11/04, 5:10pm
Nokia intros Life Tools service, five new phones
Nokia on Wednesday announced it has developed and will soon release five new entry-level handsets meant for those in the developing world. These handsets will support Nokia Life Tools, a set of livelihood improvement aids for users in small towns or the countryside. The Nokia 1280, 1616 and 1800 are the most basic of the set and are designed explicitly for areas with harsh climates and poor electricity. All have similar features, including FM radio support, a prepaid tracker, built-in flashlight and an anti-scratch cover and dust-resistant keypad. Battery life is rated at up to 22 days of standby time.
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10/28, 5:25pm
Nokia N97 mini now shipping, 2.0 update released
Nokia on Wednesday announced it is now shipping the N97 mini and has released a new update for its N97 smartphone. The newer N97 variant still has a QWERTY keyboard that angles out but has a smaller 3.2-inch touchscreen, a more compact keyboard and 8GB of built-in flash instead of the larger model's 32GB. It costs the equivalent of $664 in Europe, where it's sold unlocked and without a contract and should also be available subsidized through carriers in the near future.
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08/26, 9:40am
Nokia ARM-based smartbook
Nokia may add a second netbook PC to its lineup besides the upcoming 10-inch Booklet 3G, according to unofficial sources from cellphone makers in Taiwan. They reported on Wednesday that the second netbook will reportedly be based on an ARM processor, like so many of Nokia's smartphones. The Digitimes insiders claimed Nokia may contract Compal or Foxconn to build a device that would fit Qualcomm's "smartbook" label but which would not arrive on store shelves until sometime in the middle of 2010.
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08/24, 6:00pm
Nokia on N97 vs iPhone
Nokia chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo was put on the defensive late yesterday in an interview regarding the poor performance of the N97 versus Apple's iPhone. When asked by the FT about the critical reaction to his own smartphone, which has been criticized for being too expensive, too slow and lacking a modern touch interface, the executive claimed the N97 was still viable but admitted he wanted to do better, particularly highlighting the increasing emphasis on Ovi services like the music store and navigation.
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07/07, 2:50pm
Apple May Overtake Nokia
Apple's share of the smartphone market is growing quickly enough that it could overtake Nokia's in as little as four years, according to data from Generator Research. The analyst group sees the market almost reversing itself from its situation today and believes Nokia will tumble from about 40 percent share today to just 20 percent in 2013. iPhones, meanwhile, should accelerate and hit 33 percent of the market at the same point. Apple would match Nokia's share sometime in 2011 and ship as many as 77 million phones that year.
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07/03, 1:10pm
Nokia outs Ovi Maps 3.0
Nokia has recently announced the release of its latest version of its Ovi Maps software used in more than 40 of its GPS-enabled handsets. Now available for download, Ovi Maps 3.0 has a number of enhancements, including high resolution satellite and terrain maps in both 2D and 3D views, as well as 3D landmarks for more than 200 large cities. The latter allows users to view the virtual landmarks with fly-overs, fly-throughs, in a night view and by rotating and tilting the perspective. There is also a new Walk mode for navigating on foot, while the Drive mode provides speed limit information, location of speed cameras, real-time traffic and lane assistance.
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05/26, 7:30am
Nokia Ovi Store and ATT
After an early opening for some areas, Nokia today formally launched the Ovi Store worldwide. Accessible both through the web and through a downloadable app, the service is Nokia's own contender against the iPhone's App Store and puts both third-party apps, N-Gage games, podcasts and videos in a central location. It's primarily intended for Symbian S60 phones such as the 5800 XpressMusic as well as most recent Eseries and Nseries smartphones, including the imminent N97.
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05/08, 10:40am
Nokia Ovi Store to get 20K
Nokia's Ovi Store will open with a much larger catalog than its immediate rivals did when they were new, the company said late Thursday. Executive VP of services Niklas Savander estimates to Forbes that the portal will launch with about 20,000 "items" when it launches in late spring, just ahead of the N97 touchscreen smartphone's July release. While a significant number of these will include short-form videos, most will be apps and should include games from N-Gage as well as general apps.
