When Nokia published a press release talking about how they plan to purchase Trolltech and how doing so will strengthen both S60 and S40, it immediately dawned on me that I heard this somewhere before. I couldn’t quite put a finger on it, until now that is. During Nokia World there was an event called “Capital Market Days.” I couldn’t attend since I’m not an analyst, but I wish I could have sat in since it was packed with an insane amount of content; minus the fluff usually layered on top for us press folk. What went on during that day has been archived and you can listen to all the webcasts here, but I want to pay attention to what Niklas Savander, Head of Nokia’s new Services and Software unit, had to say.
He talks about why Nokia didn’t have “a” thin product, but a “platform” of thin products. He mentions how Nokia plans to go even thinner. The software strategy is talked about at length, how Nokia is trying to make the mobile phone space like the PC space where you can just slap an OS on any piece of hardware, and at the end he talks about touch and how touch will be just like thinness. There will not be “a” touch product, but a platform of Nokia hardware that is touch enabled. Certainly more information than we get in the press releases or the people standing at the booths.
In retrospect the Trolltech purchase makes his talk much more digestible since we now know a little bit more about Nokia’s software strategy. I edited the MP3 to include both his talk and the Q&A session. It is 58 minutes 45 seconds and can be downloaded here. The accompanying slides can be found here, start on page 15 please.
For added fun listen to the Q&A session with Anssi Vanjoki and pay attention to his rant on the context aware internet, he essentially tears a snarky analyst a new asshole.