Posts tagged Nokia
Nokia now offering 24 month warranty on phones
Mar 31st
Nokia Australia will provide a 24 month warranty on all products purchased on or after 31 March, the company announced today.
Previously offering a standard 12 month warranty, the new 24 month manufacturer’s warranty applies to all Nokia products sold in Australia including mobile phones, smartphones and accessories.
“We’re raising the standards in our handset service by offering a level of protection beyond the 12-month norm, said Nokia’s managing director, Chris Carr.” It’s of benefit to our consumers and reinforces the confidence we have in the quality of our products.”
Although Nokia remains a clear market leader in the low end of the mobile phone market, the once-dominant Finnish company has recently struggled to produce a high-end smartphone to rival Apple’s iPhone and Google Android phones. The company announced last month that it would be dumping its Symbian platform and adopting Windows Phone 7 for future smartphone releases.
From www.goodgearguide.com.au
S&P Lowers Nokia’s Credit Rating For First Time
Mar 30th
Nokia Corp, the largest mobile phone maker in the world, has had its credit rating downgraded for the first time.
Standard & Poor’s, the division of McGraw-Hill that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks and bonds, has lowered Nokia’s credit rating. The financial analysis firm also warned of further market share losses by the company in the days to come.
In its report published on 30th March, S&P stated, “The downgrade reflects the revision of our business risk profile assessment on Nokia to ‘satisfactory’ from ‘strong,’ primarily because we expect that Nokia’s smartphone portfolio will make further significant market share losses during 2011 and 2012,”
The researcher further said that there is a pretty high chance of Symbian’s shares falling from 15% to 0.2% in the next four years. Recently, CEO Stephen Elop confirmed Nokia’s decision to go for Microsoft’s Windows phone 7 as the main operating software for its smartphones, though it will be maintaining support for symbian based phones, for the time being.
In the last quarter Google’s Android has overtaken the long dominating Symbian OS in terms of market share, and Nokia’s stake in the smartphone market has lowered by some 20% since Apple introduced its iPhone in 2007.
From www.itproportal.com
Nokia: Keep codin’ for Symbian and Qt!
Mar 30th
Is Nokia wobbling over its commitment to Windows? Or just stringing along the Symbian and Qt faithful?
The cell-phone giant has published a lengthy open letter pleading with coders to keep building apps for phones running Symbian and Qt – at least in the short term.
Purnima Kochikar, vice president of Nokia’s community operation, Forum Nokia, is pleased to report that Nokia has evaluated its roadmap and that it now feels confident it will offer a strong portfolio of Symbian products during the transition period to Windows Phone during 2011 and 2012. Phew.
According to Kochikar, there’s plenty to be optimistic about. This includes faster graphics and strong processors on upcoming phones as well as updates to the Symbian user experience, starting this summer with a new home screen, a faster browser, a new Navbar, and a “fresh look and feel” for Ovi Store and Ovi Maps.
And if the romance of this bounty doesn’t keep you from jumping clear of the burning platform, then consider simple practicalities: Nokia has legal obligations “to support users for a period of time after the last product has been sold.” Yes, nothing says a company is committed to its roadmap than the threat of legal action.
Why is Nokia trying to hold onto Symbian and Qt devs? Is the company regretting its decision to go all-in on Windows Phone? If it is, we’d understand.
The wave of love that greeted Windows Phone 7 last year has turned into rage from early adopters and growing concern about Microsoft’s ability to handle even the simplest of tasks – i.e. updating phone software. A week after Microsoft said it had released the minor NoDo Windows Phone update, users on various networks, with different handsets in multiple countries, still had not been updated.
The carriers blamed Microsoft, while Microsoft blamed phone makers for unexpected differences in their hardware. This made a mockery of Microsoft’s reason for originally restricting Windows Phone 7 to just five OEMs. Last year, Redmond said that by limiting OEMs, it could get the hardware and software engineering right and prevent the kind damaging failures that create a bad perception of a brand new product and hurt it for years after.
The farce continued this week. Microsoft’s man in charge of product definition and design, Joe Belifore, had to apologize to enraged early adopters still missing their updates after he claimed the process “was going well.”