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05/06, 7:25am
Nokia E52
Nokia today stepped out of its usual schedule to update its entry business smartphones with the E52. The handset replaces the E51 and has the familiar, extra-slim candybar design but much longer talk time: where the E51 officially managed 4.4 hours, the E52 can run for up to 8 hours of calls on GSM and a still-long 6 hours on 3G. It also gets an upgrade to a 3.2-megapixel camera and GPS while adding the e-mail UI and Ovi service access from the E75.
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04/28, 12:20pm
Compete on iPhone and Work
Apple's iPhone is much more likely to be voluntarily used as a personal device than smartphones from longstanding challengers, a new Compete study shows. Although 59 percent of those surveyed that own BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile phones use theirs primarily for work, about 73 percent of iPhones are used primarily for personal use. To the researchers, the bias is more to do with an emphasis on non-traditional apps than the suitability of the phone to its particular task, as the iPhone is more likely to have software that caters to more than just calendars and e-mail.
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04/28, 8:50am
Nokia Shrinks Online Svcs
Nokia this morning took extra steps to improve its finances and said it would scale back the development of its online services. Calling it a new "focus," the Finland-based company plans to draw more heavily on third parties for its image and video uploading rather than depend on itself. It also intends to make better use of its resources and will put all games on the Ovi Store in addition to N-Gage and other front-ends that already carried the software.
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04/16, 8:25am
Nokia Q1 2009 Results
Nokia this morning reported major falls in both its financial performance and its phone market share for the quarter. The Finnish cellphone maker's operating profit has dropped from slightly over $2 billion in early 2008 to just $72.4 million in early 2009 based on a significant decrease in sales income, which dropped by 27 percent year-over-year. Much of this is attributed directly to a 19.3 percent plunge in cellphone shipments from 115.5 million phones in the first quarter of 2008 to 93.2 million for the same period this year.
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03/04, 12:30pm
iSupply on 2009 Smartphone
The smartphone field should continue to grow in 2009 in spite of the economic crash, according to an iSuppli estimate published today. Despite the world economic crash, the prediction has shipments of advanced phones growing by at least 6 percent to 183.9 million phones but also by as much as 11.1 percent if conditions are ideal. The wide range hinges on how quickly economies recover but is also said to particularly center on whether or not carriers lower the cost of entry for smartphones. Cutting the cost of data plans is particularly important, iSuppli says.
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02/23, 10:40am
iPhone and App Prices
A new study shows that iPhone and iPod touch owners are not only frequent buyers of mobile apps but are actively driving prices down and spurring interest in app development. The findings from an ABI Research survey in November note that the iPhone's App Store is successful enough to have skewed prices of mobile apps downwards, with software often selling for $1 to $2 instead of the $7 to $25 at other stores. This encourages a large number of purchases and is said to be forcing developers to choose between price and sheer quantity.
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02/16, 1:10pm
Nokia Ovi Store official
Long rumored, Nokia has officially announced the Ovi Store, the cellphone maker's own answer to services like the Apple App Store and RIM's forthcoming Application Center. Scheduled to open in May, the service will merge existing Download!, MOSH and WidSets content into Nokia's Ovi platform, allowing people to buy games and other applications for S40- and S60-based phones. Users will also have access to widgets, podcasts, videos and customization downloads.
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02/05, 4:15pm
Nokia launches N-Gage, Ovi
After considerable delay, Nokia has finally begun an initial rollout of its N-Gage gaming service. The online network allows people to download and play a variety of high-end cellphone games, rendered with both 2D and 3D graphics. The client software is now available through the company's First Access program; although it is only officially said to work with the N81, third-party sources have already managed to remove the software's protective "wrapper," and run N-Gage on phones like the N95. The service was initially slated to launch in November, but the date was then moved to late December, and finally to sometime after the holidays.
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01/28, 8:55am
Nokia Acquires Trolltech
Nokia on Monday announced a potentially significant move to acquire Trolltech, a Norway-based software developer. The approximately $153 million deal gives Nokia access to Trolltech's Qt and Qtopia open-source software framework and should let the cellphone maker expand its services to work across multiple platforms; through the same architecture used by cross-OS software such as the Opera browser and Skype, services offered through the Ovi portal should work not just across Symbian series 40 and 60 handheld devices from Nokia but also computers running Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, the purchasing company says.
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