Samsung's Galaxy brand is "nearly a synonym for Android", Gartner said

The number of mobile phones sold globally has declined year on year for the first time since 2009, according to research revealed today. Gartner released figures for 2012 that showed 1.75 billion handsets were sold during the calendar year, a 1.7 per cent decline on 2011.

Smartphones continued to drive overall mobile phone sales, and the year finished well with smartphone sales reaching 207.7 million units, up 38.3 per cent from the same period of 2011.

Demand for feature phones remained weak with sales totaling 264.4 million units in the fourth quarter of 2012, down 19.3 percent year-on-year, and Gartner expects feature phone sales to continue to fall in 2013.

Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, blamed tough economic conditions, shifting consumer preferences and intense market competition for weakening in the mobile phone market.

He added that the race to become the number three smartphone manufacturer is wide open, with Apple and Samsung a long way ahead of the pack. The two firms together raised their worldwide smartphone market share to 52 percent from 46.4 percent in the third quarter of 2012, according to Gartner’s research.

Samsung ended the year in the number one position, in both worldwide smartphone sales and overall mobile phone sales and commanded over 42.5 per cent of the Android market globally, while the next Android manufacturer had just six per cent share.

“The Android brand is being overshadowed by Samsung’s brand with the Galaxy name nearly a synonym for Android phones in consumers’ mind share,” said Gupta.

“The success of Apple and Samsung is based on the strength of their brands as much as their actual products. Their direct competitors, including those with comparable products, struggle to achieve the same brand appreciation among consumers, who, in a tough economic environment, go for cheaper products over brand.”

In the fourth quarter of 2012 Chinese firm Huawei claimed the number three spot for the first time, Gartner said. The firm sold 27.2 million smartphones in 2012, up 73.8 per cent on 2011. Gartner said international markets are key for Huawei’s growth in 2013, as well as being able to improve its product mix to a higher tier.

Huawei aims to employ 100 people in the Finnish capital

Chinese infrastructure and device vendor Huawei has announced plans to establish a research and development facility in Helsinki, investing €70m and hiring 100 people over the next five years. The new R&D facility will be a “key driver” in Huawei’s device development work, the firm said.

In September the vendor pledged to invest £1.3bn in the UK, half of which will be spent on the establishment of “centres of technical and financial excellence” and the other half on service and product procurement.

This latest announcement, while far smaller in scale, could be seen as a more pointed statement of intent, given that it sees the firm establishing an outpost in Nokia’s heartland.

“We believe the key to building our brand is to provide consumers with a reliable and differentiated user experience,” said Kenneth Fredriksen, Vice-President, Huawei Central, Eastern and Nordic Europe. “The open and innovative environment in Finland is an ideal place for Huawei to strengthen our global R&D capabilities for devices, creating opportunities for both Huawei and the Finnish telecommunications industry.”

The news comes just days after Nokia revealed that it has sold its Espoo headquarters just outside Helsinki to a property management firm, and will now lease it back.

Huawei now employees 7,000 people in Europe and the firm applauded the region’s “open economy and foreign investment initiatives,” while committing to further investment in the region. Its European situation is in marked contrast to its standing in the US, where it and other Chinese vendors are still viewed with open suspicion.

Samsung has launched the ATIV S, the first Windows Phone 8 handset

Beating Microsoft partner Nokia to the punch, Korean handset giant Samsung has unveiled the first Windows Phone 8 (WP8) handset. The ATIV S handset was showcased at the IFA 2012 consumer electronics trade show in Berlin. It has a 4.8in display and runs on a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor.

Nokia and Microsoft announced a “broad strategic partnership” to build the Windows Phone ecosystem in February last year. At the time, Elop triumphantly declared: “Nokia and Microsoft will combine our strengths to deliver an ecosystem with unrivalled global reach and scale. It’s now a three-horse race.”

Under the terms of the partnership, Nokia committed to adopt Windows Phone as its principal smartphone platform to help drive the future of the platform. The two pledged to closely collaborate on joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap for the future evolution of handsets.

While the deal suggests that Nokia would take the lead with WP8, Samsung instead appears to have muscled in on its territory, while also signalling its intent to ease its reliance on Google’s Android platform.

“By far the majority of Samsung’s smartphone sales have been Android devices, and there has been some scepticism to the extent they have committed to WP platform in the past,” said Tony Cripps, principal analyst in Ovum Telecoms’ devices and platforms group.

“Samsung has tended to take a multiplatform approach in the past and if they’re really behind the Windows OS, I’d expect to see more models from them in due course.”

Microsoft brushed off the idea that Nokia may have any concerns and told Telecoms.com that the Samsung handset is one of many WP8 handsets due to be launched in the near future.

“This is just the first in a big line-up of new hardware that’s coming with Windows Phone 8. Look for more news from our other partners in weeks and months to come,” said a Microsoft spokesperson.

Nokia had not responded to our request for comment at the time of publishing.

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Nokia has shut down two regional sales offices in China

Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia will shut down two of its four regional sales offices in China as part of its restructuring plans. The news comes in the same week that the firm has slashed the price of its flagship Lumia handset, with both developments setting the tone for the company’s 2Q12 earnings announcement, due on Thursday.

Nokia will shut its offices in Chengdu and Shanghai, and consolidate operations in Beijing and Guangzhou, according to Bloomberg. The move will see the Finnish firm cut a number of jobs in China, but it did not specify how many. Nokia has already pledged to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide by the end of 2013 as part of its restructuring process.

The Chinese development comes as Jolla – a start-up firm aiming to design, develop and sell MeeGo based smartphones set up by a group of former Nokia executives – won its first sales deal in China. Jolla’s handsets will be sold in the country through Chinese retail chain D.Phone.

MeeGo is a free, Linux-based mobile operating system project that was first announced at Mobile World Congress 2010 by Nokia and Intel. Nokia launched its first and last Meego handset (the N9) in September that year. Jolla aims to pick up where Nokia and Intel left off, and is staffed by ex-executives from Nokia’s MeeGo N9 organisation, together with some of the developers from the MeeGo open source community, who had worked on the platform.

Meanwhile, Nokia has also slashed the price of its flagship smartphone, the Lumia 900, in the US. Nokia sells the handset exclusively through AT&T, which is ranging the phone from $99 to $49 on a two-year contract, although the price plans on offer remain unchanged.