One commenter responded to Belifore: “I am am early adoptor [sic]…I want the fucking update NOW. Stop talking bull *… no customer is happy… deliver the freaking update”.
The fact Microsoft that can’t manage what’s supposed to be a minor update is shocking. This is a company that cracked the Windows PC update process ages ago.
If Elop bought into Windows without considering the readiness of either the code or Microsoft, then so too have industry analysts. IDC became the second analyst this week to claim that Microsoft will slide into third place in the smartphone OS market.
By 2015, something called “Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile” will have 20.9 per cent of the market, up from 5.5 percent, while Symbian will drop from 20.9 per cent to 0.2 per cent, according to IDC.
IDC’s report makes your head spin. Apparently, Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile will be the fastest growing operating system between now and 2015. That’s faster than Android, which IDC says is currently growing the fastest.
IDC check its analysts for brain damage. Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile isn’t one operating system. It’s two. There’s Windows Mobile, which is a dead end, and Windows Phone, which is still unproven and has near zero market share.
Plus, by 2015, Microsoft should deliver at least one full update. Both Windows Phone 7 and Windows Mobile should be things of the past.
The ability for Windows Phone to grow from zero will be determined not just by how many phones it ships on but by how many developers Microkia can convince to work with the new platform, feeding phones with downloadable apps.
Which brings us back to Symbian and Qt. Should Kochikar’s call be read as a sign that Nokia is having second thoughts on Windows or – at the very minimum – laying the ground work on a Plan B? Probably not. This is a strategy to help Nokia keep selling handsets while it – and Microsoft – try to figure out how to make Windows Phone work on even more handsets supplied by even more carriers.
At the most, this could be an example of Nokia’s tribalism in action, with different groups inside the company acting like independent entities and ignoring the company’s overall objectives or strategy. In this case, it’s Forum Nokia still advocating for Symbian and Qt – living in denial.
“What I can promise you is that we will not just abandon Symbian users or developers,” Kochikar says. Not yet, at least. Nokia needs Symbian and Qt devs to fill the gap in regional markets where Windows Phone has not yet been released. Also, Nokia needs to keep something to ship on those faster handsets between now and when the Windows Phones are finally delivered, after 2012. Nokia can’t put the business on a hiatus.
Meanwhile, he talks about how MeeGo remains “critically important” and how Nokia remains committed to investing in Qt. He directs us to a video by Nokia chief technology officer Rich Green who used terms like “strong candidate for consideration” to describe how Nokia’s thinking about Qt. See if you can spot Green’s mention of how Nokia’s going to sell Qt to Digia. Clue: he doesn’t.
But Nokia’s goal remains clear: to switch users off of Symbian and on to Windows Phone. “It would not be in our interests to undermine their Nokia smart phone experience,” Kochikar says.
And Kochikar trying to convince Symbian and Qt developers to hang on for as long as possible. “I’ve been asked many times how long we will support Symbian and I’m sure for many of you it feels we have been avoiding the question. The truth is, it is very difficult to provide a single answer. We hope to bring devices based on Windows Phone to market as quickly as possible, but Windows Phone will not have all language and all localization capabilities from day one.”
We would argue that the safest place for Symbian and Qt devs is on Android. ®
From www.theregister.co.uk
Nokia files further complaint against Apple alleging major patent infringement
Mar 30th
[March 30, 2011]
Nokia files further complaint against Apple alleging major patent infringement
(Canadian Press DataFile Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) HELSINKI, Finland _ Nokia is suing Apple in the United States for allegedly infringing patents in “virtually all” of its mobile phones, portable music players, tablets and computers, the Finnish company said Tuesday.
The complaint, filed with United States International Trade Commission, ITC, is the latest in a string of lawsuits by Nokia and comes as the world’s largest handset maker struggles to keep up with smartphone rivals like Apple.
Nokia said the seven patents in the new complaint relate to its “pioneering innovations” that Apple allegedly is using “to create key features in its products, including in multitasking operating systems, data synchronization, positioning, call quality and the use of Bluetooth accessories.” Last week, the ITC found no violation in an earlier complaint. Nokia said it “is waiting to see the full details of the ruling before deciding on the next steps in that case.” Last year, Nokia Corp. also sued Apple Inc. in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands for allegedly infringing its patents with technology used in the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
Those followed earlier lawsuits by Nokia claiming that a broad swath of Apple products violate its patents. Apple had earlier responded with its own infringement claims against Nokia.
