In a week during which the UK distinguished itself as the “Whiplash Capital of Europe” thanks to its rep for filing dodgy insurance claims, The Informer is pleased to note that, in the technology world at least, injury-preventing U-turns have been the order of the day.
There was more activity in the Indian mobile market on Monday as local carrier Reliance Communications announced a partnership with handset giant Nokia designed to push mobile data services in the country.
Nokia, the world’s leading handset manufacturer, has announced a structural and managerial shake-up designed to improve its performance in the high end smartphone segment as well as its growing services portfolio.
I had a note in from the team at free navigation service, Waze, to let me know that they’ve launched an early beta version of Waze for BlackBerry. If you haven’t come across Waze before, it’s a simply fantastic community mapping service that quite a lot of people are going nuts over. The service enables you to swiftly identify the best and most usable map routes — like a ‘path well trodden’ for the connected age.
Since making its Ovi Maps navigation service available free to the masses in late January, Finnish handset vendor Nokia has racked up 1.4 million downloads.
Acclaimed travel writer Bill Bryson once remarked: “We used to build civilizations. Now we build shopping malls.” In 2009, that observation became a theme for the mobile space.
In the rush by operators to roll out app stores, cross-network widgets and other services designed to lure Web developers and users, it is easy to forget that perhaps the greatest asset that operators have to secure themselves a long-term place in the digital-content value chain is plain old billing.
Nokia’s foray into the laptop space will start next month when the Booklet 3G launches in Europe, to be followed in November by its US debut.
Social networking seems high on the agenda these days among the operator and handset vendor communities alike.
The Symbian Foundation announced an application publishing programme on Thursday afternoon that will see it attempt to bridge the gap between developers and application stores. Dubbed Symbian Horizon, the new initiative was described by Symbian’s Sean Puckrin, who is leading the programme, as equivalent to a record label in the music business.
Nokia, the world’s biggest handset vendor joined the fray on Tuesday morning by opening the doors to its own app store as an extension of the Ovi services platform.
Application store trailblazer Apple managed to capture 12 per cent of the mobile apps market in 2008, according to figures released this week.
Finnish handset giant Nokia is refocusing its services strategy to make better use of third parties as a way of cutting costs.
The world’s biggest handset vendor, Nokia, gave some indication of its ambitions for the application store known as Ovi this week, announcing a content deal with Tim Kring, creator of the TV show Heroes.
Finnish handset vendor Nokia has significantly beefed up its Ovi mobile services offering with Tuesday’s acquisition of Canada-based mobile email shop Oz. Nokia didn’t say how much it paid for the firm, but analysts say $100m is probably close to the price. With the acquisition, the world’s biggest handset vendor has shifted the focus of [...]
The big rumour doing the rounds this week is that Finnish handset giant Nokia is looking to buy a stake in social networking website Facebook. Although Nokia is cultivating its own social networking site, Mosh, as part of its Ovi mobile services initiative, it appears that a deal is underway that will see Facebook plastered [...]
While Google is still getting its mobile strategy underway, Nokia is steaming ahead with its web services offensive, signing a deal with Vodafone on Wednesday. The “world’s largest mobile operator by revenue” and the world’s largest handset manufacturer have agreed to launch an integrated suite of Vodafone services combined with Nokia Ovi services on a [...]
Finnish handset vendor Nokia continued its march into the services arena on Monday, through the acquisition of US mapping and location based services (LBS) firm Navteq. It is beleived that “deep discussions” have been ongoing for some weeks and Nokia just confirmed that it will pay $8.1bn for the firm, making it Nokia’s largest acquisition to [...]
Lean and MeanWith summer supposedly fast approaching, many look to trim some fat and get in shape for the sunny months. The Informer has never been a huge fan of gyms; in fact his favourite machine in the gym is the one that sells chocolate. Telefonica’s UK arm O2, is one business that is looking to get lean for the holidays, though, and this week it announced that it is to trim 3,500 UK employees.
Cross-border opportunities are there, but Telenor has work to do in BulgariaPan-European operater group Telenor is making another move into Eastern Europe, this time buying Bulgaria’s Globul. The move makes sense for several reasons, but success won’t come easy in a country with high mobile penetration and a sluggish economy.
Telecoms.com speaks with Ali Agan, who has risen through the ranks of TeliaSonera Group to become CEO of KCell in Kazakhstan. With a young population Agan is keen to deploy LTE and exploit nascent demand for data services.
Jonathan Bell, VP of Marketing at OpenCloud, discusses how policy and pricing are just two dimensions along which telecoms operators can differentiate their propositions. By adding a third dimension, the service behaviour itself, operators can define and bring true innovation to the market that surpasses the traditional approaches of the past, he says.
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Calls for consolidation in the European mobile market grow louder by the week and four-operator markets look increasingly challenged. Now, those mobile operators that have already built scale seem to be suggesting that there is no option but to expand yet further through diversification.