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

Ovi Life Tools is a range of services covering agriculture, education and entertainment

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.

The business partnership is three pronged and will see Nokia make services from its Ovi Life Tools portfolio available to the rural and semi-urban segments of Reliance customers; offers on Ovi Music Unlimited devices to drive mobile music adoption; and an exclusive offer on datacards and USB dongles with the purchase of Nokia music phones as well as special data packages for other Nokia GPRS phones.

Ovi Life Tools is a range of services covering agriculture, education and entertainment – such as market prices, agricultural tips, and the weather forecast – targeted at both urban and rural consumers, designed to address the information gaps in these areas. The services will be available on subscription and pay per use for either Rs30 per month for education and entertainment and Rs60 per month for agriculture, or Rs3 per request on pay per use.

Reliance Netconnect Broadband+ datacards are being sold at an exclusive price of Rs 1999 along with the purchase of a Nokia music device, allowing users to download millions of tracks for free, direct to their mobile phone or to their PC from the Ovi Music Store for 12 months. Reliance users can also pick up a mobile data bundle of 1.2GB on Nokia GPRS enabled handsets in a bid to help drive music and data services.

Vrajesh Shelat, head of wireless data services & alliances at Reliance Communications, said: “In the last two quarters, there has been a significant adoption of smartphones by Indian consumers. We have seen the sales of smartphones on our Network increase manifold. With the rollout of 3G, we see a huge opportunity in fostering a mutually beneficial business relationship to offer customers unique Voice, data as well as VAS innovations with Nokia.”

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Nokia's new organisation structure, effective July 1st 2010

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.

In a move that signals the firm’s concerns in the top end of the handset market, where it has recently lost ground to Apple and Android, a new unit has been created to oversee the production of smartphones and mobile computers. The Mobile Solutions unit will be headed by Anssi Vanjoki, a Nokia veteran with nearly 20 years’ service. The rest of the company will be split between two other new units: Mobile Phones and Markets.

Nokia said that the reorganisation, which will become effective on July 1st this year, will “increase competitiveness and deliver a stronger and more differentiated consumer experience.” Last week, speaking to shareholders at the company’s AGM, CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo pledged to regain ground in the lucrative smartphone market, conceding the firm’s recent shortcomings.

“We are working hard to reclaim leadership in high-end smartphones and mobile computers,” he said. “It is critical that we improve the customer experience with the usability of both our devices and our services.”

Vanjoki, who between 2004 and 2008 was responsible for Nokia’s Multimedia unit and its NSeries smartphones, is now responsible for fulfilling those pledges, with the firm’s services strategy now part under his new Solutions unit. This will focus on the continued integration of the Ovi services offering into both smartphones and portable computers. Vanjoki will count among his direct reports Rich Green, who has been appointed Nokia’s new chief technology officer.

The Mobile Phones unit, to be headed by Mary McDowell, will manage the lower tiers of Nokia’s output, essential to retain the firm’s overall volume leadership in the handset space, likely to come under increasing attach from Far Eastern vendors. The Markets unit, under the direction of Niklas Savander, will oversee sales and marketing functions as well as sourcing and supply chain management.

Rick Simonson, who currently leads the Mobile Phones unit has announced his intention to retire from Nokia.

Mobile navigation service, Waze, hits the BlackBerry platform

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. This means that, generally speaking, you’ll get phenomenally accurate traffic indicators and really useful navigation knowledge parsed from the wisdom of the crowds.

Users have been flocking to the service which offers free navigation and quite a lot more. Indeed the Waze team have been working on making the service informative and fun to use. Which is why they’re offering an iPad for each of the top two users who much (i.e. drive over) the most BlackBerry road goodies during their daily commutes. (As you drive, you earn ‘goodies’ — a bit like pac man — and you can garner substantial points if you drive a different route thus populating the Waze map with more useful information for everyone else). There’s more information on the Waze blog.

Waze is available for the BlackBerry 8900, 9000, 9630 and 9700 devices (not the Storms, yet). Plus chances are it’ll work on whatever device you’re currently sporting too (e.g. Android, Nokia, iPhone).

In related news, you can now record your own voice navigation instructions with Nokia’s ‘Own Voice’ app.

Right then, this is genius! The ability to record my OWN voice navigation instructions.