Nokia said in a statement that the price reduction is normal for a product in this stage of its lifecycle. However, the company’s share price dropped three per cent on the Helsinki Stock Exchange on Monday morning, following the announcement.

Nokia has already said that it expects to incur restructuring charges of €1bn for the Devices & Services unit and has also warned that continued competitive difficulties would mean a worse than forecast performance for the unit. Nokia had previously forecast an operating margin of negative three per cent.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 OS has a new wallet feature and supports NFC

US software giant Microsoft has unveiled its latest operating system for mobile handsets, Windows Phone 8. The announcement was made in the same week as the firm launched its Surface tablet device, which runs on the flagship Windows 8 operating system for PCs and tablets.

The mobile OS shares common code with Windows 8, and has a similar tiled interface. It also shares common networking, security, media and web browser technology, and a common file system with the PC and tablet version.

“That translates into better performance, more features, and new opportunities for app developers and hardware makers to innovate faster,” said Joe Belfiore, manager of the Windows Phone program at Microsoft.

However, existing Lumia handset owners will not be able to update to the new operating system.

The mobile OS supports NFC technology and features a digital wallet that holds access to a user’s debit and credit card details, coupons and boarding passes. When paired with a secure SIM, the wallet allows users to pay for products in store by tapping their phone at compatible checkout counters.

In addition, Windows Phone 8 supports multiple core processors and two new screen resolutions – 1280×768 and 1280×720 – so users can view content in 720p HD displays. Windows Phone devices will also support MicroSD slots for additional storage, improved maps and directions, courtesy of Nokia’s mapping platform and the IE10 web browser – the same browser that will be used in Windows 8 PCs and tablets. In addition, Microsoft has announced that it now offers 100,000 apps and games.

Malik Saadi, principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media believes that the new OS will challenge the “ageing Apple iOS”.  He said that smartphones running the WP7 platform have been missing some of the most innovative features necessary to win the heart of advanced users – the “super-smartphone” owners in particular.

“WP8 addresses the majority of these issues and could be a game changer,” he said. “A number of vendors and developers have said they were holding off until WP8 is ready.”

He added that the introduction of WP8 is very likely to attract mobile operators that want to see another major player in the smartphone market, dominated by Apple and Android’s ecosystems.

“Challengers including Huawei and ZTE have also said they would not seriously engage with Microsoft until Windows Phone 8 was ready as this could potentially take the focus away from the Android platform.

HTC, Huawei, Nokia and Samsung will all manufacture handsets running on the platform, easing shareholders’ fears that Nokia’s partnership with the company will put off other manufacturers. Huawei said it will be launching a handset on the platform before the end of 2012, and reports claim that the Chinese firm is looking to strengthen its ties with Microsoft in the tablet space as well.

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Stephen Elop continues to take tough decisions in a bid to revive Nokia's fortunes

Finnish handset vendor Nokia has announced sweeping changes among its top ranks and pledged to cut a further 10,000 jobs by the end of 2013 as it adjusts the reality of life as a mid-table vendor. The firm also said that it will drop the prices of its Lumia smartphone range in a bid to stimulate more enthusiasm from consumers, and announced plans to licence its mapping technology to other industries.

The new round of redundancies will hit workers in Finland, where Nokia will close its manufacturing facility in Salo, and in German and Canada where R&D sites will also be shut down. Nokia said “IT, corporate and support functions” would be streamlined and non-core assets scrutinised for possible divestments.

One unit that has been hived off as part of the overhaul is Nokia’s luxury handset brand Vertu, acquired by private equity firm EQT VI—although Nokia retains a ten per cent stake.

Several long-serving senior executives have made way for new blood, most notably Niklas Savander, EVP Markets and Mary McDowell, EVP Mobile Phones. Savander has been with Nokia for 16 years, in that time managing the Mobile Devices unit, Enterprise Solutions and Technology Platforms. McDowell, meanwhile, joined Nokia to head the Enterprise unit in 2004.

Executives on the way up in this latest reshuffle include Juha Putkiranta as EVP Operations; Timo Toikkanen as EVP Mobile Phones; Chris Weber as EVP Sales and Marketing; Tuula Rytila as SVP Marketing and CMO; and Susan Sheehan as SVP Communications.

Since Stephen Elop assumed control of Nokia in September 2010, some observers have pointed towards a decline in the number of natives in senior positions at Finland’s biggest brand. The latest round of appointments goes some way to addressing this issue.

Gartner handset analyst Caronlina Milanesi accentuated the positive, saying that Nokia was evolving into a “slender more agile company focusing on opportunities to differentiate, such as imaging and maps.”

But Informa analyst Julian Jest described Nokia’s announcements as “drastic action” designed to “reverse its declining fortunes”.

In among the appointments and numbers, Nokia announced the acquisition of mobile imaging specialist Scalado. For more information on that deal, click here.

Nokia said it expects to incur restructuring charges of €1bn for the Devices & Services unit but warned that continued competitive difficulties would mean a worse than forecast performance for the unit. Nokia had previously forecast an operating margin of negative three per cent.

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The move gives Nokia a new revenue stream from IP licensing

As the quest for talent and intellectual property continues apace, Nokia has acquired Swedish imaging specialist Scalado, securing itself a royalty revenue stream from the editing, enhancing, viewing and sending of images on mobile devices.

While Scalado itself will continue to exist as an independent entitie, with all its present customer agreements and obligations, the 110 staff, developers, technology and IP will shift to Nokia. The company’s Swedish site, in Lund, will become a centre for Nokia’s imaging software for smartphones.

Scalado was founded in 2000 and has been working with Nokia since 2003. The technology itself helps to manage the hardware layer, like camera sensors, in mobile devices. The company already licenses its IP to the top five tier one mobile phone manufacturers, top ten sensor companies, and most leading platform providers. “As a result, when someone is using a camera phone, it’s very likely that Scalado’s patented imaging platform is onboard,” the company said.

A portfolio of more than 50 patent and patent pending technologies are currently being used in over one billion mobile devices, a figure that is growing with over 500 million devices each year, the company said.

Naturally, such a move would give Nokia a new revenue stream from IP licensing. As a privately held firm Scalado does not reveal its figures, but the company said it has been doubling its revenues year on year since 2007.

Scalado’s latest announcement, made in February, showcased a new technology that allows users to erase unwanted objects from images captured on mobile devices.

The acquisition, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close during the third quarter of 2012. Terms have not been disclosed.

