Probably a touch of formality after completing their accquisition, but Sony Ericsson have confirmed that UIQ is still being licenced to other manufacturers if they so wish. In addition to this they're also inviting other phone vendors to become share holders in UIQ (which is currently 100% owned by Sony Ericsson). An interesting move, but will anyone take them up on it?
Bewitched by the new Nokia N77? A fabulous use of ultra converged high-tech? Or a restrictive, distracting and debilitating waste of time? In this editorial, I put forward my own opinion, m'lud, the case against mobile TV.
Ewan Spence has been watching the E65's launch today and remarks on similarities to last year's N80. With a certain core feature set now well established, is the E65 all about marketing?
What a busy time (but perhaps an appropriate one) to divulge a mass of stats from the smartphone world. Canalys' latest report shows that 64 million smartphones shipped worldwide in 2006. Symbian's world market share was up to 67%, of which Nokia accounted for 50% and Sony Ericsson 5%.
And with energy levels rising round the blogosphere we come to 3GSM 2007 at last. So many things we've not been allowed to talk about but which will be announced at 10am GMT on Monday... Watch this space for analysis, photos from the launch events and more... Rafe's in the thick of things in Barcelona - wish him good health and plenty of bandwidth!
NTT DoCoMo, Renesas, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Sony Ericsson today announced that they plan to jointly develop a next-generation mobile phone platform based on the SH-Mobile G3, a single-chip system solution for mobile devices. The platform will include software for basic operations and an advanced OS (such as Symbian). In addition to the Japanese market Renesas also plans to make the platform available to the worldwide WCDMA market.
Telefonica Moviles Espana and Symbian today announced a collaboration that sees the two companies working to reinforce the role of Symbian OS devices (both S60 and UIQ) in Telefónica's mobile device portfolio. The deal is aimed at reducing development costs and time to market for new devices.
Nokia and T-Mobile have announced that they are working together to help bring T-Mobile's core services to the market on S60 devices and to improve the ability for S60 licensees to create devices for T-Mobile. T-Mobile is the third such operator collaboration for S60 following on from Vodafone and Orange last year.
So much better than traipsing across the world, enduring hours of travel and sitting in a stuffy theatre - Nokia are doing another worldwide webcast 9am tomorrow (Thursday). The subject's not officially announced but clever money is on an expansion of their mapping and navigation software systems (e.g. that in the N95) into the wider S60 world.
Just as we're about to get our hands on the first 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 devices, Nokia go and announce S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2... In addition to ease-of-development benefits, this comes with "Usability enhancements supporting ease of use in (for example) messaging, multitasking and downloading. Feature Pack 2 also enables instant media playback during downloading and animated notification of inbound calls." More details and actual screenshots are available here on S60.com. The full Nokia press release follows....
In another superb and comprehensive piece, our very own Krisse analyses the successes and (mainly) the failures of the original Nokia N-Gage, then looks at the way the new next-gen gaming platform will directly address each problem. It's all looking rosy - apart from the name! Krisse explains...
With the Nokia N92 and DVB-H mobile TV still not really established in most of the world, I was interested to see Marek Pawlowski's blogged review of his data-based 'Mobile TV' experience on a S60 smartphone. The jury's still out on the best way to provide TV on a smartphone, but suffice it to say that Marek was seriously underwhelmed by his trial.
Sony Ericsson has announced, following regulatory approval, that is has completed its acquisition of UIQ Technology from Symbian. UIQ Technology will operate as a separate business subsidiary of Sony Ericsson and the UIQ software platform will remain openly available. We can expect to hear more about Sony Ericsson plans at the upcoming 3GSM conference,
Just as we're about to get our hands on the first 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 devices, Nokia go and announce S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2... In addition to ease-of-development benefits, this comes with "Usability enhancements supporting ease of use in (for example) messaging, multitasking and downloading. Feature Pack 2 also enables instant media playback during downloading and animated notification of inbound calls." More details and actual screenshots are available here on S60.com. The full Nokia press release follows....