“Tired of the same old “Turn left”? Now that navigation is free in Ovi Maps you can create your own drive guidance instructions and share them with friends and family. Cheer up your loved ones’ dull morning commute or do your best pirate voice for a friend – Own Voice for Ovi Maps lets you say it your way! Own Voice for Ovi Maps requires the latest version of Ovi Maps installed on your device.”

This is going straight on my N86 8MB. I love the fact that once I’ve recorded my 53 scottish-themed See-You-Jimmy driving instructions, I can upload the voice pack to Ovi Maps so that the 10 million other Ovi Maps users can each benefit from my voice pack.

“Irn Bru Ewan”, I think that’s what I’ll call my voice pack.

If you’d like to record your own voice pack, it’s really simple. Here are the instructions:

“Find a quiet space to record, then let the app take you through each of the 53 required commands including the penultimate “You have reached your destination”. When you’re done recording, you simply add your name, save and the voice pack is uploaded to the Own Voice website meaning that others can also choose your voice to direct them en route.”

I’m really looking forward to modifying the hugely annoying ‘Turn around when possible‘ message into something a little bit more… fragrant.

Download to your Nokia device with this URL: http://store.ovi.com/content/34132

Nokia's free Ovi Maps racks up almost 1.5 million downloads

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.

In the wake of its 2008 acquisition of location and mapping firm Navteq, which it bought for $8.1bn, the world’s biggest handset seller made mapping and turn by turn navigation available for free to a potential 83 million users. Since the announcement on January 21, Nokia is claiming 1.4 million downloads of Ovi Maps, with the one million mark reached at the end of the first week.

The top five markets downloading the new version of Ovi Maps are China, Italy, UK, Germany and Spain. While the top five most popular Nokia devices installing the service were: the 5800 XpressMusic, N97 mini, N97, 5230 and E72.

“This is great news for our third party application developers.  Within a matter of days there is an installed base of more than one million active users all potentially hungry for new and innovative location-aware apps,” said Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president at Nokia.

“For the operators too there is a growing opportunity to sell more data-plans and a complete navigation package to existing and new customers,” he added, while Nokia said it is quickly activating a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services.

At the recent re-launch of Ovi Maps in London, Vanjoki indicated that in the long term, Nokia hopes to gain greater revenues through the widespread adoption of Ovi Maps as a contextual platform for mobile applications, which will, of course, be sold through the Ovi store. Vanjoki said that Nokia believes the map should become “the user interface to our life,” marking another step toward positioning its mapping data and technologies as a key platform at the centre of applications.

And when asked about the potential revenue loss from making features such as turn by turn available for free, Vanjoki said the intention was to make a little money from a much bigger pool of users, than taking a lot of money from a smaller base. He also hinted however that in the long term, the platform would be good for mobile advertising, suggesting another, much hyped, revenue stream.

The big attraction with this new service is that the maps are available in on and offline mode. They can either be downloaded on the fly over cellular or wifi, or sideloaded in advance from the PC. Any maps that are downloaded are also cached so they don’t need to be downloaded again, and this goes for all the maps available for 180 countries. The service also features car and pedestrian navigation features, such as turn-by-turn voice guidance for 74 countries in 46 languages, and traffic information for over ten countries.

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If they build it, will they come?

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. Mobile platform developers, handset manufacturers and operators alike have unanimously moved on from building up their developer communities and have switched their focus to opening virtual marketplaces in a bid to tap into a promising revenue stream.

Since Apple ignited the app store revolution in mid-2008 with the opening of its own, aptly named, App Store, both rivals and partners have been falling over themselves in the hope of replicating the firm’s success in the space. In July, Apple said that iPhone users had racked up more than 1.5 billion application downloads in the first year since launch. Apple’s storefront now boasts more than 65,000 apps available to consumers in 77 countries and more than 100,000 developers in the iPhone Developer Program.

These are big numbers, and they’ve been duly noted by other players in the industry. But Apple has capitalised on the ‘vertical stovepipe’ model it uses to lock down its revenues and is still the only firm to really drive home the app store concept via its marketing and advertising campaigns.

Without the same level of control over both the hardware and software, some of the other app storekeepers are facing a challenge in the form of market fragmentation. When asked why the Symbian Foundation didn’t open its own store, instead opting to let Symbian developers pitch their apps to the numerous operator or vendor run initiatives, Laura Merling, acting head of developer programmes says: “We don’t want to compete with our members. We want to bring them value and grow the ecosystem. Most consumers don’t know they have Symbian on their phone. They know which vendor made their phone, and they know their carrier. It’s not like Apple, which is all in one,” Merling says.