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Nokia's flagship Lumia smartphone

Finnish handset vendor Nokia has announced that is expecting to report a loss for the first two quarters of 2012. In a statement released Wednesday the firm blamed “competitive industry dynamics” for damaging net sales for its Mobile Phones and Smart Devices business units, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, India and China.

The announcement takes the shine off the recent resurgence of Nokia’s high end products under the direction of Stephen Elop. The ex-Microsoft executive said the poor performance reflected an organisation still evolving to meet its targets. “Our disappointing Devices & Services first quarter 2012 financial results and outlook for the second quarter 2012 illustrates that our Devices & Services business continues to be in the midst of transition,” he said.

Nokia said that its Q112 operating margin for Devices & Services was “approximately negative three per cent,” compared to the previously anticipated breakeven. “Nokia expects its non-IFRS Devices & Services operating margin in the second quarter 2012 to be similar to or below the first quarter 2012 level,” the firm said. The Smart Devices gross margin is approximately 16 per cent, the firm said.

It also expressed concerns that second quarter performance would be affected by “timing, ramp-up, and consumer demand related to new products,” as well as the macroeconomic environment.

The firm said it expects to report net sales of 12 million units for its revamped Smart Devices segment for the first quarter. Of this, two million were Lumia devices, with an average selling price of €220.

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Nokia has announced today two new smartphones powered by Microsoft Windows Phone 7 (WP7), the Lumia 610 and an LTE-less variant of Lumia 900 targeting Non-US market. With the introduction of these new smartphones, Nokia aims to broaden its WP7 portfolio beyond the main-stream smartphone market. While the release of LTE-Less Lumia 900 has come with no surprise, the most impressive news in today’s announcement was the release of Lumia 610, the lowest BOM and lowest cost WP7 phone introduced so far. With a retail price of about 190 Euros, Nokia is now one step closer to bringing WP7 to the entry level smartphone segment.
This news has come only a few months after the decision by Microsoft to relax hardware requirements for its mobile platform, which clearly shows strong dedication from the Finnish company to execute its WP7 strategy which was revealed just one year ago. This move will clearly enable Nokia to better compete in the low-cost smartphone market without compromising the device performance or the overall user-experience.

Dave McQueen, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media comments on Nokia’s Asha range.

As a follow-up to the Asha range that Nokia unveiled at its yearly press event last October, the company has extended the 4-device range by 3, launching the 202, 203 and 302 at MWC. Running on Nokia’s home-grown Series 40 and further blurring the distinction between the featurephone and smartphone with a bundled array of content and service, the devices are all designed to encourage access to the web and the use of data services.

Although directed toward connecting the “next billion” of users in emerging markets, there is obvious value for pushing these “smartness” handsets into developed markets. As with others in the range, the new 202 includes an Easy Swap dual-SIM option and will be available for €60. By also announcing an expansion of Nokia Life and creating Mail for Exchange for some devices in the Asha range, the decision made by business users and consumers alike to reach blindly for an out-and-out smartphone is perhaps not an obvious choice as once was, particularly if

Andy Castonguay, Principal Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media comments on Nokia’s new 808 PureView.
While most recent news about Nokia has focused on its growing portfolio of Windows Phone-based devices, Nokia will reveal some of the handiwork it has recently undertaken to refresh its Symbian line-up at Mobile World Congress. Nokia’s new 808 PureView model will highlight the company’s renewed focus on imaging. With a robust set of technology to enhance the device’s imaging capabilities, the 808 will be positioned as a flagship device in markets where Nokia has not yet launched its Lumia line of smartphones. With a Carl Zeiss, high resolution sensor and advanced oversampling algorithms, the device is capable of generating an image files equivalent to 41 megapixels. While most consumers won’t take advantage of the full oversampling capability, they will benefit from better low-light performance, high-speed shutter and on-the-fly editing capabilities.

Symbian sales have been eroding swiftly in recent quarters amid new competition and the expectations for the new Lumia portfolio, but in key markets such as India and China as well as markets in the Middle East and Africa, Nokia is hoping to leverage what remains of Symbian magic and enhanced imaging capabilities to hold on to their market share through the broader transition.

The analyst firm’s findings chime with those released earlier this year by Strategy Analytics. Apple has displaced Samsung as the leading smartphone vendor in the field, with a 23.8 per cent share of the high end handset market in the fourth quarter of last year, and 19 per cent across the whole 12 months. Apple sold 35.5 million iPhones in the last three months, Gartner said.

And there’s little to surprise in the firm’s assessment that competition from the chasing pack is doing little to trouble the top two in the smartphone space. Sony Ericsson, Motorola and RIM were all described as disappointing, failing to challenge the leaders while looking increasingly vulnerable to the low-end threat from the likes of Huawei and ZTE.

Samsung continues to close in on Nokia’s overall lead in the handset space, although the Finnish firm’s ability to execute and deliver on the Lumia WP7 products did offer a glimmer of hope. Nokia will have to price aggressively to stay in the game, Gartner said.

Worldwide Mobile Device Sales to End Users by Vendor in 2011 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2012)

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 4Q11 (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (February 2012)

Vodafone's Peter Becker-Pennrich

As the global director for terminals marketing at the Vodafone Group, Peter Becker-Pennrich holds decision making powers over a procurement strategy that deals in serious volumes. Vodafone buys between 60 and 70 million handsets each year, spending $8bn across it’s footprint, including affiliates and partner markets.

Just eight vendors account for 98 per cent of the handsets Vodafone offers and Becker-Pennrich says he expects this number to go down. He won’t reveal how many models are in the Vodafone portfolio, saying only that it is a number similar to that targeted by Telefónica, which is looking to slash its 240-model range by more than half. He adds that he anticipates “quite a bit” of reduction in the number of models on offer during 2012.

As Telecoms.com speaks to Becker-Pennrich, late in November 2011, the handset sector is in an even greater state of flux than usual. Over the past few months Nokia and Microsoft have blasted back into the smartphone market, Apple’s talismanic leader Steve Jobs has died, RIM has continued to founder and Ericsson has announced its departure from the handset market, with Sony buying it out of the two firms’ JV Sony Ericsson.

Do you think that vendors are managing to differentiate themselves successfully in the smartphone space – particularly the competing Android vendors?