“Our latest ITC filing means we now have 46 Nokia patents in suit against Apple, many filed more than 10 years before Apple made its first iPhone,” said Paul Melin, vice-president of intellectual property at Nokia.
“Nokia is a leading innovator in technologies needed to build great mobile products and Apple must stop building its products using Nokia’s proprietary innovation.” Nokia said that in the past two decades it has invested some C43 billion in research and development to build “one of the wireless industry’s strongest and broadest IPR portfolios,” which includes more than 10,000 patent families.
The legal disputes, which generally don’t stop products reaching markets, come amid increasing competition in the fast-growing smartphone market. Tech companies are scrambling to win over the growing number of consumers buying handsets that come with email, Web surfing, cameras, videos and scores of apps for checking the weather, updating Facebook and other tasks.
Nokia has been struggling against stiff competition, especially from the iPhone and RIM’s Blackberry.
In addition to the two ITC complaints, Nokia said it has filed cases on the same patents and others in Delaware, and has further cases proceeding in Mannheim, Dusseldorf and the Federal Patent Court in Germany, the UK High Court in London and the District Court of the Hague in the Netherlands. Some of them will come to trial in the next few months.
Nokia stock closed almost unchanged at C6.17 ($8.68) on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
Online: http://www.nokia.com (c) 2011 The Canadian Press
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From www.tmcnet.com
How Nokia fell from dominance and got pinned down by competitors
Mar 27th
No company sold handsets better than it did. Not in India. It customised products as McDonald’s did with aloo tikki and sold them like Lux soaps in neighbourhood stores. This disruptive innovation landed Nokia India almost 60% of the handset market by 2005. The brand became a synonym for the product. Indians didn’t go to buy a mobile phone. They went to buy a Nokia.
Now many of them don’t. Increasingly, Indians go to buy a Nokia and come out with a BlackBerry, Samsung or Micromax. According to the latest 2010 (January-September) report by IDC, a provider of market intelligence, Nokia’s market share was 56.2% in 2008 and 32.9% in 2010. The brand has lost its X factor.
Nokia India, however, disagrees, claiming its market share in CDMA and GSM handsets today is 52.2%. Technology research firm Gartner puts the 2010 figure at 30.3%. GfK-Nielsen estimates it at 44.8%. Nokia says the IDC report does not include shipments from Nokia’s manufacturing facility in Chennai. Also, it says that IDC’s statement that most of its shipments from the Chennai plant were exports was “inaccurate and untrue”.
“IDC and Gartner are reputed global firms which have a history of tracking numbers and trends. We do extensive work on the handset industry and we often use their reports,” says Jaideep Ghosh, executive director, KPMG India.
But Gautami Srinivasan, 19, hadn’t given up Nokia on the basis of IDC or Gartner reports. A Delhi-based beautician, Srinivasan wanted a basic phone. Features didn’t matter, price did. What better than a low-end Nokia?
“The salesman told me that Micromax Q1 had a dual SIM, loud speakers, expandable memory and an ABCD [Qwerty] keypad. It was cheap but looked expensive,” she says.
Smartphone users have found different reasons to convert. Sweta Kumar, a 28-year-old consultant, was bored with her toy and wanted to buy a Nokia C7. But she ended up buying a Samsung Ace. The salesman at the multi-brand store pushed Samsung as “the top brand in smartphones” and the “leader in touch technology”. What nailed the deal was the phone’s Android operating system.
From economictimes.indiatimes.com
Nokia Loses Round One to Apple in Patent Wars
Mar 26th
Finnish mobile phone market leader Nokia has come out on the losing end in some if its patent infringement battles with the American PC giant, Apple.
Acting as arbitrator in the clash of the titans, a judge from the US International Trade Commission ruled in favour of Apple in five of the patent wars, and determined that Apple did not commit any intellectual property infringements against Nokia.
Judge James Gildea of the ITC did not outline the basis for his decision. The six-member commission may still overturn this ruling, which will be probed later this year.