“But as soon as it starts getting out on other devices, then you’ll have the same fragmentation issues. So those different apps are going to be in different stores again. It fragments distribution. We don’t want another store. We want to help the developers and the stores to get more apps in the stores.”

To date, Nokia’s Ovi has been the de facto store for Symbian apps—at least in publicity terms. But this is probably down to the Finnish firm’s historical affiliation with the platform and there’s nothing to rule out other handset vendors or operators building their own app stores around Symbian offerings. The Foundation certainly hopes so and wants to be there to help them with that process. Other shop fronts that feature Symbian goods are the Samsung Application Store and US carrier AT&T’s Media Mall.

“Look at Ovi, they’ve said ‘here’s the type of apps we want in our store, if you can help us find those and help us supply those’,” Merling says. “The great part is we can go to the developer community and tell them these are the top types of apps companies are seeking for their stores. Some might focus on entertainment, others on media, or utilities. They might not have focused on local search and local discovery. Every app store has its things that it’s missing and we can act as a facilitator of that on a broader scale,” she adds.

Key to this approach is an efficient publishing platform for applications, which for Symbian is Horizon – an initiative described by programme leader Sean Puckrin as “equivalent to a record label in the music business”. The aim of Horizon is to offer a range of services to developers to help them get Symbian-friendly versions of their applications into various stores, thus lowering the cost of distribution.

“What we’ve looked at is two areas in which Symbian could help the broader ecosystem,” Merling explains. “One of them is starting with the processing of apps. If you think about a developer, the market for Symbian is pretty fragmented. There are 25 different stores that you might deploy your app into to get distribution. With the Apple iPhone there’s just one store. So how do you get enough apps in the store if you’re the store owner—and, if you’re the developer, do you want to choose one store over another? You want the broadest distribution, so you want to be in all of them. But there are time and money costs associated with that. So our goal with the Horizon platform is an app publishing platform. The goal is to minimise the cost to the developer for getting distribution.”

For the likes of Apple, this isn’t an issue. The company benefits from an almost fanatical developer base and, along with Research In Motion (RIM), Microsoft and Palm, a single channel to market. Android, the mobile OS venture backed by Google and the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), differs slightly from this crowd due to the fact that it has a single app store—Android Market—but it also has strong operator backing because of its open and accommodating attitude towards the carrier community. As a result, operators are able to take more control of the applications their users are downloading and offer Android-based applications through their own app stores.

However, there is a common issue that crops up time and time again, affecting the closed distribution models as much as it affects the open ones. How much control should the operating system developers exercise over the application vetting process?

Apple’s vetting process for applications, at times seemingly random, has caused plenty of controversy, with a number of applications bouncing in and out of the app store like yo-yos as Apple apparently vacillates over their validity. Developers have complained that Apple has been less than forthcoming with explanations as to why certain apps have been removed, but some commentators believe operator partners have had a word in Apple’s ear about certain applications, such as VoIP apps or those that allow tethering, which they don’t want running on their networks.

Conversely, Android has caught flak for being too lax in its own vetting policies which, when the Android Market first opened its doors in 2008, resulted in a certain amount of malware or virus-infected applications being released through the official channel. Then again, Android has also pulled applications from its own storefront after carriers complained they violated certain terms and conditions. Once again, VoIP was a common culprit.

It’s still early days for many of the other app stores. RIM only recently showed off its BlackBerry Widget Software Development Kit (SDK), a suite of tools allowing third party application developers to build rich, web-based applications for BlackBerry handsets, and Palm will officially open the doors to its Palm webOS developer programme in December. Meanwhile Microsoft has already drawn its line in the sand, releasing a list of what it will and won’t allow Windows mobile applications sold in its store to do, when it launches in the fourth quarter of this year.

But the lack of consistency and regulation in this nascent market has already caught the attention of the authorities. The US Federal Communications Commission recently took its first look into the business, having sent letters to Apple, its US carrier partner AT&T and Google asking for answers as to why Apple blocked Google’s VoIP application, which enables AT&T subscribers to make free voice calls.

That particular case is ongoing and its outcome will likely set a precedent for the rest of the industry. Not least because it has the potential to exacerbate the bottleneck problem likely to arise from the application inspection process as app stores rise in popularity. Screening each and every application to be made available for a certain platform is a timely process as well as an expensive one – more so for fragmented platforms like Symbian and Linux – and for developers who depend on getting their wares into the market as soon as they’re released time is indeed of the essence.

