Nokia 770 Tablet critisism

Nokia 770 got terrible review from Rob Pegoraro of Washington Post. According to him, everything is wrong all the time. Some miraclous moments he came across with and during those moments, Nokia 770 was almost OK to surf the web. Seems like Nokia has some tough challenges in fixing up the flaws.

ATI, Nokia and Bitboys

Bitboys has always been a strange bird on graphics frontier. Tiny company in the middle of nowhere, but their products have been ahead of their time. Bitboys was never able to capitalize their expertise in personal computer graphics segment. However, mobile graphics has meant booming times for the company and growth has been rapid. Nokia is the important key in this capitalization as a big and demanding customer. They dragged Bitboys product development into right direction and now leading mobile graphics solutions come from Bitboys. One bump on they way to happiness remains though – capital expenditure.

Nokia doesn’t want to invest capital in their partnerships if somehow possible. This means tough times for their collaborators. They need to carry the risks and find resources, Nokia provides orders but that’s it. Bitboys didn’t have deep enough pockets, and therefore outside investor was needed. Now the support is there, money is abundant and resources adequate. ATI and Nokia will continue, but Bitboys will disappear into history.

Nokia also ties with Visa

Came up with this interesting piece of news. Nokia and Visa are working together in order to bring out mobile paying system in Malaysia. Hot (literally) markets of Asia are just drooling to get such system.

Nokia ties with Adobe

Nokia will start to ship their N93 with Adobe’s Premiere Elements 2.0. This means that N93 owners can edit the video clips that they have shot with their handset. This is very cool news, especially if it doesn’t affect pricing. My guess is that with this sort of announcements, Nokia is trying to prevent N93 price from eroding. Technology is hard to change in millions of units sold, but software can be updated and stuffed into the physical product in abundant quantities. Let’s have more of this, shall we?

Nokia rises from ashes

Business world has been full of analysis and news about Nokia’s new rise. Their higher end mobile phones have gotten buyers attention and everything is well again. Nokia’s features are the key that attracts buyers. It still isn’t the innovative and sexy design, but I am so much hoping for that day to come again.

Anyhow, now Nokia has grasped the momentum again. N-series is a solid base on which to build on, and new theme variations are published frequently (if not hampered by software issues). This year will see Nokia going from strength to strength, I just still hope that their new design team will get more juice into their handsets.

Nokia's mobile TV projections

Nokia estimates that mobile TV will be part of our everyday life by year 2008. Only two years, do you believe that? I still use voice and text services only, and I consider myself as relatively technology friendly. Looks quite optimistic projection to me. Reuters run the original story.

Frank Nuovo leaves Nokia

Various media has been commenting Nuovo's leave from Nokia as some sort of disaster. Just think of it, the guy who raised the company to design greatness, is leaving the company. Jorma Ollila is also leaving, so are other managers. What is going on?

Luckily Nokia has very stable protocols on place. Old managers breed old ideas, it is about time to get new blood into the company and steer away from that traditional Nokia "our phones look like popsicles" design.

Mr. Nuovo is exactly the right person to develop the Vertu brand as there it is not important to create new ideas but to produce elegant beauty, which Mr. Nuovo can create.

Mad Dog Player for Nokia phones

Mad Dog Mobile is a mobile community, where youngsters can interact with each others. Mad Dog Player is the core of the community, it changes your phone into community gateway - chat, play, listen, message, talk... Fun and it can be free if you mange to get your friends using it too.

For now Mad Dog is only running on Nokia mobile phones, but expect it to take on the world like a virus.

Nokia Flagship Stores

Nokia has plans for opening several sales points at world’s shopping capitals. What is interesting in these stores is that they will be located in high-profile locations in world’s major shopping destinations. Complete Nokia products portfolio and access to N-Gage Arena will be showcased at these locations. Today they opened the first Nokia Flagship Store in Moscow, Russia.

WHAT'S UP WITH NOKIA?
To me this looks like extravagant start for Nokia’s goal to improve their channel and customer relations. This way Nokia can create high-end image for their products in selected markets. It is not about sales volume but voyeurism. Soon we will have those paparazzi pictures showing some celebrities walking out from Nokia Store and tabloids will scream – XXXXX $ VERTU BOUGHT BY... Offering outstanding customer service for selected few is an excellent approach to PR. Answer me this – what is N-Gage Arena doing in this palette? Read the complete press release here.

Forum Nokia S60 3rd Edition Challenge

Nokia’s purpose is to encourage development on fields like – enterprise, music, location-based and Flash applications for the Series 60 platform. Competition has some neat prices (sadly just for the winners) – money, fame and memberships. If you can create something stunning with C++ or Flash, you must act now because the registration is open until 15th of December. Read details over here.

Is Nokia leaving India?

Just as I posted about Nokia’s “We move not” assurances for China, it seems that it is India that really needs those assurances. Nokia is planning an investment in India that would benefit from special tax brakes for example in a form of toll free imports. All is well on planning board, but now Indian governmental bureaucracy is taking its toll and licenses are still in the making. Nokia is getting nervous and possibly scouting alternative locations for their investment. Read more here.

Nokia and Foxconn

Now I spotted news that supports my previous comment. Nokia’s supply agreement with BenQ is about to run over the finish line. This Forbes article is not able to verify any information but points to the possibility that jump to Foxconn might be ahead. Read more here.

Nokia in global politics

India is growing as a mobile market area. In size it will be similar to China. Nokia has been investing heavily on China and now Chinese are wondering whether India’s growth will draw Nokia’s investments, especially research and development, from China to India.

To ease this tense situation in international politics, Jorma Ollila has been assuring that Nokia will not do any drastic relocation moves between these two countries. I suppose it means that Nokia’s capital spending is going to grow, because they have to invest heavily in both countries. Read more here.

Nokia aims for stronger channel and customer relationship

I just posted a brief rant comment about Nokia handling their US distribution channel with remarkable stupidity. Now I noticed a piece of news saying that next year Nokia will focus on channel and customer relationships. Finally! If you want to read more about Nokia’s future plans (they pointed five separate goals) then follow this link.

Nokia brings video tone

Nokia has introduced a new consumer service product – video tone. It works so that whenever call comes phone will play chosen music video or animation. Service will run on Series 60 platform mobile phones.

Personally I think that animations and demos will be very popular. This will also be good market crack for companies. They can offer short mobile video advertising clips for free. Consumer would then promote company in surprising situations. Let’s have a term for these products, what about Movi (mobile video) and Moviad (mobile video ad) or what about Mad (mobile ad)? Read original article over here.

Nokia's Kallasvuo talks stock price up

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo from Nokia said in New York investor relations meeting that Nokia’s mobile phone sales would see continued growth while profit margins would remain stable. This and other improvements that Nokia has been able to pull through this year resulted into hefty stock price increase. Nokia stock price is now on its highest level in almost two years.

It was very interesting to notice that Nokia thinks that there will be over three billion mobile phone users by 2008 already. This growth has mostly come from developing markets in India, China, Russia and Brazil. Nokia has been doing exceptionally well on these markets.

Kallasvuo also expects Nokia to increase its market share during the coming year. New phenomenon on mobile market is the death of smaller mobile terminal manufacturers. According to Kallasvuo, it is imperative that companies gain the critical mass, in order to gain benefits of the scale. Companies with less than 15 percent market share will find it increasingly difficult to operate on the mobile market. Therefore three names seem to rise above others – Nokia, Motorola and Samsung.