Posts Tagged ‘Nokia’

Nokia launches 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen phone (formally known as the "Tube")

At long last, Nokia has taken the wraps off its much anticipated entrance into the touchscreen smartphone space, post-iPhone of course.

The new device – dubbed 5800 XpressMusic – is, as the name suggests, being pitched as a music (and video) centric phone, and is to be the second handset to support the company’s all-you-can-eat music subscription service, Comes With Music, which also officially launched today. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nokia is also emphasizing the 5800’s media production and sharing capabilities, two areas where the company feels it competes strongly against Apple, especially since the iPhone lacks video recording functionality. On that note, the 5800 features a 3.2 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and is capable of 30 frames-per-second video playback and recording.

There’s also the now standard support for Nokia’s ‘Share on Ovi’ web service, which along with the ability to upload to Nokia’s own media sharing site, also supports uploading to Flickr and Facebook. Additionally, music play-lists can be shared via Bluetooth, although this feature will likely only be of real use to Comes With Music subscribers.

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Review: Nokia E71 (my favorite smartphone yet?)

I’m a great believer that when it comes to choice of smartphone, one size doesn’t fit all. As much as we like the iPhone here at last100, for example, particularly for its industry leading mobile web browser and fast growing library of third-party applications, for my personal needs it doesn’t quite fit the bill. Enter Nokia’s new QWERTY smartphone, the business-oriented E71, which along with addressing most of its predecessors’ shortcomings (the E61/E61i) is a device that comes incredibly close to meeting all of my own particular requirements. Which, of course, isn’t to say that it will meet yours, although it may well do.

Claiming to be the world’s slimmest cell phone with a QWERTY keyboard, the E71 is highly pocketable, especially compared to Nokia’s earlier attempts. It also looks the business in other ways, using a stylish blend of stainless steel and ‘grey’ high density plastic, resulting in a very solid feeling build.

Spec-wise, the version of the E71 for review was the UK version, a Quad-band GSM /3G phone with HSDPA, EDGE, GPRS and WiFi data support.

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BBC iPlayer shows a little too much love to Nokia's N96?

Erik Huggers is the BBC’s Director of Future Media and Technology. Although a more apt title for himself, along with predecessor, Ashley Highfield, would be Director of Future License Fee Justification. That’s because the BBC, which is funded by British tax payers, is doing more than most broadcasters to stay relevant as we move towards a future where viewers want to watch ‘television’ on their own terms: from anywhere, on-demand and on the device of their choice.

Enter the BBC’s catch-up service, iPlayer, which streams the public broadcaster’s content to Windows PCs and Macs, Nintendo’s Wii, Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch, along with Virgin Media’s cable TV service. A download version is also available for Windows-only.

And just today, the BBC and Nokia announced that a streaming and download version of iPlayer will soon be available for the mobile phone maker’s yet-to-be-released N96 handset.

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Nokia's all-you-can-eat music service to land in UK first

No carrier support

Nokia’s all-you-can-eat music subscription service, will launch first in the UK next month, but the real news is the lack of carrier support. Instead, Comes With Music will be offered on a pre-pay handset only, the slightly dated Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, sold exclusively through Carphone Warehouse, the same retail chain who in conjunction with 02 have partnered with Apple to sell the iPhone.

Described by Nokia as “a revolutionary way for people to discover and enjoy music”. Comes With Music gives those who purchase a supported handset “unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalog with the ability to keep all downloaded tracks even after the year is over.” It’s seen as a direct attempt by the world’s number one handset maker to take on Apple’s iPhone/iTunes music service – ironic considering that both offerings will now compete for shelf space at the Carphone Warehouse during the busy Christmas period.

As we’ve noted before, Nokia’s aggressive moves into the ‘services’ space was bound to hit a nerve with carriers who offer their own competing products. According to The Guardian newspaper (via mocoNews), Nokia has touted Comes With Music to all five UK networks, none of whom have found it attractive enough to bite. So far at least.

The major labels on the other hand seem more than willing to play ball. To date, Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music have already signed on, and Nokia is hopeful that EMI will also soon join.

The real surprise of the App Store isn't number of downloads or revenue

That the iPhone’s App Store has delivered 60 million downloads and generated an average of $1 million a day in revenue since its launch a month ago isn’t all that surprising.

To begin with, the App Store couldn’t be any easier to use. All apps available to purchase and download either from the familiar iTunes Store or from the device itself. Next, factor in Apple’s marketing machine, the quantity and quality of apps available from Day One – many of which are free – combined with the fact that the typical iPhone owner has cash to spare and an early adopter mentality geared towards trying out new things, and you have a surefire hit on your hands.