Nokia still has not received any details about the decision, and Communications Manager Päivi Tallqvist says the company will decide on a future course of action after it has this information.
In 2009 Nokia filed several patent infringement cases against Apple based on the development of its wireless handsets. In its turn, Apple counter sued, claiming that Nokia had infringed on patents related to the iPhone.
The International Trade Commission hears many patent cases and can bar the import of devices found to be infringing another company’s patents.
From www.yle.fi
Nokia R&D： 4 Windows Phone 7 Mobile Phones And 1 Win8 Tablet
Mar 25th
Nokia R&D： 4 Windows Phone 7 Mobile Phones And 1 Win8 Tablet
Nokia President and CEO Stephen Elop said, Nokia started to develop the first Windows Phone 7 mobile phone in a interview on last weekend.
Eldar Murtazin from Russia, revealed more news about Nokia Windows Phone 7 Plan, the “Chief Master of Exposure” of Nokia claimed that Nokia did not only start to develop one version of WP7 mobile phone, there were 4 versions of WP7 mobile phones and one version of Win8 tablet at least on their planning.
There are two new versions would meet the standards of Windows Phone 7 Chassis 1, which aimed at high-end market. The other two would meet the Nokia’s own standards of smart phone hardware, which aimed at midrange market.
According to the prior provisions of Microsoft, the minimum standards of hardware, including processors, memory, screen etc. ,for Windows Phone 7 system settings were strict,. But the limits would be broken after Nokia in cooperation with Microsoft, and cheaper WP7 mobile phones would be launched.
Windows 8 system of Microsoft would support ARM processor what give Nokia a new opportunity to launch a windows 8 tablet, making MeeGo system almost a tragedy.
From www.phbeta.com
First Look: Nokia Astound Smartphone on T-Mobile
Mar 22nd
Given yesterday’s news of AT&T purchase of T-Mobile, it is slightly ironic that the very first phone we’ve seen up close at CTIA this year is a T-Mobile phone. And even more ironic, the T-Mobile Astound uses the Symbian platform, which Nokia made pretty clear it had washed its hands of last month. But don’t dismiss the Astound immediately; for its price, it has some pretty solid specs.
The Astound will cost $80 with a two-year contract from T-Mobile. Nokia told us that the phone is targeted at first-time smartphone users who don’t want to pay a lot of money for a data plan. And T-Mobile is following through on this promise; Astound owners can pay as low as $10 a month for this type of plan.
If the Astound looks familiar, it is because it is the T-Mobile branded version of the Nokia C7, an unlocked global Symbian phone. The two are very similar, but the C7 has an all-black color scheme and it does not have the most recent version of Symbian.
The Astound sports an 8-megapixel camera with HD video capture, a 3.5-inch AMOLED display, and 8GB of memory. Note: Out of all the phones I review, I still hold that Nokia phones have some of the best cameras. I didn’t really get a chance to play with the Astound’s snapper other than a few pictures in a dark bar, but what I shot looked pretty decent.
Slim, Silver
The phone itself is quite attractive with a white and silver color scheme and slim profile. I didn’t like how buried the microSD card slot was on this phone; you have to remove the back as well as the battery to get to it. The SIM card slot is nicely labeled however (see picture).
While the Astound might be attractive on the outside, Symbian is still, well, Symbian. Although it is a powerful and full-featured platform, its whole aesthetic feels dated and static compared to Android 2.3, Apple’s iOS, and even the latest version of RIM’s BlackBerry OS. Thankfully, this is the most recent version of Symbian S^3 so you get a portrait QWERTY keyboard and an browser improved from the previous versions.
Nokia officials had no comment on its relationship with Microsoft, but they did hint that there will be more Symbian phones to come. The Astound will be available April 6 online as well as at T-Mobile stores.
More about CTIA’s Spring show
From www.pcworld.com
Nokia Union Bank Money Initiative Launched in India
Mar 21st
Over in India it is estimated over 50 percent of Indians don’t have a bank account whilst 90 percent of villages do not have a bank branch, but Nokia along with the Union Bank of India aims to change those figures with the launch of Union Bank Money.