I don’t think they’re doing it very successfully in terms of impacting customer choice. If you were to compare devices from Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC and the rest, you would actually find quite a lot differences. But what we see from the behaviour of customers in the market is that they typically gravitate towards the large brands. It’s very hard for the smaller players to find ways to differentiate on top of what has become a very standardised design, which is a small tablet. There’s not much design innovation you can bring around tablets and on the OS side the choices are limited. So in terms of customer perception the differentiation is relatively low.

Will that change and, if so, how?

My personal theory is that, if you look at the last ten years in this industry, we’ve always gone through cycles that are driven by some form of technology innovation. So when we started Vodafone Live! we had the clamshell form factor coming into Europe, along with colour screens and cameras. That used to be a €400-plus segment but it went down in price over time.

So camera phones brought the Japanese players to Europe, who had not really been present before, while Nokia missed the boat. Later, the arrival of 3G brought the Korean players in. Another trend was for flat phones like Motorola’s Razr, and another was the slider form factor.

Now, what happens at the beginning of the innovation cycle, typically, is that whoever owns that innovation is able to capitalise on it and build a brand value.  Later on, as the innovation cycle flattens out and more players are part of it—and price goes through the floor—it’s very hard for the players who were not part of the first wave of innovation to explain to customers why they demand a premium price for their brands.

Then current trend for smartphones—started by the iPhone—has been unusually long, but it’s still just a trend. We’re at the very tail end of that trend right now and you can see that the players which led that trend initially are very hard to challenge. Vendors who can theoretically build similar products are struggling to convince consumers to take the risk and go for a lesser known brand.

So there is little differentiation right now, but I don’t think we are headed for a PC model, even though people have said that over the past ten years every time we get to the end of the innovation cycle and there’s nothing else on the horizon. I think there is always going to be something new that will change the world again.

If that’s true, what do you think that something new is going to be this time?

There are a couple of candidates. One is outside the phone space; I expect that the connected device category—by which I mean any consumer device that has a SIM but is not a phone, which is led by the tablet segment—will grow massively next year, simply because prices will come down significantly from where they are today. The number one or two reason for customers not to buy tablets today is that they are too expensive. That will be a significant growth driver for next year and our challenge is to make sure we have the right propositions and retail set up to capitalise on that.

Are you not concerned that tablets may be used principally over wifi connections, threatening the data revenue model?

That trend varies greatly across markets. I see that in the UK, but in other markets like Spain, Italy and Germany, we see almost the opposite distribution of wifi and 3G usage. Across the board in Europe it’s about 50-50. The operators are becoming more educated in how customers really want to use their tablets and are creating offers that are tailor-made to support these use cases. I would forecast that the share of 3G-enabled tablets is going up rather than down for the next year.

That said, there will always be a substantial share of people who want a “couch tablet” that they just use on their domestic wifi connection. We have offers for these too, with mifi and tethering options with smartphones. It’s not a problem, it’s a matter of offering the right way for people to connect regardless of which kind of product they have.

As I said, it’s not just tablets; look at our announcement on the Sony game player. We’ll see significant growth in the next two years for sure.

And what’s the other trend?

The second thing is that, whichever company can create a really smooth integration with the home environment—whoever gets that right first—will be able to command a premium on their products in the smartphone space. Devices will be very neatly bundled with whatever happens on TV, media centres, on home stereo and tablets etc.

I still need to find a product which really neatly works with everything I have at home. If you look at Apple or other suppliers, they are halfway there—I don’t think these guys have really cracked it yet. If they do then there will be a business model occur where someone would offer a quad-play including all the devices and all the services for a flat fee per month. That’s quite a disruptive business model for the device manufacturers. It could be good fro Samsung, Sony and Apple. But it would be harsh for other vendors. It would be hard for the likes of HTC, for example, which doesn’t have a play outside the mobile phone space.

So the vendors will be pushing to get users onto a single brand for all these devices, mobile and domestic?

I think so, because the ones that have the best potential to win in this space are the ones that already have a play in every element. So there’s a lot of sense in trying to drive people towards a single-brand home.

But what is happening on the horizon, and we just need to see how it gets commercialised, is that there are more and more standards like DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) and all sorts of streaming standards in the network and cloud storage. So there is the chance to actually offer something which is open. If someone works that out and finds a way to offer it across devices from multiple platforms, that could be a disruptive event for the entire industry.

Let’s return to the present competitive situation now. Nokia and Microsoft have made a high profile return to the smartphone space. Is Vodafone pleased to see them back with Windows Phone?

The duopoly of iOS and Android feels uncomfortable and, if you look below the surface, iOS makes it difficult for us to push our services and differentiation agenda. So competition is always good. But Android is actually much more helpful than WP at the moment if you look at the high level requirements from an operator perspective in terms of commercial flexibility, attractiveness to lots of vendors, the ability to pre-embed things and deeply root things into the OS.

Android does that quite neatly. The only problem is that if Google had a bad day and changed all its policies then there’s relatively little that the industry could do about it. That’s where a lot of the discomfort is coming from. So we need more competition in the smartphone OS space.

Windows Phone is not there yet. They are making genuine efforts for Windows Phone 8 but in Window Phone 7 there is still a lot to be wished for, especially  when it comes to offering all those things we need on the enterprise side and the overall flexibility of the OS. Having said that there is benefit in having competition and more players on the market and that’s why we welcome Nokia and Microsoft back into that space.

In the past Microsoft has been criticised for taking too PC-centric a view of the world, and struggling in the smartphone space as a result. Do you think this fair, and has it changed?

I would have said that was true for a while but if you look at what they’re doing now, the Windows Phone 8 kernel is completely changing from Windows Phone 7 to be the same as they have for Windows 8 on the PC. Just look at it technically, two or three years into the future, what exactly will be the difference between a PC which happens to be quite flat and has a touch screen compared to a tablet compared to a smaller version of that which is a smartphone?

I would agree that, architecturally,  Microsoft took a PC-centric view two or three years ago. But not now.

So do you think that Microsoft has a strong play in the smartphone space now?

Well, I continue to be confused with Microsoft’s stance. On the one hand they want to provide a fairly rigid, streamlined experience, saying they don’t want to confuse the customer. They want to have a brand recognition for their experience—they don’t want to be like Android where, in some cases, you can’t distinguish what’s underneath the skin that the vendors put on top of the OS. But in itself this is of no value for anyone in the ecosystem except for Microsoft.