Instead, the real surprise is that the carriers – AT&T in the U.S. and 02 in the UK – agreed to Apple launching the App Store in the first place. Or more specifically, that Apple could offer the App Store in the manner in which they have done.

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Report: HTC's Android-powered "Google phone" may be delayed after all

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Developing a phone — even if it is just an operating system — is not something you do overnight with a bunch of cajoled software developers.

Just a week after High Tech Computer (HTC) said it was on schedule to deliver Android-powered cell phones by the 4Q of 2008, another report surfaces Thursday that says HTC is “having structural problems to incorporate Google’s demand feature set” and “demanding a guaranteed minimum revenue surety from Google,” according to Barron’s Tech Trader Daily.

Barron’s picked up a research note from Trip Chowdhry of Global Equities Research saying his “contacts” contend that HTC’s Android handset — the so-called Google phone — will be delayed until the first quarter of 2009.

Additionally, Chowdhry’s “contacts” tell him that another problem Google is having is attracting software developers to the platform. They’re too busy writing code for Windows Mobile, Nokia (Symbian), Research in Motion (BlackBerry), and Apple’s iPhone.

That’s no surprise. These guys actually have phones, real working phones, to develop for and test.

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Warner Music jumps on-board Nokia’s all-you-can-eat music plan

Three down, one to go

Warner Music jumps on-board Nokia’s all-you-can-eat music planNokia continues to cozy up to the music industry, announcing today that Warner Music has signed onto ‘Comes With Music’, the company’s all-you-can-eat music subscription plan. The major recording label becomes the third of the Big Four to have agreed a partnership with Nokia, following earlier deals with Universal Music and Sony BMG. The remaining major holdout is EMI.

Announced last December at the annual Nokia World conference, “Comes With Music” will enable customers to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited access to “millions of tracks”, and – rather surprisingly – get to keep any downloaded tracks once the twelve month subscription period ends. The only way to then continue accessing the service, however, is to purchase a new “Comes With Music” device (see our follow-up report).

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Nokia buys Symbian, opens fire on Android, Windows Mobile and iPhone

Nokia buys Symbian, opens fire on Android, Windows Mobile and iPhoneThe boldest moves are made from a position of strength, not when the chips are down and you’ve very little to lose. Nokia’s decision, announced today, to acquire the remaining 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn’t already own and make the mobile platform open source, is bold to say the least.

Symbian unified platform: UIQ, S60The ambition, says Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, is to create “the most attractive platform for mobile innovation and drive the development of new and compelling web-enabled applications.”

To achieve this, Nokia will join other industry players, initially AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone, to form the non-profit Symbian Foundation, although any company can join.

Together the foundation will unify the Symbian OS with its various competing User Interface layers – primarily Nokia’s S60 and Motorola and Sony Ericsson’s UIQ – into a single open platform for “converged mobile devices”. The new foundation, in which Nokia has the biggest seat since it will swallow up all of Symbian’s current employees, will oversee the process of releasing the new OS under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) 1.0 open source license – a transition that will take two years – and become its long-term custodian.

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Nokia purchases Plazes, a location-based social networking service

plazes logoBuried in Bob Iannucci’s discussion at Supernova 2008 last week was this comment: “Connecting people only through voice communications is limited,” the Nokia chief technical officer said.

To me, that sums up everything Nokia is doing, including today’s announcement. Nokia, the world’s largest handset manufacturer, is purchasing Plazes, the location-based social networking service that’s based in Berlin with all of 13 employees.

Plazes, founded in 2005, lets people alert their friends about what they are doing and where they are — sort of Twitter and Loopt rolled into one. Users can subscribe to their friends, a group of friends, or to specific locations known as “Plazes.”

Updates can be done via plazes.com, by mobile phone and text messaging, or by a number of third-party applications using the Plazes’ API. And, we can expect, Plazes will be on millions of Nokia phones worldwide as soon as possible.

nokia logo“Nokia is a perfect partner for us because they share our product vision and have the muscle to bring locative presence to hundreds of millions of people all over the world,” the Plazes team writes on its blog. “What better partner than Nokia for exploring innovative ways of connecting people?”

With Plazes and other recent acquisitions, Nokia is clearly connecting people through location-based services, maps, music communities, gaming, and — almost forgot — voice.

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@Supernova: Evidence developers are just as interested in Blackberry as they are iPhone, Android

While the Supernova conference is mostly about the future of the network, a part of that network is mobile. And if you listen to most attendees, the two most important mobile players right now are Apple and the iPhone and Google and Android.

Oddly, it’s as if two other established players — Nokia and Research in Motion — have been relegated to the sideline as also-rans. One conference attendee even asked during a discussion about the future of mobile, “Is Blackberry dead?”

Hardly.

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