Nokia strikes back

LONDON

CELLPHONE maker Nokia on Tuesday unveiled the smartphones its new management team will be using in its fight to win back market share from Apple and Research In Motion.

The world’s biggest cellphone maker, Nokia is engaged in a major management revamp, with the departures of its chief executive and chairman announced last week and its top internal candidate for the CEO post resigning on Monday after an outsider was chosen for the job.

Nokia still controls around 40 per cent of the global smartphone- market volume, but has lost out to Apple and Research In Motion’s BlackBerry in the fatter-margin market for the most expensive cellphone models.

“Today, our fight back to smartphone leadership shifts into high gear,” Mr Niklas Savander, head of Nokia markets unit, said in a speech at the London launch.

The new models – E7, C7 and a new version of the C6 – all come with large touchscreens and use the latest Symbian software.

“The products are a clear improvement... but we know they are not where Nokia needs to be yet, and any other promise around ‘we are working on it’ would not have convinced anyone,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.

“A new CEO and the old guard stepping down might give investors more confidence that
things are really changing.”

The phones will go on sale before the end of the year at prices ranging from 260 euros (S$450) to 495 euros, excluding subsidies and taxes.

Last week, Nokia announced it was hiring Mr Stephen Elop, a Microsoft executive with Silicon Valley credentials, to replace embattled chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and renew its drive to compete with Apple.

Mr Elop and Mr Kallasvuo were not among speakers at Nokia’s annual top media show, Nokia World, which ended yesterday.

On Monday, Nokia’s smartphone and services chief, Mr Anssi Vanjoki – an outspoken and respected figure in the mobile- phone industry who was considered the most likely internal candidate to replace Mr Kallasvuo – announced his resignation.

Underlining the scale of the change, chairman Jorma Ollila, who led Nokia’s transformation from a rubber boots-to-TV sets conglomerate into a mobile-phone giant in the 1990s, said last week he would step down shortly.

Analysts said they did not expect the management change to have a quick impact on Nokia’s strategic plans.

“In the midst of management turmoil, Nokia is attempting to keep a steady hand on the tiller,” said Mr Ben Wood, head of research at CCS Insight.

“Although many questions are being raised about its future strategic direction, in the near term, we expect the company to stick with the vision it has outlined,”
Mr Wood said.

http://myepaper.mypaper.sg/ebook/web_php/System/Zoom_In/Zoom_In_Page.html

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Nokia dishes out Symbian 3 phones, holds back on MeeGo device

by Ariel Tam
Updated 01:00 PM Sep 15, 2010

A quartet of smartphones running on Nokia's latest Symbian 3 open-source operating system (OS) took the spotlight at Nokia World 2010 in London on Tuesday. And those expecting a MeeGo device announcement - borne from the February marriage of Nokia and Intel's respective Maemo and Moblin Linux platforms - would have to patiently wait for an update later this year.

For now, Nokia appears to be banking on Symbian 3 to counter the rise of Apple, Google and RIM in the lucrative and cut-throat smartphone arena. While Symbian took the lead in smartphone OSes in the second quarter of the year according to Gartner, its 41.2 per cent market share represented a marked decline compared to its 51.0 per cent share in the same quarter last year. Android, on the other hand, has blossomed dramatically from 1.8 per cent to 17.2 per cent, making it the third most popular after the Blackberry OS (18.2 per cent). The Symbian 3 phones - N8, E7, C7 and C6 - signal Nokia's hope of wresting back a greater cut of the mobile OS pie, and the Finnish company is aiming to ship more than 50 million new Symbian phones.

The phones support multiple home screens, visual multitasking and gesture-based navigation, and are integrated with Qt, Nokia's application development framework that allows developers to build apps once and deploy them across open software platforms.

Nokia is also throwing in free satellite navigation software with Ovi Maps walk-and-drive voice-guided navigation, as well as Web TV services for users to get their goggle box fix of programmes on channels such as CNN and National Geographic. We take a closer look at the Symbian 3 offerings.



Nokia E7

The E7 is the latest modern-day version of what Nokia calls one of its "most iconic and loved devices", the Nokia 9000 Communicator, introduced in 1996.

And just like the first Communicator, the E7's not the most petite of phones. But with a profile of 13.6mm, it is reasonably svelte. The phone's designed to help the business professional to manage his life on the go, and sports a four-inch capacitive touchscreen and a robust slide-out full Qwerty keyboard. The Amoled screen's blessed with what Nokia calls ClearBlack technology, which touts a polariser that removes unwanted reflection, delivering a higher contrast level and better outdoor visibility while consuming less power.

Mail for Exchange support gives you real-time access to corporate email systems, and you can read and edit documents like Powerpoint files on the go. Nokia has pre-loaded a raft of business-centric apps to help you along, such as QuickOffice and F-Secure Anti-theft.

Other features include an 8-megapixel camera capable of high-definition 720p video recording, an HDMI port for connection to your home theatre system, and security options such as device lock and wipe.

Besides grey and white, the phone comes in not-too-serious hues of green, blue and orange. The phone will be launched in the fourth quarter of the year.



Nokia N8

Securing bragging rights as the first phone to run on Symbian 3 and announced in April this year, the N8 is a power-packed number sporting a 12-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens and Xenon flash, as well as Dolby Digital Plus surround sound. At Nokia World, the company showed off spectacular photos taken in Singapore on the N8 and played a movie trailer of Tron: Legacy off the phone on huge screens via an HDMI cable.

A 3.5-inch widescreen capacitive touch display takes up the bulk of the phone's front façade. It supports multi-touch, and you get three customisable home screens that you can navigate with a speedy swipe of the finger.

The N8 has 16GB of internal storage, which can be beefed up to 48GB with a microSD card.