On the other hand they want to appeal to as many OEMs as possible. But if they want to be restrictive with their experience and at the same time appeal to the OEMs, you just can’t square that. Why would an OEM be interested in taking the platform if they can’t differentiate on top of it?

My long term expectation is that at some point Nokia and Microsoft will become one. Not necessarily from a financial and corporate entity perspective but simply because it’s hard for the likes of Samsung and HTC to really justify any investments into Windows Phone if Nokia is benefiting from much tighter integration with Microsoft and the much bigger bet the company has made on Windows Phone.

Do you have a positive outlook on Nokia’s chances for success with its new offering?

I’m tentatively optimistic. I don’t believe that success is guaranteed but nor is it all doom and gloom which, you sometimes see in the analyst opinion pieces. Nokia stlll has one of the strongest and largest supply chains in the world. Their economies of scale are still significant. Unlike some of their competitors they do have a quite substantial presence, in all of the markets that we operate in, at least. It’s really important, if you’re a vendor, that you know how to work the channels and you’ve got enough sales structure in place.

And they do still have brand value, for sure—and a lot of brand recognition. This is a dormant asset because, if they manage to underpin that with more attractive products—and you could say the Lumia800 is an attractive product compared to what came before—then I can see how a lot of these things can be leveraged again, compared to where they were last year. There could be quite a good growth curve for Nokia in the smartphone segment in 2012. Is that going to happen for sure? I don’t know—but they have a fighting chance and therefore I’m tentatively optimistic.

Ok, so let’s go from a leader-turned-challenger to the company that effectively created the smartphone sector as we know it today; Apple. The firm lost Steve Jobs this year, and was overtaken by Samsung as the highest volume smartphone vendor, although Samsung has a far broader product range. Is Apple still a leader, and can the firm succeed without Jobs?

If we refer back to the industry paradigm about innovation cycles, then Apple were the ones that benefitted most from the latest one—and they have a lot of clout at the end of it. If the tablet is the next big thing then Apple have done a great job of also meeting that need from the start. It’s very rare in the tech industry that someone would be able to do that back to back.

So we just have to give them a lot of credit for what they’ve built. In doing so I think they did leverage their capacity for innovation. But looking into the company from my discussions with Tim Cook before he took his new role, and some of the guys that are running the iPhone and iPad business there, the whole company is completely built to execute from the top. They are so rigid on their processes—of going to market, of production, of everything you could imagine. It’s no wonder they are the most valuable tech company in the world right now because they have the best products delivered through the best processes.

The question is whether or not they will have the best product going forward. And you could argue that the iPhone 4s was a disappointment to many people. If  you forget about brand value and all these kind of things, and just genuinely compare a Galaxy Nexus, SII or HTC sensation with an iPhone you find many reasons why the iPhone wouldn’t be rated as high as the others.

So the big question will be whether they can replace the genius at the top with enough empowerment in the system and at the same time maintain the rigour in their processes. If they can’t, then you can imagine that all their marketing guidelines, which are very strict and are quite clear on what the different channels can do and cannot do, will be impossible to enforce. And you can already see that in some markets at the edge of Europe or outside [the core markets] they are starting to really struggle to maintain the level of control they used to have.

If you have processes which are not built with flexibility and your content is not absolutely dominant any more, then you can’t just instruct people to act the way you want them to and that could be very disruptive to the business model that they have built.

Finally, I’d like to hear your thoughts about Research in Motion. That firm is having a tough time. Do you expect them to come out the other side ok?

RIM reminds me right now of Nokia around the point when Nokia was selling the N97, maybe a bit later. If you have strong leaders who take credit for taking  company to where it is now, they really struggle to see that they shouldn’t be the ones who take it further forward. We’ve seen the same thing with Motorola, we’ve seen it with Nokia  and now we’re seeing it with RIM.

I’m not sure whether RIM entirely understand the magnitude of the problem that they have. I don’t think it has completely sunk in. Look at their options; should they license another OS? I think it’s quite difficult because what makes your Blackberry really valuable is not the user experience of being able to write emails and integration and all of that. It is the unbeaten ability to have push email with very decent battery life; a service that is super stable, super robust. They’ve taken a lot of flack for the outage they had but they ran so many accounts for so many years when nothing happened. That’s their strength.

The magic sauce of this thing is just about where the silicon hits the software. It’s very far down  in the software development. So it’s not easy for them to put some standard software on top of their hardware and then somehow use all the things they’ve been developing. It will be a massive effort but I think they will go for an open OS which they don’t control—which is why they made the QNX purchase.

Nokia's Lumia is too expensive at €420, according to Simon Lee-Smith

Nokia’s high end smartphones are “too expensive” according to the European general manager for devices at international carrier Telefónica. Simon Lee-Smith told Telecoms.com that Nokia’s premium devices are “not yet at the right price point,” adding: “If Nokia wants to sell in volume, they need to bring out devices which are cost-competitive.”

Lee-Smith said Nokia was “beginning to listen” to its carrier customers and that he expected the Finnish vendor to deliver devices in the new year that are “more commercially effective”. He said the problem related to products that have been available for some time, such as the N8 and N9, as well as the recently announced Lumia800, Nokia’s new flagship WP7-based smartphone.

At Nokia World last month Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that the Lumia 800 would retail for €420, pre-tax and pre-subsidy.

The vendor also used Nokia World to unveil a rejuvenated emerging market proposition based around feature phones heavy on functionality but low on price. “I hope they’re successful with that,” Lee-Smith said. “They need to be able to subsidise their high end smartphones, because they’re too expensive.”

Device vendors generally have unrealistic expectations of what carriers and consumers will pay for smartphones, Lee-Smith said. “All device manufacturers seem to think that a €400-plus device is the norm. Well, it isn’t. Customers and operators won’t pay that cost for a device which doesn’t differentiate sufficiently.”

Simply improving the specifications of smartphones is not sufficient, he added, saying that operators in general, and Telefónica in particular, won’t pay premiums simply because vendors are delivering phones with bigger screens or higher resolution cameras. “Let’s not let the technology and cost curve ahead of the demand curve,” he said.

The Titan is HTC's flagship WP7 Mango handset

Taiwanese handset vendor HTC has previewed two Windows Phone 7 smartphones to consumers across Europe, ahead of the products’ commercial release in October. The Titan and Radar handsets are the first from HTC to run the latest version of WP7, dubbed Mango.

