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Source: Mocoblog

Awesome!

I first mentioned this hypothesis when I made my personal post on the 28th:

If someone at Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) or Motorola (NYSE: MOT) offered me a job I would take
it in a heart beat. I think Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is in the best position to help make
the ideas I have in the back of my head a reality, but I have no
problem working with an underdog to help them rise to the top. Sony, I
believe, can overtake Nokia in the mid to high end space if they played
their cards right.

Then Charlie Schick chimed in a day later:

I remember when I thought Sony Ericsson, just after the merger, had only a few months to live. And indeed, they basically fell off the map.

But, wow, they’ve methodically delivered and amazed folks with their devices. Now, they are like the Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) of the mobile world – leaders who have fallen so low, only to keep their chin up and become someone who is the model in design and style.

Way to go.

Today (a day after Charlie) DigiTimes is saying the same thing:

Nokia expanded its leadership position in the mobile handset market in 2006, shipping more units than its next two closest competitors combined, according to research firm iSuppli.

However, the biggest waves in the market in 2006 were made by Sony Ericsson, which in the fourth quarter posted the largest on quarter growth of all mobile-phone makers, with shipments rising 61.5% to 26 million units, up from 16.1 million units during the same period in 2005. The joint venture between consumer electronics giant Sony and telecommunications specialist Ericsson enjoyed a great 2006, achieving more than 15% growth in the second, third and fourth quarters of 2006.

"Sony Ericsson is targeting its entire product line at the mid-to-high range of the market and just recently has started entering the emerging low-cost handset market," said Tina Teng, wireless communications analyst at iSuppli. "This has contributed to the company’s accelerated growth in 2006. Plus, Sony Ericsson’s products appeal to every regional market globally, because its camera- and music-enabled phones hit the sweet spot in terms of desirable handset features."

Why are people buying more Sony phones? That’s a rhetorical question, but something Nokia should be asking itself right about now.

Personally I think that some of their models are down right sexier than anything Nokia makes. Touch screens offer an attractive feature set. The Walkman brand is very strong.

Definitely a company to watch.

I wish some one would podcast this, sadly I doubt that is going to happen. Prove me wrong people!

The Mobile Persuasion Conference is a full-day, eight session conference hosted by the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab featuring expert talks and panels on how mobile technology can change attitudes and behaviors.

The first Mobile Persuasion Conference will be held at Stanford University on Friday, February 2. Over 250 attendees are expected. The conference is for innovators, researchers and companies creating mobile technologies that change people’s beliefs and behaviors. Applications include health, commerce, activism, social networking, advertising, conservation and mobile gaming.

The sponsors of Mobile Persuasion are: Nokia (NYSE: NOK) Research Center, Institute for the Future, U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, and Stanford Media-X.

Tickets are available for $349 at http://mobilepersuasion.eventbrite.com/

Source: TMC Net

More info on Mirjana at the Nokia Research Center

I’m going to drop her a line and see if I could get her powerpoint slides.

(Picture found at the University of Berkley’s website)

I just found out about this application called: Mobiola Web Camera. Here is the product description:

Turn your Symbian smartphone into a high-quality web camera and throw out your bulky USB webcam. Very simple to install and configure, Mobiola Web Camera consists of two software components: (1) a client application that resides on the phone, and (2) a webcam PC driver compatible with any Windows application that can receive video feeds from a web camera including Skype, Yahoo, MSN, AOL IM, ICQ messangers, www.YouTube.com, www.MySpace.com and www.grouper.com. Carry your webcam with you wherever you go and connect it to your laptop at anytime.

This is just one of those things that makes so much sense. It is yet another feature that will encourage users to hook their phone up to their computer.

The only thing I worry about is how exactly would you mount your phone to sit properly? From the looks of it this only does video too. Shame because I’m almost positively sure that the microphones in mobile phones are better than anything that comes with our computers.

So last week I hosted our first ever "S60 Blogger Strategy Session". We met for an afternoon of info-sharing, brainstorming, and strategizing (I don’t that’s a real word) – then off to downtown Helsinki for some drinks and dinner. About 13 people in attendance, only two of our bloggers were unable to attend, which is honestly a miracle considering our bloggers are spread out over the globe.

I think the event was a huge success, we covered a lot of ground, we could have easily been there all day chit-chatting about blogs. 2006 was our first full year on the blogosphere and was an enormous success and I know we’ll be continuing that success into 2007. Here was the agenda for the day…

13.30 – 13.45 | Introductions
13.45 – 14.30 | Blogging guidelines, standards, and etiquette
14.30 – 15.00 | Advanced MoveableType
15.00 – 15.05 | Break
15.05 – 15.45 | Plugins, improvements, and add-ons
15.45 – 16.30 | S60 Blogging strategy
16.45 – 17.30 | Taxi to downtown
17.30 – onwards | Dinner at Ravintola Helmi

Since we’re the first in the company to blog publicly, we’re kinda the ones making the rules. We spent the beginning of the session going over guidelines, writing tips, online etiquette, posting standards etc… In the next few weeks I’ll be finalizing an official "S60 Blogger Guidebook". After that we went into advanced features of MoveableType. Then everyone complained when I only left five minutes for a break, so we extended it to fifteen.