“Every store does its own signing and testing – these things that every store has to do, but the reality is that a huge chunk of it is similar across all the stores,” says Symbian’s Merling. “So if the Foundation can act as a moderator—the place that all Symbian apps get processed—we become the testing ground, create a set of tools that let people create device independent apps and test them for them, approve them and get the distribution. A moderator which removes that cost from them in terms of managing that store; we see that as a big opportunity.”

The big test will be whether the storekeepers can assess and improve each application submitted in an efficient and fair manner, giving adequate feedback to application developers. When Verizon recently launched its developer community initiative (VDC), giving developers who have created apps for platforms such as Java, BREW, Android, Windows Mobile and others the opportunity to submit their creations for deployment in the company’s soon to be launched app store it promised a streamlined testing and certification process with the goal of having apps approved within 14 days of submission.

“The large number of platforms makes developing applications to work on a number of devices very expensive,” says Pascal Thomas, vice president of digital innovation and communities at Orange. So it might be that to combat fragmentation expenses, developers choose a single platform and stick to it, in which case it won’t necessarily be the biggest, but the most customer relevant shopping mall that provides the biggest pull. Then again, in order to maximise potential revenues, developers will need to get their goods into as many stores as possible, which will mean addressing fragmentation itself, both on the same platform and across different platforms. In this case, perhaps the industry needs to adopt a standards-based approach. “The industry needs to work together to develop some rules to gather developers together so we can have success like the Apple’s app store has had success,” Thomas adds.

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Although operators’ content offerings are becoming overshadowed by the profusion of application stores being launched by handset and OS vendors, it is interesting to note that many of these vendors want to enable their stores with carrier billing. IPhone App Store copycats they might be, but one thing they don’t feel they can get away with copying is Apple’s single-minded exclusion of carrier billing from its store. All applications bought on the App Store are billed through Apple’s online-digital-content platform, iTunes – leaving operators well and truly out of the picture.

Not so in the case of Nokia’s Ovi Store and Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Both stores are being enabled with carrier billing wherever possible. And most other vendors launching app stores are reportedly planning to do the same, even though carrier billing is extremely costly. Carriers charge a percentage of the revenue billed through their networks. The average for off-portal content transactions in Western Europe is about 30% – which is phenomenally high compared with the single-digit percentages charged by credit/debit-card and online-payment providers.

But handset/OS vendors realize that it is going to be hard to get sales going on their nascent stores without carrier billing. That’s because they do not have existing billing relationships with end-users, and it is unrealistic to think that most users will be happy to key in their credit-card details on their phone before they try to make their first purchase on a store. Most users will give up before trying.

Payments for the masses

At the same time, the vast majority of mobile users around the world don’t own credit or debit cards – either because they are too young or because they live in parts of the world where bank accounts and plastic money are rare. This is predominantly the case in most developing countries.

So if most app-store sales end up being billed via mobile networks, operators will reap handsome profits from services that they won’t have had to spend a penny to deploy and market – just as they do through enabling billing for third-party off-portal services.

Another enticing opportunity afforded by operators’ billing relationship with mobile users is that of enabling mobile payments on fixed-line Web services. That is already happening through applications that mobile billing aggregators are making available to Web-site owners, which enable users to key in their mobile numbers to pay for digital and, in some cases, physical goods through their mobile accounts.

After the onslaught suffered by operators from online and PC brands such as Google and Apple – which are doing a good job of disintermediating carriers from the mobile content value chain – operators have the opportunity to counterattack and tap into some of the revenue being made through digital content and e-commerce on the Web.

Operators have a far greater chance of generating revenue from billing than from trying to compete in the provision of content-and-application services with brands that are simply better at it and have more street cred than they do.

But to ensure that mobile payments become mainstream, mobile operators must become less greedy and substantially lower the extortionate rates they currently charge. In the long run, it will pay off handsomely for them.

The Booklet 3G - just don't call it a netbook

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.

The Booklet 3G will be available to O2 customers in Germany from October 22, for €249 upfront and then €20 per month over 24 months. All you can eat data is available for an additional €25 per month.

US customers will be able to order the device from the same date at retailer Best Buy, but the Booklet will not actually hit US soil until mid-November. The device is being made available for $299.99 on AT&T’s network with a Data Connect plan and two year contract.