While Microsoft revamped its mobile OS programme, HTC—once a firm that was described by executives as having “Windows in our DNA”—adopted Google’s Android operating system, establishing itself as one of the leading Android players. With the Titan and Radar the firm is demonstrating an ongoing willingness to work with Microsoft, although the allegiance is not what it was.

Nonetheless, the firm praised Microsoft’s new platform, with global sales and marketing chief Jason Mackenzie saying it allowed HTC to “raise the bar with advanced photography, multimedia and social capabilities”.

Microsoft’s close partnership with Nokia, announced early this year, was felt by some observers to run the risk of alienating other vendor partners. But Nokia has yet to release a product based on WP7, and has lacked conviction when voicing its desire to deliver a handset before the end of 2011. So it may be that WP7 remains more open territory for other vendors than it appeared early this year.

For vendors that have aligned themselves closely with Android, the recent announcement from Google that it is to acquire the handset division of Motorola might well have forced a rethink for the same reasons that the Microsoft/Nokia partnership gave them cause for concern. HTC, which has established leadership in both camps as it has sought to build its consumer brand, could prove a useful bellwether.

Nokia is reported to be ready to close its Vertu luxury mobile phone outlets in Japan

Nokia’s gradual withdrawal from the Japanese market looks set to continue, with rumours that the vendor is set to withdraw its Vertu range of “luxury” handsets and services due, apparently, to the brand’s inability to compete with smartphones.

According to reports in Japanese newspaper Nikkei, the Finnish vendor will withdraw completely from that market at the end of August this year, having failed to make any meaningful impact on the country’s mobile communications ecosystem. Nokia’s Vertu partnership contract with local big gun NTT DoCoMo was due to end at around this time also.

British-based Vertu is an independently run division of Nokia, manufacturing the mobile phone market’s answer to high-end, status symbol watches and jewellery. Many of its phones are made using precious metals and gems– it’s most expensive device to date, the Signature Cobra, retailed for over £200,000. A Signature stainless steel model retails for £8,600. The phones run on Nokia’s Symbian operating system.

Nokia’s relationship with the Japanese market has been a troubled one. The vendor pulled out of the mass market there in 2008 having battled to compete with locally developed products and competing offerings designed specifically with the Japanese user in mind. According to commentators at the time, Nokia’s offerings didn’t support many of the technologies popular with Japanese consumers, leaving the company unable to compete with locally based manufacturers. While Nokia’s star waned, the iPhone and Android based phones saw exponential growth, with the latter in particular cementing a toehold for device makers such as Samsung and LG.

Following the 2008 withdrawal, Nokia had continued to operate two Vertu outlets in the upmarket areas of Shibuya and Ginza. Nokia Siemens networks will continue to operate in Japan.

NSN is reported to be unable to find a buyer for controlling stake in its JV

Nokia Siemens Networks’ search for a willing buyer for a stake in the ailing JV appears to have staggered to a halt, with reports emerging that Nokia and Siemens have agreed to rather invest more of their own cash in an effort to revive the partnership’s fortunes. Reports in the Wall Street Journal suggest that plans to sell a controlling stake in the venture to a consortium including private equity investors were about to fall through, with Reuters quoting telecoms analyst Earl Lum as saying that “Any potential investor would need to see some light at the end of the tunnel with regard to profitability for NSN.”

When NSN was launched in 2007, the 50-50 partnership between Nokia and Siemens was projected to hit double-digit returns over the course of a six year partnership. To date, the JV has only posted two profitable quarters. As such, it is widely believed that the price tag is a little too rich for investors. Earlier this month, two private equity groups were said to have walked away from a potential deal after months of discussion came to a halt.

Although NSN is the second-largest manufacturer of wireless networking kit in the world,  the JV is reported to have lost in the region of $1bn last year. The venture has been flirting with prospective buyers since last year but it is widely believed that the partners disagree about pricing. Nokia’s difficulties are well known and Siemens, perceived to be on steadier ground financially, is reported by the WSJ to be interested in taking control of the JV. This may be a tall order, given that Nokia currently controls four of the seven board seats. This morning, Nokia offered the somewhat enigmatic statement to Reuters that there were “multiple options” for the JV.

Earlier this year, NSN had engaged in a battle of wits with the Chinese authorities over its $975m purchase of Motorola’s network infrastructure assets. The deal finally went ahead in May, following months of foot-dragging from the Chinese Anti-Monopoly Bureau, which was reluctant to approve it, thanks in no small part to objections from home-grown kit-maker Huawei. The increased presence of Chinese kit makers in the global market has put pressure on western players like NSN and Ericsson; as the likes of Huawei and ZTE make a strong play on price as a differentiator, their western counterparts have begun viewing services and managed offerings as a revenue stream in saturated markets such as Europe.

Microsoft has joined the queue of tech firms opposed to Google's acquisition of Nortel's patent portfolio

Microsoft has joined HP, Motorola Mobility and Nokia in a growing line of tech companies opposed to Google’s proposed $900m purchase of Nortel’s patent assets. According to Redmond, a 2006 deal means that Microsoft has a “worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free licence to all of Nortel’s patents” and that this agreement is binding regardless of who buys the intellectual property.

Microsoft said that the current terms of sale jeopardise this arrangement. The software giant, in a submission to the Delaware bankruptcy court, said it is seeking a ruling requiring that licensing agreements currently in place “must remain enforceable against the purchasers of the transferred patents.”

Google’s bid was approved by the courts overseeing Nortel’s bankruptcy proceedings in Canada and the US early in May. Since then, Apple, Nokia, RIM, Microsoft and patent-service company RPX Corp have all been said to be interested in bidding for the more than 6000 patents and patent applications on offer. The auction, led by Google, is slated for June 20^th in New York.

Google’s bid isn’t the only one giving rise to concern. Earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US Department of Justice’s (DoJ) antitrust division was concerned that Apple’s rumoured interest in the patents would give rise to a situation in which the patents would be used to stifle competition in the telecoms sector. Apple has a reputation for ring-fencing its interests and intellectual property holdings and, according to the WSJ, was in talks with the DoJ about these concerns. Blackberry manufacturer RIM, which had expressed interest in acquiring the patents, was prohibited from bidding for Nortel’s wireless business in 2009.

The patents in question include both granted and pending applications covering wireless, 4G/LTE, data networking, optical, voice, social networking and internet, among others. Nortel-owned technology is used in Blackberry, iPhone and Android devices.

