Krishna Srinivasan’s Blog

Handset major Nokia Corporation’s global president and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo on Thursday said that the launch of Apple’s iconic iPhone in India would have an impact on the company here, “When iPhone comes to India, it adds to our competitors here. The entry of a new product in the market creates customer interest and it, therefore, impacts us in India,” Mr Kallasvuo said.

Nokia is the market leader in India and commands a 60% marketshare in the handset space. The company has so far largely remained unchallenged in India as it continues to extend the lead over its rivals in the domestic market.

At the same time, Mr Kallasvuo pointed out that consumer interest in iPhone would lead to an increased awareness on many of the concepts and features available on Nokia’s handsets.

Earlier this month, both Bharti and Vodafone had announced that they would soon be offering the new and cheaper version of iPhone to their customers by the year-end. More>>

With Nokia’s acquisition of Symbian, it is going head-to-head with Google Android and Windows Mobile to make a run at building the top software platform for mobile phones. The problem is that all three of them could be making some bad assumptions about the way the mobile phone market — particularly the smartphone market — is going to unfold over the next five to ten years.

They all seem to be assuming that the mobile phone market will mirror the computer market, which is dominated by a small handful of platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The reality is that there is likely to be a much larger diversity of platforms in the mobile world.

In addition to Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, there is now the iPhone with its OS X-based platform. And, beyond those four, there’s a plethora of phone makers that run their own proprietary operating systems on a variety of phones, sometimes with a customized OS for each phone.

It’s going to be very hard to put the genie back on the bottle in the phone market. All of these different types of phones are already out there and will be in use for years to come. Some may argue that the smartphone market does not have as many players as the general mobile market, but the lines are blurring between standard mobile phones and smartphones.More>>

GLOBAL - Nokia today announced a plan to acquire the 52 per cent of Symbian it doesn’t already own and set up the Symbian Foundation, making the platform open source in the process. The ambition is to create “the most attractive platform for mobile innovation and drive the development of new and compelling web-enabled applications” Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo.

The full press release is below:

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced it has launched a cash offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 million.

Nokia has received irrevocable undertakings from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Siemens International Holding BV to accept the offer, representing approximately 91% of the Symbian shares subject to the offer. Nokia also expects Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to accept the offer.

The acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, announced today by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DOCOMO, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. More information about the planned foundation can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.

“This is a significant milestone in our software strategy” said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia. “Symbian is already the leading open platform for mobile devices. Through this acquisition and the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, it will undisputedly be the most attractive platform for mobile innovation. This will drive the development of new and compelling, web-enabled applications to delight a new generation of consumers.”More>>

World’s largest cellphone maker Nokia has tied up with Google to facilitate web search on its products, even as it launched models offering new services, moves that could consolidate its leadership position.

The integration will begin in select markets on Nokia N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 6220 classic. Google search will be extended to additional models in the future.

Ultimately, Nokia will make Google search available to its customers in over 100 countries around the world, serving mobile owners speaking more than 40 languages.

At the GSM World Congress, the company also launched a number of new devices including phones that offer location- based navigation services.

Nokia improved its market share to 40 per cent last year and hopes to better it.

Launching four mobile phones — N96, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 and Nokia 6219 Navigator, the company said these were no longer mobile phones but mini personal computers.

“As we continue to free the internet from the limitations of the desktop, we are taking mobility into a completely new realm of possibility,” Nokia Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said.

The devices exhibit different location-based and multimedia experiences from pedestrian navigation to geo-tagging and movie viewing to video and photo sharing. The phones would be in the market from second quarter this year.

Commenting on i-phones from Apple and other companies, Nokia officials said they were ready to face the competition.

Nokia Executive Vice President (Mobile Phones) Kai Ostamo, while commenting on its new range of phones, said “we would like to be called Mobile Experience Company and not just a mobile phone company.”

Forget Microsoft, News Corp. or even Apple. Nokia, the world’s no.1 mobile handset maker, should buy Yahoo. Or so says Information Week’s Stephen Wellman, who puts forward a compelling argument: If Nokia is repositioning itself as a Web services company, to combat falling profit margins on its hardware, then acquiring Yahoo would help to give the company a much needed presence on the desktop (not just mobile), as well as beef up its Web offerings and Internet brand recognition in general.

“Nokia is now a Web company, not just a handset maker. But, the company acts as if the Web is just mobile and has no desktop component. This isn’t a very smart strategy”, writes Wellman. All of Nokia’s mobile web rivals: Google, Microsoft and, of course, Yahoo all have desktop products.

“These Web giants are leveraging their vast desktop Web audiences to grow their mobile initiatives. While Nokia has tons of mobile phone customers, it doesn’t have as many Web application users”, notes Wellman. Read More>>

Review Nokia has boosted its N series with its most heavily-featured candybar yet. With a five-megapixel Carl Zeiss-lensed, xenon flash equipped camera and GPS, it’s comparable to the N95 and one of the best cameraphones around. Even if it’s not the prettiest.

Working on the principle that you shouldn’t judge a book by the cover, anyone serious about getting a high-quality cameraphone should take a long hard look at the N82.

With Wi-Fi and HSDPA 3G connectivity, it has versatile options for high-speed web surfing and content downloading. It doesn’t have the 8GB built-in storage capacity of the recently upgraded N95 8GB - reviewed here - just 100MB of internal dynamic memory. But the N82 does have the same media player plus a Micro SD card slot. The N82 comes with a 2GB card, but can take Micro SDs of up to 8GB. These are widely available for around £40, giving you an affordable route to upgrade to iPhone-like music player capacity.

Other plus points include unusually high video recording quality for a cameraphone, and the facility to upload pics and clips online to content sharing sites. The N82 is also one of the new breed of N-series phones to support the Nokia Music Store and revamped N-Gage gaming platform. Read More>>