Microsoft brand will only replace the Nokia brand in product, applications and experiences when Microsoft has launched a new product into the market. The Lumia and Asha brands and products, the Mobile Phone portfolio, including Nokia X, sold under the Nokia brand will be transferred to Microsoft as part of the transaction. You may now say, "I work for Microsoft and I work on the Microsoft devices business." Do not say you work on the "Nokia business".Based on my understanding, all Lumia and Nokia X products currently on the market will continue to carry the Nokia brand for some time. However, no new products from either portfolio will carry the Nokia brand. Interestingly, the bulk of Lumia and Nokia X shipments are concentrated in markets where the Nokia brand holds a lot of value (India, Europe, Latin America, etc.). Needless to say, this could spark a steep decline in Windows Phone's market share over the next 12-18 months.]]>
My new Nokia telephone model is called the E 51. Unfortunately the phone has not been designed in so that just anybody could learn to use it easily.
On the contrary, I think that it has been designed as if its most important mission would be to advertise itself to people who are interested in telephone technology. All kinds of amazing functions are offered on the display, but as I do not understand what they mean, I guess that I will never use them. But keep reading to find out about the Nokia executive who visited the author of the letter, and what he said.]]>
The Melin declaration furthermore says that "to prove to Nokia that he knew the confidential terms of the Apple-Nokia license, Dr. Ahn recited the terms of the license, and even went so far as to tell Nokia that 'all information leaks.' The Apple-Nokia licence was secret, and only provided to Samsung's lawyers for an expert witness to investigate - not for distribution to Samsung. On Thursday we asked Samsung to confirm the details of the meeting. It hasn't responded so far. The judge's statement says the document was marked "Highly Confidential - Attorney Eyes Only" - yet sent to more than 50 Samsung executives without redaction. Samsung's lawyers confirmed that "dozens" of individuals had seen the document, according to the judge's statement. The judge has told Samsung to make Ahn available for interview.]]>
Only older HTC phone models were listed in the case. But the HTC One smartphone and other new devices use the same technology that would be banned if the commission decides in January to uphold its initial ruling, two people familiar with the matter said.
Nokia said it believed that the One also violated the Finnish company's patents and would be included under any ban. Things are going from bad to worse for HTC.]]>
Nokia couldn’t have multi-OS strategy since they didn’t have enough software competence. Meego phones are now "unicorns", as the Polish man using one on the flight to Geneva remarked to me the other day.]]>
In a notice published Monday, Judge Thomas Pender of the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) said HTC had infringed two of the three wireless patents-in-suit claimed by Nokia.
Nokia, which filed the complaint in May 2012, had asked the U.S. trade agency to impose a sales ban on certain HTC Android-based phones and tablets. A final ruling is scheduled for Jan. 23 next year after the judge's findings are reviewed by the six-member panel. Not standards-essential patents, so Nokia could get a trade ban - or HTC could figure out workarounds.]]>
"The Nokia deal is a lot of things," said Ballmer. "One of the things it is, is a way to make sure we can capture the gross margin upside because we're making most of the investment today, that we need to make even owning Nokia." It's clear Microsoft wants to take some of the smartphone profits away from giants like Apple and Samsung, and Nokia is a key part of that plan. It's fascinating how Google has destroyed Microsoft's business rationale in mobile by making Android free, and in effect forced it to buy Nokia. Next question: is Google making money from mobile?]]>
Something like this was always on the cards, keeping the recent events in mind.
And even though these are still rumors, with Nokia yet to make any official statement, these two reports come from the most reliable of sources. The launch event that the Finnish smartphone maker had scheduled for 26 September in New York City may be pushed back.]]>
In many cases, these customers are new to Microsoft, and their first personal computer will be a phone. With Nokia’s Mobile Phones starting at $20, more people will be introduced to Microsoft services earlier in their lives than ever before. In some geographies, Windows Phones are not available. Again, Nokia’s Mobile Phones will introduce more people to Microsoft services in more places than ever before. The four sentences in that second paragraph sit uncomfortably together, and don't seem to have a single strand of thinking behind them. It's more like two people arguing.]]>
This will cover much of the same territory that Google is traversing in its own quest to build a self-driving car, although – from Nokia’s perspective at least – with a more limited scope. While Google tests its vehicles in California, Here and Mercedes-Benz have started off by building a 3D map of the route taken by the first ever automobile, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, between Mannheim and Pforzheim in southern Germany. Perhaps Nokia keeping HERE was a smart move after all. Self-driving cars have the potential to be a huge business, and the one essential element is great maps.]]>
On Tuesday (3 September) Microsoft announced that it will buy Nokia‘s phone business for $7.2bn – marking the sale of the world’s most prolific mobile phone brand.