On to plugins, improvements, add-ons and other ways to develop the blogs. The first half of 2007 should see a lot of cool new additions and features added to the blogs. Then with the time left over we all talked and discussed all sorts of blog-related issues. Finally we hopped in some cabs and went downtown for a nice dinner. All-in-all a really nice event and we’ll be doing this every six months or so.

I had my camera with me and of course, completely forgot to take photos, here’s a couple pics of the very end when everyone was leaving …

Source: See into S60

That’s the number one issue Phil. There are so few blogging publicly. This is what you and Tommi should focus on: recruiting more people from within the company to start a blog.

S60 is such a small, very small, portion of what Nokia (NYSE: NOK) does.

Circulate a memo or something around the company so fellow employees can listen in on the session. Post a podcast of your session. Get exposure.

Straight from Tommi’s blog:

As you know, I have recently started in a new job position, and I still want this blog to be valuable for both the readers (=end-users) and for Nokia (NYSE: NOK)/S60. Or to be accurate, I want to make it even better.

But how to do it in practice?

There’s one thing that I have learned during the last year: blogging = talking + listening. So, the best way for me to make this blog valuable, I believe, is to integrate both the talking part and the listening part as closely as possible to our daily work.

In practice that would mean:
– writing with an insider voice about the stuff we do in Nokia/S60, or have recently achieved
– collecting feedback from the readers and feeding it back to the actual development process

What do you think: is this the right approach?

Dear Nokia people in my own unit and elsewhere: feel absolutely free to contact me (tommi dot vilkamo at nokia dot com) if you want me to:
– spread the word about something you think is worth attention
– ask questions from the readers (e.g. "What do you think about our new application?")

—

Ps. I think there are currently a couple of thousand regular readers, some of whom are very knowledgeable, insightful, and/or influential. Consider them as a focus group with steroids, if you will.

Hmmm tempting. I really wish I could brain storm this right now, but I have quite a few school related activities that limit the one precious resource we all wish we had more of: time.

Tell Tommi what you think he should blog about, I’m sure all of our ideas are in the same ball park.

UPDATE: This is a question for Nokia employees, not us. Thanks for clarifying Tommi!

I misread.

What’s happening with Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s next-generation N-Gage platform? Nokia announced plans to put N-Gage inside a bunch of its multimedia handsets at E3 2005, and then showcased a number of games at the same show last year.

But since our interview with Nokia’s Jaakko Kaidesoja in November, it’s gone a bit quiet. Until now, at least. We can reveal that behind the scenes, activity is ramping up, following a top-secret workshop for publishers and developers, held in Santa Monica last week.

The two-day event saw Nokia fully unveil the new platform for the first time, with a series of technical and business presentations to fill attendees in on the specifics. And check the calibre of some of the companies rumoured to have attended, according to a reliable source:

Disney, Sega Of America, Sony Online Entertainment, Universal, Square Enix, Capcom, THQ Wireless, Glu Mobile, Digital Chocolate, EA Mobile, Tecmo, Namco and Vivendi Games were reportedly all there, along with first-party developers (firms developing games to be published by Nokia) including Backbone Entertainment and Foundation9.

Sessions in the Business stream included an explanation of how next-gen N-Gage games will be distributed, including something intriguing called the ‘N-Gage activation code system’.

Publishers will also be able to ‘track and manage’ their N-Gage games, which could imply you’ll be able to pass games onto friends in some form, although presumably they’d have to pay to play the full version. Other business sessions covered marketing and customer service issues.

Meanwhile, the Technical stream saw the publishers get their first detailed look at the N-Gage software development kit (SDK), which is only now being sent out to them (first-party developers have had it for a while). Other technical sessions included best development practices, a guide to the new platform’s back-end architecture, certification and security.

Another two-day event is happening next week in Madrid, so that European firms can get the lowdown on N-gage too. Speakers at both workshops include Nokia’s director of publishing Gregg Sauter, senior title marketing manager Nick Malaperiman, and marketing manager Simon Etchells.

The news isn’t surprising in itself. You’d expect Nokia to be holding these kinds of events in the run-up to the public unveiling later this year, possibly at the Game Developer’s Conference in March.

But the fact that such high-profile publishers attended last week’s event – although it’s not clear whether this means they’re definitely developing N-Gage games, or just in the process of deciding – is a positive sign for the next-gen N-Gage.

Source: Pocket Gamer

As Jerry Maguire once said: "Show me the money!"

I’ll really have to see this to believe it. I only have one comment:

Why limit N-Gage to be a Nokia only thing? There are a lot of phones out there that run some variant of Symbian. It wouldn’t hurt the platform if there were more "N-Gage Capable" devices.

It would help expand it.

Tomasz from the My-Symbian forum just sent me this screen shot:

(Click the image to see it in its full 800×352 resolution)

The raging debate about this pictures legitimacy is being conducted in this My-Symbian thread.

What do you guys think?

Personally I hate the inverted battery meter, but everything else looks pretty swell.

Thank you Tomasz!

And the last FOMA in the series is Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) manufactured SO902iTV. First of all, this beautiful device is Bravia-branded and sports a wide mobile TV-ideal (16:9) hi-res 3″ screen which displays 240×432 pixels. Users can even record the TV on this device and play it later.

Read the full article »

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