and related community data.
Following on from the intial announcement, Nokia and Accenture have announced they have finalised an agreement for Nokia to outsource Symbian software development and support to Accenture. As part of the agreement 2,800 Nokia employees, 200 less than originally cited, will transfer to Accenture when the deal is closed in October.
Nokia is currently in the process of closing its Nokia branded online stores in a number of countries. The online stores for France, Spain and the Netherlands have already closed and the majority of the others, including the UK, will follow in due course. Nokia has indicated that the closures are part of a company wide overhaul. While the closure of the online stores may be seen in some quarters as symbolic of Nokia current malaise, the reality is that their contribution to Nokia sales was negligible.
Nokia has announced that it has signed a patent license agreement with Apple, ending all patent litigation between the companies. The financial structure of the agreement consists of a one-time payment payable by Apple to Nokia and ongoing regular royalties to be paid by Apple to Nokia. The exact amounts involved are confidential, but the "agreement is expected to have a positive financial impact on Nokia's recently revised outlook for the second quarter 2011", so the sums must be very substantial.
Nokia's Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Rich Green, is to take an indefinite leave of absence for personal reasons. Green joined Nokia in 2010, and was brought into its leadership team in February 2011, reporting directly to new CEO, Stephen Elop. As CTO, Green was charged with overseeing the direction of technological advancement in both Nokia's software and hardware groups. Henry Tirri, head of Nokia Research Center, has been appointed acting CTO.
Bloomberg Businessweek has published an in-depth article, titled 'Stephen Elop's Nokia Adventure', which describes how Nokia's new CEO is trying to turn the company around. It covers his first 8 months at the company and looks at the story behind Nokia's new strategy. There's a lot of interesting detail about the decision making behind Nokia's smartphone strategy, which took place in the first few weeks of 2011.
Yesterday at the D9 conference Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, quashed recent rumours that Nokia was set to be acquired by Microsoft. In response to a question about whether Microsoft was interested in buying Nokia's hardware division Elop said that, "the rumours are baseless", reinforcing an interview had had given to CNBC earlier in the day and statements that Nokia had released to the media.
Nokia today updated its outlook for Q2 2011, substantially downgrading previous forecasts. The company says it now expects net sales to be "substantially below its previously expected range of €6.1 billion to €6.6 billion" and that, "Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin could be around break even", against a previously expected range of 6% to 9%. Multiple factors are impacting Nokia's Devices and Services business, including competitive dynamics and a product mix shifting towards to lower end and pricing tactics by Nokia and certain competitors.