Unsurprisingly, when looking at the list of top 10 most-sold mobile handsets – the list is dominated by Nokia – hailing back to its glory days of the 90s and 2000s, before the advent of smart phones massive mobile data use. Try to guess the only phone manufacturer apart from Nokia in the top 10.]]>
But ownership by Microsoft will not of itself change the sales of Windows Phones. If anything, it will decrease them, since it prompts other OEMs to give up on it entirely. It will not make more developers make Windows Phone apps or more consumers buy the devices. And it does little or nothing for Windows on tablets. Something else needs to change. Nokia really was at risk of running out of cash. Microsoft is offering a €1.5bn loan through to January 2014.]]>
The list at the time consisted of 13 phone vendors who either merged, were liquidated or acquired after this trigger point was reached. There were no examples of vendors who recovered. Since then two more vendors reached the threshold (Nokia and RIM) and a third will do so this quarter (HTC). One vendor (LG) may be recovering but Nokia has just been acquired and RIM has put itself up for sale. Some Japanese vendors like Panasonic have also called it quits since then. So the score so far is about 18 triggers, 15 exits and three pending. Only LG, owned by a bigger conglomerate, has escaped the black hole. It's not promising for HTC or BlackBerry.]]>
It’s hardly the self-driving car, but it’s Nokia entry into the growing field of internet-linked entertainment and navigation systems.]]>
"We almost fell into the trap that had often befallen Nokia, which was... let them work on it a bit longer because we couldn't quite reach agreement," Elop said. Instead, he demanded a decision that day.
"Why wait til tomorrow or next week? We could make the decision today. And we did." Lumia was the result. Fascinating insight into how much has changed under Elop.]]>
Of course, the underlying problem is that though both platforms are perfectly OK (though with their flaws), they're radically sub-scale. iOS now has about 400m active devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, though obviously with overlapping users) and Android over 800m, plus China. Lumia and BB10 combined have sold a little over 23m units in the last 18 months. As a developer, why would you target these? Developers? Developers? Developers?]]>
However, finding a market is about finding a new axis of differentiation. In the case of low-end smartphones, are there things that matter beyond price and performance?
Consider again where Asha will be sold: India, Africa, Latin America – all have markets where mobile phones are the primary form of computing, as well as areas without consistent electricity. In such markets, nothing matters more than battery life. And Asha has that in spades. In fact, the Asha range has sold more phones in the past three quarters than Windows Phone. (Also, bonus point for the title of the post.)]]>
Erik Bertman, chief of Nokia's Russian business, will oversee Nokia's sales and marketing activities in China beginning June 1, Nokia spokesman Doug Dawson said Tuesday. Mr. Bertman replaces Gustavo Eichelmann, who is leaving Nokia for personal reasons, the spokesman said.
… Nokia sold only 3.4m mobile devices in China during the first quarter of 2013 compared with 9.2m in the first three months of 2012.
Nokia's decline in China was considerable last year. In the second half 2012, sales of devices and services in Greater China fell 78% on the year and the decline for the year was 68% as the company sold 27.5m devices in the region compared with 65.8m in 2011. ]]>
And now the respite is over.
Nokia shipped as many Lumia phones during the first quarter as Wall Street expected but the Asha magic has evaporated and feature phone ASP levels are now tanking hard once again. The average price of Nokia’s feature phones tumbled by a drastic -15% year on year, while feature phone shipment volume dove by -21%. This is a truly dangerous combination; even steep price cuts are not helping the moderate sales decline.]]>
What Nokia is doing here is simply the normal course of business if a patent holder (Nokia) does not share the vision of another company (Google) with respect to a proposed standard and reserves all rights. What motivation could Nokia possibly have to donate something to a Google initiative? None. No motivation, no obligation, no license. Simple as that. ]]>
Why is this important? Africa and Latin America are particularly feature phone-heavy markets. They tell us how Nokia’s feature phone strategy is working.]]>
El País: Do you discard launching an Android phone next year?Certainly Nokia could make a run of it in the Android space. It's very good at making lots of different phones. (Thanks @rquick for the link.)]]>Elop: In the current ecosystem wars we are using Windows Phone as our weapon. But we are always thinking about what's coming next, what will be the role of HTML 5, Android... HTML5 could make the platform itself—being Android, Windows Phone or any other—irrelevant in the future, but it's still too soon [to tell]. Today we are committed and satisfied with Microsoft, but anything is possible.
Adopting Windows Phone also means Nokia is now reliant on Microsoft’s execution — and Redmond continues to lag behind the pace of development on the dominant smartphone platforms. “Microsoft has been slow to innovate with Windows Phone, which has held Nokia back,” says Fogg. “The current version, Windows Phone 8, is little different in consumer features to Windows Phone 7 of two years ago. In the meantime, Apple and Google have piled on numerous more features to iOS and Android.”
