Stefan Constantinescu has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices.
He has been blogging since 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007, then got a job at Nokia in March of 2008, but has now rejoined the IntoMobile team as of June 2009. He is currently based out of Finland.
Stefan is a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet and he knows that there are others like him out there. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you!
DVB-H, the technology that provides television broadcasts for mobile phones, has reached a new price point today with the launch of the Nokia (NYSE: NOK) 5330 TV Edition. For 155 EUR ($230) you get a 114 gram slider that measures 101.2 mm x 48.5 mm x 14.25 mm, has a 3.2 megapixel camera, 3G, and a 1000 mAh battery good for about 6 hours or soul crushing, mind numbing, corporate sponsored programming. The screen measures only 2.4 inches across and has a resolution of 320 x 240, so try not to stare at it for too long, or else your eyes will go bad and you’ll wish you actually did something more meaningful with your life than attempt to sit through an entire “My Super Sweet 16″ marathon on MTV.
Erik Sylvestersson, Vice President Sales & Marketing at DNA Finland said: “Live digital TV broadcasts over DVB-H networks is becoming more accessible to more people. In Finland, we have found that sport and news are the key drivers for broadcast mobile TV consumption among consumers. People want to be able to watch the action as it happens – rather than settle for highlight shows once they get home. Consumers expect an exceptional on-the-move TV experience at an affordable price, something the Nokia 5330 Mobile TV Edition is fully equipped to deliver.”
Erik has obviously never been to a sports bar during a Formula 1 race, or saw a Finland vs. Sweden hockey match. The people of Finland watch sports outside of their home as an excuse to get away from their wives, meet their friends, and pound back some beers while staring at a 60 inch HDTV and stuffing their faces with hot wings.
Update: This is the 5330, not 5530. Thanks to @Not_Al for noticing the typo.
Update: The product sheet [PDF] notes that there will be two versions of the device. Both will have quadband GSM, but one version will have triband 3G on the 850/1900 and 2100 MHz bands, while the other has 3G on the 900/1700/2100 MHz bands. Think we’ll see this on T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) USA with that 1700 MHz 3G band?
Dell’s long awaited entrance into the smartphone game has finally become a reality with an official press release on their site. We’ve been tracking this device for a little over 2.5 years now. It was one of the industry’s worst kept secrets.The Mini 3 will be sold in Brazil and China by the end of this year, but no price points have been given. In related news, Chinese publication PC Online got their hands on a retail unit and have posted several unboxing photos. The Chinese Mini 3 may lack 3G and WiFi, but it comes with a stylus that works on capacitive screens and a miniUSB to 3.5 mm headphone jack cable to rock out to whatever state propaganda is à la mode. Expect this device to be available in the USA and Europe some time in the first quarter of 2010. Why did Brazil and China get the first model is up for debate; maybe Dell is saving the higher end models for wealthier nations?
Law.com posted something that probably very few IntoMobile readers care about, but I’ll share it none the less:
In Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s big patent showdown with Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) over iPhone technology, it will be Alston & Bird versus Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr. Wilmer’s co-managing partner Bill Lee made an appearance for Apple on Tuesday in a stipulation filed in Delaware federal district court.
There may be no lawyer in America more familiar with the technology behind smart phones than Lee. For years, he represented Broadcom (NSDQ: BRCM) in its battles with Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) over phone patents. That litigation ended in April when Qualcomm agreed to pay Broadcom $891 million.
When Nokia filed its suit alleging infringement of ten patents, we noted the conspicuous absence of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges. The firm had been inseparable from Nokia through its global war against Qualcomm, which ended on the steps of Delaware Chancery Court last year. As we reported, Alston & Bird has done quite a bit of litigating for Nokia as well.
The same is true of Wilmer for Apple, though this appears to be the highest-profile case Bill Lee & Co. have taken on for Apple. According to the stipulation both parties agreed to, Apple has until December 14 to respond to Nokia’s complaint. Some observers are expecting that answer will include a countersuit.
For those who are not aware of what’s going on, Nokia sued Apple for violating 10 wireless patents. Nilay Patel from Engadget did a fantastic job at covering the details of the case, it’s consequences, and likely results. Expect to be reading about Apple vs. Nokia for at least a year, probably two. Things like this never end as fast as you’d like them to, and the results are never what you expect. At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. You’ll keep on buying the latest iPhones or Nokia smartphones.
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) recently spent an excessive amount of money to produce a 4 minute video showcasing what they think the connected world of 2015 will look like. The first narrative focuses on a French businessman who recently relocated to San Francisco. Apparently he is antisocial because the “closest thing to a boy’s night out” is sitting in front of a television screen, watching a football match, while having a video call with 3 of his friends across the pond. After 2 bottles of wine at home, alone, I bet one of them drops their pants and moons everyone in the room. The next character in this cell shaded investor relations pornography feature film is Maria, a student with an obvious lisp attending her final year at the University of Barcelona, and she is in a club with her friends … but she can’t remember their names. What the hell kind of friend are you Maria? Her boyfriend is based in London, so they have to resort to cyber sex in their “online apartment” using a projected keyboard and display to feel connected.
Finally we have some Indian guy who downloads films to his device, projects them onto a wall so he and his family can watch them, and he sends reports of his fishing trip to a University in America who then deposits money in his Nokia bank account. The video ends with a whole bunch of buzz words flashing on the screen in a seemingly random way that resembles what we all saw in 1999’s hit film “The Matrix”. We can only hope that by 2015 Nokia finally manages to get kinetic scrolling to work without looking jerky, and the Ovi Store to resemble the iPhone App Store of today.