Powered by Intel’s Atom processor and weighing in at 1.25kg, the Booklet runs Microsoft’s Windows 7operating system. It features HSPA and wifi connectivity as well as A-GPS , integrated Bluetooth and promises a 12-hour battery life.

Analysts said that Nokia’s decision to go with Windows, rather than a Linux-based OS, which had been anticipated, was the most surprising element of the announcement. But there was identifiable logic in the decision, they said.

“There has been some disappointment with Linux netbooks so far, ” said Carolina Milanesi, research director at Gartner. “Nokia’s brand is big in the mobile phone space but not in the PC space. Having Microsoft on board will give Nokia a little more strength in that market.”

While the Booklet represents Nokia’s bid to get a foothold in a new hardware sector, it is also designed to showcase the firm’s Ovi service portfolio. The launch, Nokia said, was “another important ingredient in the move towards becoming a mobile solutions company.”

Is Nokia set to acquire Dopplr?

Social networking seems high on the agenda these days among the operator and handset vendor communities alike.

First we had Vodafone announcing its 360 platform, which at least one analyst has compared to Nokia’s initial Ovi announcement in 2007. There are key differences in that Vodafone is positioning social networking at the core of 360, but more as an aggregator than a whole new social network as Ovi tried to do.

Yet it seems the Finnish handset giant is pressing on with its plan. The rumour circulating on Thursday is that Nokia has snapped up travel-focused social network Dopplr, which is run, incidentally, by ex-Nokia director of design strategy, Marko Ahtisaari.

Dopplr fills the niche of ‘intention broadcasting’ rather than status broadcasting, whereby users publish details of where they are travelling to, with the aim of discovering coincidences in the travel plans of their network of contacts.

The purchase price is thought to be between €10m and €15m, which is also thought to be less than Ahtisaari was hoping for. Both Nokia and Dopplr are keeping quiet, but the move fits in with Nokia’s rash of acquisitions in this space. Earlier this month, Nokia bought cloud-based social media sharing and messaging service Plum, and that was in the wake of the acquisitions of Cellity and Bit-Side earlier this year. In 2008 there was the acquisition of Plazes, and prior to that, Twango.

However, Nokia’s main foray into the social network space with its own platform – Mosh – was ill fated and the meeting place recently closed its doors.

So it’s no surprise that IDC analysts John Delaney and Jonathan Arber think the operators may have an edge here in their ability to leverage their network assets. “Given the speed with which consumers are realising the potential of the mobile handset as a social networking platform, Vodafone has clearly seen an opportunity to use its network assets to offer its customers an enhanced experience,” the analysts said on the announcement of Vodafone 360.

“It is focusing on allowing users to bring together contacts and content from their existing social networks, and to share content to these networks. This focus on enhancing, rather than replacing, customers’ social networks and services is something we expect to see more of from other operators in the coming months,” IDC said.

Symbian to play application middle man

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.

The aim of Horizon is to offer a range of services to developers to help them get Symbian friendly versions of their applications into various stores. At launch, the Foundation is working with Nokia’s Ovi store, the Samsung Application Store and US carrier AT&T’s Media Mall. Services will include language translation, UI construction and porting from one platform to another, as well as marketing and certification. Developers working on the launch phase of the project include UK newspaper The Guardian, Dynatech, MobileIron, National Public Radio (NPR), Skout, Ustream, and Wine.com.

The presence of dating app Skout, which has had success on the iPhone, gives a hint as to Symbian’s Strategy, which seems in part to be seeking already successful apps and offering to help them port to Symbian in a bid to create a reliable stable of applications.

“[Developers] see the volume and opportunity on Symbian,” Puckrin told telecoms.com, “but there’s a little bit of last mile work required to help operators actually seize that opportunity. We’ve had positive feedback from developers; they see it as addressing a number of the issues they foresee on going to market on Symbian,” he said.

Puckrin conceded that not all developers would feel the need to exploit the new service, which is probably a good thing for the Foundation, given that it plans to work on an app by app, bespoke basis, which could prove extremely time consuming.

“It is a lot of work,” he said, “and it won’t be thousands of applications to start with. It will scale over time and we’re expecting it to really take off around October.”

The involvement of Symbian Foundation founder member AT&T is also interesting, as it points towards the Foundation’s desire to spread the geographical appeal of its OS to developers. “One aspect of the programme is to look at companies that don’t have Symbian on their doorstep, in the US, for example, and help them understand the great opportunity worldwide that exists for them if they port their applications to Symbian.”