“Elop chose Windows Phone also because he could reduce costs by lowering the number of Nokia staff working on content and services. Ironically, Nokia is having to stimulate the Windows Phone ecosystem by content deals to attempt to get the platform moving,” Fogg adds. This is the question on which the whole of Nokia's present and future revolves. Should it have gone with Android? Would it have been able to compete with Samsung and be as big, or would it be struggling as HTC now is, stuck in the mid-market? Though the claim that Android and iOS have added more features than Windows Phone (especially Nokia's version) doesn't quite stack up. Nokia's Windows Phone has plenty of standout features (Kids Corner, Nokia Music, City Lens).]]>
1 Yuan - 388 Yuan /month
800 Yuan ($130) - 288 Yuan /month
1200 Yuan ($190) - 228 Yuan /month
2000 Yuan ($320) - 188 Yuan /month
388 Yuan is about £38. (Thanks @dmyke for the link.)]]>
So we have a perverse situation of a very costly, unprofitable asset requiring duplication of maintenance effort by politically motivated actors imprisoned by their own strategic interests.]]>
A chart on AppData, an analytics service that tracks the rankings of apps, shows that downloads of Nokia’s Here app took a nosedive in late November. Now Nokia’s maps don’t appear to be gaining any traction in the App Store. Every silver lining has a cloud.]]>
MobileMedia is a company that is actually owned by Nokia, Sony and MPEG-LA. It was formed in January of 2010 as an entity for enforcing those companies’ patents. Essentially, MobileMedia is there so that Sony and Nokia don't have to get their hands dirty enforcing their own patents.]]>
Excluding any local taxes or operator subsidies, the Nokia Lumia 620 will cost around $249 USD and will be available from Q1 2013. To quote a former Nokia head of PR, "survival is in our DNA." (Thanks @rquick for the link.)]]>
This is about addressing different types of connected devices — not just mobile phones but also tablets, connected cars, and wearables. As such, “HERE” could play a pivotal role in helping Nokia leverage tomorrow’s new mobile form factors.
This is also about addressing different platforms — not just Nokia Windows Phone devices but also, initially, other Windows Phone licensees, such as Samsung and HTC. That’s why Nokia has also announced today in San Francisco that it will launch an application for iOS 6, a partnership with Mozilla to launch a mobile Web version of HERE Maps for the new Firefox OS next year, and a native Android app and plans for the availability of a HERE SDK for Android in early 2013. This horizontal approach is a way for Nokia to license its content and platform to other OEMs that use the Android ecosystem, such as Amazon.com.]]>
In other words, the net cost of the Microsoft exclusive relationship is at least $2bn in operating profit.
This turns out to be the difference between being profitable and being distressed. Utterly stunning. Nokia has in fact only sold 96m Symbian phones since announcing their end.]]>
"What I love and what I think has happened is that the discussion has moved to quality and moved away from 'I have a map app you have a map app,'" Halbherr said over coffee at his division's office in Berlin last week. "People start looking at how precise it is." Given the €8bn cost of Navteq (what is now Nokia's location and commerce unit) and that it has kept losing money, you can be sure Nokia is happy now.]]>
I've certainly found in my own experience as a designer that women tend to place less emphasis on having so-many thousand apps or impressive speeds and feeds. Technology matters, but women don't really see their phone as a gadget.]]>
"We get over 12 billion probe data points per month coming into the organization," Fox said from his office in Chicago. "We get probe data not only from commercial vehicles like FedEx and UPS trucks, but we also get it from consumers through navigation applications."
Depending on the device type, the data that streams into Nokia can have slight variations.
"The system that they have for tracking the UPS trucks is different from the way the maps application works on the Nokia device. You'll have differences on the amount of times per minute they ping their location, though typically it's every 5 to 15 seconds," Fox said. "It'll give you a location, a direction, and a speed as well."
They can then use that data to identify new or changed roads. In 2012, they've used the GPS data they get to identify 65,000 road segments. (A road segment is defined as the strip of surface between intersecting roads.) The GPS data also comes in handy when they're building traffic maps because they know the velocity of the vehicles. Read on for the clever privacy protection tweak too.]]>
“I’m not talking about some city being in the middle of the ocean or Paddington Station showing up as a park,” Elop said.
Location-based services, broadly speaking, are critical to the future of phones, Elop said. While mapping is today still a comparatively small source of revenue for Nokia, Elop said it is a growth business, as evidenced by recent deals with Amazon and Oracle. The row between Apple and Google - and especially the maps fallout - has turned into some of the best news Nokia could have hoped for. It owns Navteq and needs it to pay back.]]>
Nokia is reportedly looking to initiate a patent war as the Finnish handset vendor has voiced a complaint, suspecting that HTC has copied the outer design of Nokia's Lumia 820 for its Windows Phone 8X, the sources noted.
HTC declined to comment on the speculated patent issue. But Fred Liu, president of engineering and operations at HTC, stated that he personally does not see the similarity between the Windows Phone 8X and Lumia 820 as suggested by some industry watchers.]]>
In an effort to demonstrate the benefits of optical image stabilization (which eliminates blurry images and improves pictures shot in low light conditions), we produced a video that simulates what we will be able to deliver with OIS.
Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but we should have posted a disclaimer stating this was a representation of OIS only. This was not shot with a Lumia 920. At least, not yet. We apologize for the confusion we created. One suspects cock-up rather than conspiracy. ]]>
Contrary to those suggesting that a PureView Lumia would need considerably more than 8-megapixels in order to qualify, Dinning described the tech as more of a hybridization of multiple factors. (Thanks @Scoob1011 for the link.)]]>
Running the new Mobility unit will be Alberto Torres, who departed Nokia after running its MeeGo operations — operations that were doomed once it became clear that CEO Stephen Elop would be taking the company down the Windows Phone path.]]>