Samsung, who is a member of the Symbian Foundation, is supposedly going to stop producing Symbian devices by 2011 if a report from Digitimes is to be believed. Senior Vice President Don Joo Lee said the South Korean company will continue to focus on Android, Windows Mobile, and the yet to be revealed Bada, mobile operating systems. By 2012 Samsung will have only 20% of their smartphone portfolio running Windows Mobile, with the rest being split between Android and Bada. Considering most Samsung Symbian devices never really did all that well to begin with, mostly because finding them was not an easy task, they’re not going to be missed. This does bring up an important question however: except Nokia (NYSE: NOK), who else is going to be making Symbian devices in 3 years?
Speed Forge Extreme is an obvious clone of Sony Computer Entertainment’s Wipeout franchise, but we’ll let that slide for a second because what the developers at RatSquare have done is simply stunning. Thanks to the OpenGL ES 2.0 support in the iPhone 3GS, full screen motion blur effects are now possible. No word on pricing or availability other than “It is coming to iPhone and Android soon”.
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) makes close to 4 out of every 10 handsets sold on the planet and in Q3 2009 the Finnish firm made $1.1 in operating profit on the sale of 108.5 million units. Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) sold “only” 7.4 million iPhones, yet they made $1.6 billion in profit. This is the first time in the history of mobile telecommunications that someone has made more money than Nokia on mobile phones. These figures were provided by Alex Spektor, Analyst at Strategy Analytics. His colleague Neil Mawston, Director of Wireless Device Strategies, had this piece of advice to offer:
“Nokia’s profit margin for its handset division has been shrinking during the 2009 global economic downturn. Strategy Analytics believes that the United States, where Nokia now trails Apple in marketshare, is the key to Nokia’s recovery in 2010. A successful fight on Apple’s high-profit home turf can simultaneously help to revitalize Nokia’s margins and to put a check on Apple’s surging growth.”
I’m not really surprised, and you should not be either. Just about every other market operates the same way. Porsche is the world’s most profitable auto maker, but they don’t sell nearly the amount of cars that Ford does. Porsche also doesn’t make a model that sells for $12,000, yet Ford has such a model, and plenty of them too. Ford’s highest end product, the Ford GT, is also pile of poop compared to anything the Germans have to offer. Different companies make different products for different people. Apple makes the best smartphone on the planet (my opinion, not universally shared, don’t complain, I don’t care) because the people working in the handset division concentrate on high end devices. Nokia is a huge company, but how many people do you think work on the 20 EUR devices that go to the emerging economies around the world, and the 100 EUR devices that go to people who are not that well off in West European countries, and how many people are left to work on the N97, N900, and other high end models?
Can Nokia make the best smartphone or are they in an environment where it simply isn’t possible?
Trimming in Public is a series where I go through my list of 293 RSS feeds, 10 feeds at a time, give some detail as to why I subscribed to a particular feed, and then decide whether or not to keep on consuming that feed. In Episode 1, I explained what RSS is and how to use it. Please read that if you need a refresher on why RSS is awesome and why you should be using it if you take reading news on the internet seriously. The prefix to Trimming in Public is “Becoming a better blogger, reader and helping me take out the trash.” For the bloggers out there who read IntoMobile, I hope you get a better idea of what I do to keep on top of the news. For the readers who read IntoMobile, I know that this site isn’t the only mobile focused technology publication on the internet, and by sharing which sites I read I’m hoping that you’ll keep on coming back here. Taking out the trash has an obvious explanation, I can’t keep up with my RSS feeds and need to trim my list. For those who want to download my complete list of 293 RSS feeds, feel free to grab my OPML file.
Check out Episode 25 after the jump, and all episodes by clicking on the Trimming in Public tag:
Samsung has just announced a brand spanking new mobile operating system named “Bada”, which is Korean for ocean. They didn’t mention a single feature that makes it stand out, nor did they include screenshots. Bada will be fully unveiled in December at an event in the UK. In a world where we have Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile available for handset manufactures to use, and to customize, to their heart’s content, Samsung has decided that neither of those three solutions is good enough. Don’t forget that Samsung already does make Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. This company is starting to feel like an unemployed degenerate who goes to clown college to learn how to juggle just so he can pay for his whiskey habit. It’s the fifth week of class, and he mastered juggling 3 balls, but now he wants to jump to 4 for some strange reason. Moral of the story: I hate clowns, and companies that launch press releases filled with fluff.
Update: And in case you’re wondering, Samsung expects the first Bada powered device to launch in 1H 2010, with more models expected in 2H10. Bada will have an application store, launching in 1H10, and will expand to over 30 countries by the end of 2010.
We’ve all been there. It’s 3 in the morning and you’re chatting up a beautiful university student who has had way too many shots. She grabs your arm and looks deep into your eyes, channeling a Freudian lust for the love that her father never gave her growing up. She asks to go home with you. Now, you can’t say yes since you’re married and have two beautiful children, but the allure of being balls deep inside a woman half your age is too resisting to pass. You may never have this opportunity again, your wife stopped performing fellatio last decade, and besides, you need the confidence boost by convincing yourself that doing this will make you a man again. Morally grounded men might pull out their iPhone and call the a taxi for this sweet young lady. Some will use the large, multitouch screen to zoom in on their children’s faces as a reminder of what’s waiting for them back home. You’re not one of those men. You’re going to use your iPhone to find the nearest Hilton Hotel, navigate to it, place it on the night stand, and then reach for it once again once when she is in the reverse cowgirl position so you can snap a quick video so you’ll never forget that one night you kicked ass.