According to an article over on Information Week, Nokia and the UBI have announced the commercial launch of Union Bank Money, a service that targets those people who do not have a bank account, and delivers financial services via their mobile phone.
The chairman and managing director of Union Bank India, M.V. Nair said, “Technology is a great enabler for banking services and our partnership with Nokia will help us offer ‘Anytime Anywhere’ financial services to consumers across the country. Once rolled out across the nation, Union Bank Money will be the single largest network in India to provide mobile financial services to consumers in urban as well as penetrate rural areas to tap the unbanked populace.”
Nokia and the UBI have launched their financial inclusion plan to deliver banking services to in excess of ten million customers by the year 2013, with Nokia supplementing the existing 3000 Union Bank of India branches with Nokia retail outlets serving as business correspondent agents for Union Bank Money services.
The Union Bank Money app can be installed across almost all existing Nokia mobile phones and Nokia will be pre-installing the app on a wide range of handsets.
From www.phonesreview.co.uk
Nokia’s first Windows Phone to be launched in a year’s time
Mar 14th
Published: Monday, Mar 14, 2011, 18:04 IST | Updated: Monday, Mar 14, 2011, 18:23 IST
By Sreejiraj Eluvangal | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA
Nokia will launch its first Windows Mobile phone in roughly 12 months from now, the Finnish firm’s India MD, D Shivakumar said. Shivakumar also defended the deal with PC operating system maker pointing to Microsoft’s strengths in areas such as socia networking, search and other software.
In a regulatory filing in the US on Friday, Nokia had said that it expected most of its smartphones to migrate to the Windows Mobile platform only in two years, setting off speculation that it will take two years to implement the strategy.
Nokia and Microsoft had announced a deal last month under which Nokia promised to build smartphones only on Windows platform, and to abandon other platforms like Android and Symbian.
According to Canalys, a global IT market research firm, the share of Windows in total smarphone sales had plummeted to just 3% during the last quarter of 2010 despite having been present on more than half of the smartphones in the early 2000s. In comparison, Symbian, which is being discarded by Nokia, had a marketshare of 31%.
Critics and consumers dismissed the last major version of Windows Mobile, called Windows Mobile 6, as being clunky and resource-hungry, though they have been kinder on the new version — Windows Mobile 7, unveiled earlier this year.
Shivakumar said Nokia’s bet is on the new version and its is much better than the earlier ones. “We took the decision after looking at that operating system [Windows Mobile 7]. It’s a good operating system,” he said, when asked about abandoning a popular product for a less popular one.
Nokia, which has around 35-40% of India’s cellphone market, is estimated to be maintaining its share in the smarphone market as well, despite teething troubles in bringing new models to market. The Finnish firm has been caught in a semi-paralysis for the last 2 years as rivals such as Samsung and LG raced ahead by introducing tens of new models in the smartphone category.
The flounder also cost Nokia’s four-year-old CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo his job late last year, and brought Stephen Elop, then head of Microsoft’s business division to Nokia’s head.
Shivakumar said the alliance between Nokia and Microsoft will give the latter a second shot at the mobile market, thanks to Nokia’s 33% global marketshare.
“Microsoft has been looking for a strong hardware partner, but they have been on phones [platforms] which has not given them that strength. With Nokia, suddenly the scales are huge.
“So, for the first time in many a markets, people will get used to a Windows Mobile phone thanks to the Nokia tie-up,” he pointed out.
For Nokia, the deal will help the company give a quiet burial to the ailing Symbian operating system while leveraging Microsoft’s influence as a shareholder at Facebook to bring nifty features to its future smartphones.
“Its [new] operating system has links to it [Facebook].. It has a range of services which complement Nokia services — they have Bing [search], Zune [music] and games,” the India MD said. Meanwhile, Nokia will launch around 40-50 new phone models in 2011, including around 20 smartphones built on Symbian, he added.
He also claimed that the Rs 23,000 ‘N8’ trebled the Indian smartphone market since its launch six months ago. Around 6 million out of the 155 million phones sold in India last year are expected to have been ‘smart’, according to research firm IDC India. They are expected to hit 39 million units by 2014, according to Canalys.
From www.dnaindia.com