Google’s recent moves into the mobile and desktop operating systems space has attracted a number of patent-related challenge from the likes of Oracle, which claims that Android infringes on patents it acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems. Whatever happens with the Nortel bid, Google stands to turn a profit: its bid comes with a $25m “break up fee” that will see it walk away with at least some cash should another bidder prove successful. In order to beat Google, the search company’s offer must be bettered by at least $29m and offers over and above that figure must come in $5m increments.

Apple has agreed to pay Nokia licensing fees for its technologies

Nokia has announced the settlement of a long-running patent spat with Apple. Under the terms of the agreement, Apple will pay an undisclosed lump sum as well as ongoing royalty payments for its use of patents Nokia claims belong to it. Both parties have agreed to withdraw their respective complaints to the US International Trade Commission (ITC).

The ITC has become an increasingly popular stage on which telecoms competitors have sought to hammer-out IP-related grievances; the Commission has the power to effect import bans on disputed products. Apple has previously sought such bans on Nokia and HTC devices.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement that the settlement “demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.” Elop added that, over the past 20 years, Nokia had invested approximately €43bn in research and development resulting in the generation of “over 10,000 patent families.” According to Nokia, the agreement is “expected to have a positive impact on Nokia’s recently revised outlook” for the second quarter of this year, which projected a break-even on non-IFRS operating margins for devices and services.

An Apple spokesman confirmed that “all of our current lawsuits” had been dropped, but “not the majority of the innovations that make the iPhone unique.” The legal challenge from Nokia dates back to October 2009, when the Finnish device maker claimed that Apple was hitching a “free ride” on Nokia technologies with every iPhone since 2007. Among the disputed patents were ones covering wireless data, security and encryption technologies and speech coding. At the time the claim was filed, Nokia said that it had licensing agreements with over 40 companies and that Apple alone had refused to pay up.

Apple

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Stephen Elop is under pressure to rejuvenate Nokia's fortunes in the smartphone market

Troubled Finnish handset vendor Nokia has said that it will not hit its sales or margin targets for the second quarter of 2011 due to a range of factors impacting negatively on its business. The firm said its difficulties are such that it was “no longer appropriate to provide annual targets for 2011.”

Nokia attributed its problems to “competitive dynamics and market trends across multiple price categories, particularly in China and Europe,” as well as a shift towards lower margin devices and pricing tactics from itself and its competitors.

Nokia is being undercut in the low end, high volume segment of the market by increasingly powerful Chinese manufacturers with far lower cost bases. Meanwhile it is still anonymous in the lucrative smartphone segment, where its partnership with Microsoft has yet to bear fruit. CEO Stephen Elop came close to promising that this situation would change before the year is out, saying: “We have increased confidence that we will ship our first Nokia product with Windows Phone in the fourth quarter 2011.”

It remains to be seen whether this confidence is well placed, but it is certainly out of kilter with Nokia’s wider take on the future. The firm had predicted net sales of devices to be in the range of €6.1bn – €6.6bn for the second quarter of 2011, but said that the reality will be “substantially below” this target. Nokia also said that its operating margin would likely fall from six to nine per cent, with breakeven now the best case scenario.

“Strategy transitions are difficult,” said Elop. “We recognise the need to deliver great mobile products, and therefore we must accelerate the pace of our transition,” he added.

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Achim Berg, Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone, at the launch

The latest version of Microsoft’s mobile operating system, Windows Phone, ripened this week. Mango, as it is known, adds more than 500 new features, including threads which switch between text, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger within the same conversation; the ability to group contacts into personalized Live Tiles; as well as deeper social network integration.

Andy Lees, president of the Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft, said the smartphone experience is complicated by, “a sea of disconnected apps and accounts as people attempt to keep pace with all the ways they communicate — from calls, texts, email and instant messages (IM) to status updates, Tweets, check-ins, photo posting and tagging.” To this end, Microsoft aims to “challenge the way people think about apps”. Where today their usefulness is measured by what can be done within the app, Microsoft reckons the future of apps is in how they can be integrated directly into the core experiences of the phone and the start screen.

Commenting on the update, Ovum principal analyst Tony Cripps said that, while Mango will provide a worthwhile upgrade for both existing and new users of Windows Phone devices, the firm needs to do better if it is to persuade the market that it has the most user friendly – and desirable – mobile platform in the market today.

“New features such as Groups and Threads look set to deliver a deeper level of integration between different communication apps (and other apps on the device) than users are so far accustomed to. But integration is a tough concept to sell to consumers even if they may benefit enormously once they’ve adopted it. Cracking this conundrum may well be key to Windows Phone’s future success,” Cripps said.

Microsoft also trumpeted growth in the Windows Phone ecosystem, with more than 17,000 apps currently available in the Marketplace and good things expected from the recently announced partnership with Nokia. A beta release of the free Windows Phone Developer tools, which will be used to create the next generation of Mango apps and games, will be posted for public download to Microsoft’s website this week.

Acer, Fujitsu and ZTE have now also joined the fray as Windows Phone licensees, perhaps in a bid to take advantage of the more achievable hardware specs now being touted by Microsoft. “That said, Mango still lacks the potential for customisation and brand differentiation that some manufacturers are looking for. With Nokia likely to dominate Windows Phone shipments once that relationship is fully up and running that may need addressing if other high-end OEMs are to stay on board,” Cripps said.

In related news, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon mobile processor was named as the core to power a new generation of Windows Phone devices.

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First out of the blocks and over the crash barrier was German enterprise software giant SAP, with its announcement that it had partnered with Amazon to roll out its applications on the EC2 compute cloud. Mammoth it might be, but SAP demonstrated none of the elephant’s famed capacity for memory. Proudly punting the bookseller’s new status as a “certified global technology partner” it had clearly forgotten that, a mere two weeks ago, one of the company’s biggest wigs, Sanjay Poonen, said Amazon’s recent outages were making it harder for companies to sell cloud services to businesses.

Perhaps the close proximity of Disney’s Magic Kingdom – the announcement was, after all, made at SAP’s user conference jolly in Orlando – had an osmotic, feel good effect, but according to SAP, the pair are now whistling while they work on benchmarking and testing Amazon’s cloud to make ready for the arrival of BusinessObjects along with ugly sisters CRM and ERP. Presumably, the powers-that-be at SAP are hoping that Amazon’s cloud carriage doesn’t turn into a pumpkin, as it did in April, when EC2 went offline, taking high-traffic sites such as FourSquare and Reddit with it.