The phone comes in five shades - grey, silver, green, blue and orange - and will be available in Singapore by October.



Nokia C6

If you fancy the stainless steel-and-glass aesthetic, you might like the Nokia C6. Social network buffs can post and view real-time updates on Facebook and Twitter on the 3.2-inch ClearBlack-powered touchscreen, and synchronise events from their social networks to the phone calendar. Internal memory's on the pithy side at 340MB, but that can be augmented by a 32GB microSD card. Only two colour choices are available - silver and black. Both the C6 and C7 will be available before the end of the year.










Nokia C7

The C7 is the more powerful cousin of the C6 and sports a 3.5-inch touchscreen and a trim profile of 10.5mm. Like the C6, this phone delivers real-time updates from social networks like Twitter, and you can snap a photo, tag it with your location and upload it to Facebook in a single click. The C7 also has the honour of being what Nokia says is the first mobile device to use non-toxic bio-paint. We wouldn't quite call it the "sleekest, smoothest device in the world" like Nokia did, but we do agree that it is one respectable-looking phone. You get one more colour option besides silver and black - brown.



Navigating a gold mine

With the abrupt change in leadership announced last week, where former president of Microsoft's Business Division Stephen Elop will replace Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo as Nokia's chief executive on Sept 20, all eyes were on the Nokia World 2010 conference as industry players look for hints of the direction Nokia is heading.

One of the key areas Nokia is devoting its energy on is the mobile navigation market. The company has invested substantially in this area, including a US$8.1 billion acquisition of digital map information provider Navteq in 2008. Nokia predicts that by 2013, more than 800 million people around the world will be using GPS-enabled devices and related services.

Nokia's popular Ovi Maps service is now available for 78 countries in 46 languages. The latest beta release of Ovi Maps, available for download since Tuesday, offers dedicated pedestrian routes, real-time traffic, visibility to subways and trains in 85 cities as well as enhanced search and location-sharing capabilities.

"The next generation of mobility innovation will all be about experiences that result from leveraging the fact that you know your location," said Niklas Savander, Nokia's executive vice-president (Markets). "It is a space we intend to own."

http://www.todayonline.com/Tech/EDC100915-0000148/Nokia-dishes-out-Symbian-3-phones,-holds-back-on-MeeGo-device

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Nokia C6-00

You'll have many happy hours of text-chatting

Smartphone Review: Nokia C6-00
by Sim Cheng Kai
05:55 AM Aug 13, 2010

IT MAY not feature a cutting-edge design or a blazing-fast processor, but if you're addicted to Facebook, email and instant-messaging (IM) on the go, then the Nokia C6-00 may be just what the rehab centre ordered.

Looks-wise, the C6 will impress your parents more than it will impress your peers. This matt-black phone sports clean lines and a neat, symmetrical physique, as well as a glossy screen top and a 1mm-thin glossy rim.

The Symbian S60 5th-edition touchscreen slider comes pre-installed with the official Facebook app, and integrates with Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat. The latter two are Nokia's fuss-free email client and IM app that are compatible with Google, Windows, Yahoo and Nokia's Ovi email and IM services - no tacky email set-up fields like naming your "POP3 server" required.

The Facebook and Ovi Mail apps also appear as widgets on your screen's home page by default, so you can check the latest three or two messages, respectively, at a glance. Meanwhile, your Ovi Chat contacts are located conveniently on a tab adjacent to your phone contacts' list. Multiple-party conversations can be initiated under a "Group" tab.

These social networking options are supplemented by a slide-out keypad that's comfortable to thumb-type on - even for people who have humongous fingers like mine - thanks to a set of big, concave keys. To the right of the keypad is a directional pad that's just as solid - a noticeable upgrade from previous Nokia phones like the N97 mini, which the C6 is roughly the size of (113.4x53x16.9mm).

However, the larger keypad comes at a price. In the N97 mini (and its non-mini predecessor), there is a catch that props the screen up at an angle, tilting it downwards, when you slide the touchscreen. This provides a nice viewing angle of the screen when the handset is set on a table, and also prevents users from accidentally sliding the keypad out.

On the C6, however, there is no such catch. The screen slides straight up in an incredibly smooth motion (which some users might prefer), but the keypad also slides out downwards unintentionally - for example, when I'm pressing on the camera shortcut button.

Nevertheless, the 5-megapixel camera with LED flash here is competent, and the default photo-taking app lets you geo-tag photos and use digital zoom during video recording. The camera lacks a Carl Zeiss lens, though (featured in some other Nokia handsets).

Making calls with the on-screen keypad is not entirely perfect. I find myself hitting the wrong key fairly often, since the virtual buttons are adjacent to one another and there is no haptic feedback. Call quality, however, is excellent, and though the C6 sports a resistive touchscreen instead of the more sensitive capacitive variant, a proximity sensor will turn off the 3.2-inch TFT screen when you hold it up to your face.

Mobile computing performance is surprisingly smooth on this 434MHz-processor smartphone, save for a few occasional glitches. Sometimes, apps would freeze for no apparent reason, and to the extent that I could not even force-shut them down through the task manager.

However, these situations are rare, and most of the time, I was quite pleased with the device's web-surfing speeds on both the pre-installed browser and the Opera app that I downloaded from the Ovi store.

The small assortment of onboard apps, like Nokia's Ovi Maps which uses the built-in A-GPS to find your location on the phone's pre-installed maps (loads faster than Google Maps), are also handy.

The Nokia C6-00 is available exclusively from M1 at $499 (without contract) and $98 (with a two-year plan).

http://www.todayonline.com/Tech/Techreviews/EDC100813-0000120/Youll-have-many-happy-hours-of-text-chatting

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