Sony Ericsson wasn’t so much looking for the reverse gear as pulling into the lay-by, as it announced the dropping of its lawsuit against Clearwire this week. In January this year, the Swedish kit maker claimed that Clearwire’s swirl logo looked far too similar to its own and it sought an injunction to prevent the carrier from using it as it moved towards a launch into the smartphone space. In a move that surely has nothing to do with a managed services deal between the Clearwire and SE parent Ericsson, Sony Ericsson has now said that it will drop the suit, although it can fire it up again in the future should Clearwire start to get stroppy. Also extremely unlikely to have had any bearing on the decision is Clearwire’s announcement that it had decided against launching any smartphone device for the time being.

The managed services deal between Ericsson and Clearwire suggests that further U-turns are in the offing; Ericsson’s disinterest in WiMAX seems to suggest that both Clearwire and its parent company Sprint are about to switch nags and abandon the technology in favour of LTE, which is now established as a global standard. The two carriers’ impending technology shift has been all but an open secret in the industry for some time, with only the timing up for debate.

The deal will see Ericsson absorb some 700 Clearwire employees and assume responsibility for network engineering as well as operations and maintenance of Cleawire’s core, transmission and access networks. It will no doubt come as a welcome respite from some of Clearwire’s financial pressures, not least in terms of human resources. As well as bolstering Ericsson’s already sizeable managed services customer base, the deal further entrenches the Swedish vendor in the US market where, just five years ago, it was a bit player.

Apple is also apparently readying itself for a turnover. The next iPhone now seems unlikely to hit the market in its usual summer time slot. It’s also unlikely to ship with LTE. The only thing that seems less likely than improvements beyond the cosmetic is the notion that the herds of iSheep will hold off buying it and wait for the LTE-enabled version. While St. Steve is rumoured to be champing at the bit to get an LTE iPhone into the market, the company has, apparently, decided to park things for a while until it’s happy that chipmaker Qualcomm’s offering is beautiful, sorry, good enough to grace Apple’s devices.  This hasn’t stopped China Mobile from announcing that it has “reached a consensus” with Cupertino regarding the use of a future iPhone on the carrier’s TDD-LTE network, however. While chairman Wang Jianzhou said that talks with Apple were ongoing, he wouldn’t be drawn on the specifics of a release date for an LTE iPhone.

If Apple haven’t completely closed the door on LTE this year, it’s far to say that Nokia is all but slamming it in the face of its Ovi service. Hot on the heels of Symbian, Ovi (which is the Finnish word for door) is being, er, metamorphosed into the “powerful master brand” that is Nokia, according to the Finnish giant’s marketing department. From July this year, Ovi will be known as Nokia services, which The Informer thinks will probably be just in time for the manufacturer to be swallowed whole by the Borg over at Redmond.  Whether a beautiful butterfly or a toad emerges before the end of the year is anyone’s guess, but Nokia says users of Ovi services will see no difference beyond branding once software updates start to kick in.

Speaking of strange metamorphoses, Korean vendor Samsung, better known for its devices than its network prowess, announced this week that it was going to try to break into the European LTE network equipment market. Maybe the promise of a revenue stream and product range that Apple can’t accuse it of ripping off is too tantalising a prospect for the company, but the cellular infrastructure market is one of the toughest operational spheres in the world. The exit of once substantial players like Motorola and Nortel and the enforced mergers of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks are testament to this, and the rise of Chinese players Huawei and ZTE has turned the market into a small pond full of big fish.

If some think Samsung unwise to engage in handbags with Apple, it’s likely that even more will view the company’s optimism regarding its chances in the European market as wildly misplaced. Talking about its newly-formed task force for European network domination (a.k.a European Network Operations, or ENO), Youngki Kim, EVP and general manager of Samsung’s Telecommunication System Business said that “We believe that ENO will play a pivotal role for Samsung in helping us achieve significant 4G LTE success in Europe, through the introduction of our advanced LTE technologies.” The world loves a tryer, as The Informer’s granddad used to say.

Pop Quiz: What’s Orange and wants you to pay?

If you’re Arnold Schwarzenegger the answer is Mildred Patricia Baena, but if you’re not Arnie, whose American Dream triumvirate of Hollywood, power and disgrace is now complete, and you live in the UK, then the answer is QuickTap.

QuickTap is the new NFC mobile wallet service launched by Orange UK on Friday, a day after O2 tried to steal its thunder by announcing the partners it will be working with on its competing service when it launches later this year. Orange has buddied up with Barclaycard and Gemalto for its service, which lets users load up to £100 onto a payment app, which can be used to make purchases at participating retailers up to the value of £15.

Sounds good, but it’s not without restrictions. First up, the only compatible phone for the time being is the Samsung Tocco, an entry level touch screen toy that doesn’t even have 3G. If carriers, including Orange, are to be believed, mobile data is a mass market phenomenon. But if that really is the case, who the hell’s going to want a touch screen handset that can’t go over the EDGE? That’s the first problem with the new offering.

(Come to think of it, the Informer has a touch screen handset that is restricted to EDGE, but that’s because it’s an iPhone 3GS on the O2 network.)

The second restriction is that you have to be a Barclays Bank customer, or owner of a Barclaycard or Orange Credit Card in order to load money onto the application in the first place. And that counts a lot of people out of the equation. The only conclusion the Informer can reach is that Orange must be wanting to limit uptake in the initial stages of the service offering.

The firm said that more handsets “are expected to follow”, a choice of words that makes it seem as if Orange is not sure if and when that will actually happen. A press office lady told the Informer that Orange is “in discussions” with a number of vendors, so if the discussions are still ongoing, that Samsung Tocco might have the stage to itself for a little while.

So where can you use QuickTap? The handful of name-checks that Orange supplied included McDonalds, Subway and roadside slop house Little Chef. Hey, Orange: we’ve got enough of an obesity crisis in this country without you trying to get everyone eating fast food all the time! The carrier seems to be going after that segment of the market that was once memorably described to the Informer by a One2One (later T-Mobile) executive in a Gerry Ratneresque moment as “Johnny White Socks”.

And with that lovely image to occupy your mind for the weekend, the Informer bids you adieu for another week.

Take care,

The Informer