Nokia today announced that it would discontinue its Ovi Share service. Ovi Share is a web service used by Nokia to host users’ content, but with the push toward the Windows Phone platform over at Nokia it makes sense that the company would choose to consolidate its core services.
Users of Ovi Share will have until May 30 to retrieve their content from the service, at which point all of the content will be no longer accessible. → Read More
I doubt that you’ve forgotten about Nokia’s crazy 808 PureView phone with a 41-megapixel camera. How could you? It’s impossible to dismiss, even if the whole 41-megapixel figure is a bit misleading.
The only issue with it is that it runs on Symbian, a slowly but surely dying platform. Luckily, Nokia has confirmed that its PureView technology is headed to the Windows Phone platform as a part of the Lumia line.
Nokia’s VP of Marketing Jo Harlow confirmed the news to Finnish newspaper Aamulehti, but said that while she isn’t sure of a precise timeline, “it shouldn’t take long.” → Read More
It was over a year ago that Nokia and Microsoft announced their partnership to make Windows Phone the primary operating system for Nokia’s smartphones. But the real test in the consumer market starts now, the first full year of Nokia selling its new handsets, with a portfolio of four models shipping in a range of markets, including China.
Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia, is all too aware of the challenge ahead. Although his company is still the world’s biggest handset maker, its leadership is now much more narrow, at 23 percent, according to Gartner. And its fightback strategy on Windows Phone is effectively starting from scratch: Windows Phone accounted for only 1.9 percent of smartphones sold in Q4 2011, a decline on the 3.4 percent it took in the same quarter in 2010.
We got a chance to sit down with Elop earlier today, in a meeting room at the top of Nokia’s ginormous MWC stand, to talk about some of the challenges and opportunities the company is facing up ahead, and how its news this week will play into that: → Read More
My first reaction upon hearing about Nokia’s 41-megapixel 808 Pureview was that it was an absurdity, a perfect example of the very worst of consumer electronics, and a total miss. But the more I read, the better I understood that this phone isn’t just some freak of nature with a ridiculously high number attached to it. It’s just the slightly awkward first steps of a serious move by Nokia to differentiate itself.
If you’ve only skimmed the news, there are some things you should probably know about this strange beast of a camera.
First, the 41 megapixel figure is really misrepresentative, not to say untrue. It doesn’t take 41-megapixel photos in any way, shape, or form. Even in the special high-res creative mode, it “only” produces 38 megapixels. Mostly it will be taking normal-size shots, between 3 and 8 megapixels. So what the hell does this 41 megapixel figure even mean? → Read More
I think it’s safe to say that the new 808 Pureview handset was a surprise to just about everyone here at Nokia’s press conference. Not only did Nokia manage to squeeze a 41-megapixel sensor (no, that’s not a typo) into a smartphone, they squeezed it into a smartphone that runs on the Symbian Belle OS.
But first, let’s get the nitty gritty out of the way. Ridiculous camera aside, the 808 features a 1.3 single-core processor, 512MB of RAM, 4-inch AMOLED display, and a curved plate of Gorilla Glass to cover it up.
While I can’t help but wish it was a Windows Phone, the OS choice doesn’t come as a huge surprise. More than a few of Nokia’s recent N-series devices have gained a devoted following of photographers who have fallen for their great mobile optics, and the PureView 808 is geared toward that same set of mobile shutterbugs. → Read More
I’m sitting in the packed press room for the Nokia press conference.
Stephen Elop has just come out and right off the bat praised his company’s performance in the last year, a huge one for the company in its turnaround strategy with a new operating system (Microsoft), and a shift away from its own Symbian platform. It’s proven that “We can rapidly execute our new strategy.” → Read More
I’ve been mulling this concept over for a long while and it took Josh Helfferich’s single image to bring the concept into sharp focus. My thesis (and you won’t like this) is that every major “flagship” phone in the Western market is now made in the same mold, with the same trade dress, with one goal in mind: to fool the casual observer into thinking that everything is an iPhone. While you can argue on the outliers, the truth is right there. Every major phone released in the past four years has cleaved to this design for dear life. The trend began, popularly, with the Nokia 5800 (some would argue that Meizu M8 was the first) and hasn’t stopped since.
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If my Mom asked me what smartphone to buy right this second, I’d tell her to wait — wait until the Nokia Lumia 900 is released. It’s that good. Windows Phone 7 is that good. It’s faster and more idiot-proof than Android and presents core functions like phone calling and messaging better than iOS. Windows Phone is, in my humble opinion, a fantastic product.
Nokia has had a rough decade. Trouble started in the States where the company continued to pump budget phones into a market that went upscale. They were an early entrant in the smartphone race, but didn’t curate a developer-friendly ecosystem as quickly as others. They were down, out, and looking dead in the water. Then Microsoft floated by and threw out a life preserver worth $250 million. Now, after just one quarter, Nokia is the top dog of the third most popular smartphone platform. That’s a great spot to be in. → Read More
The Microsoft-Nokia partnership is still in its infancy, but it would seem as though that little guy is about ready to start walking. Strategy Analytics today released Q4 numbers showing that Nokia holds 33 percent of the Windows Phone 7 market share, pushing the Finnish phone giant to the top spot globally.
Windows Phone 7 devices in general are up 36 percent with 2.7 million units shipped in the fourth quarter. Nokia’s slice of the pie comprises .9 million units sold. → Read More
Nokia isn’t all that great with teasers. In August the company posted a teaser for the newest version of Symbian which just so happened to include the release date in it. Today, the teaser (at least) doesn’t give away the name of the product or anything huge like that, but it’s pretty clear what Nokia is hyping right here.
Obviously the big news here is some form of camera technology. We’re promised pure detail, pure depth, and pure definition — all in all, a pure view. → Read More
Apple has an undeniably huge opportunity in China, but it is still facing some big challenges. As the iPhone maker claimed the top spot as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor in the last quarter (October-December), it actually slipped in the rankings in China and is now in fifth position after ZTE.
But with Apple only kicking off sales of the iPhone 4S in China this January, it’s arguable whether we will see a delayed reaction from the launch of the new device, or whether longer term this is simply a market that will ultimately gravitate to local brands and cheaper devices in the longer term. → Read More
It’s a sign of the times, though not a particularly surprising one: Nokia has finally eliminated its European phone assembly infrastructure and will be moving those 4000 jobs to Asia, according to a Reuters report. The factories are not being shuttered altogether, and localizing and finishing work will still be done there, but the primary assembly work is being relocated.
The news and layoffs were expected, as the company has slashed many more thousands of jobs over the last year, but this particular cut is symbolic: the intensely European company has been battered into submission, and will join the others in the now-standard configuration of “design here, build there.” → Read More
The Lumia 800 is an excellent device, and if you’re new to the world of smartphones, the Lumia 710 is quite excellent as well. But those of us who’ve been excited about the Nokia/Microsoft partnership since the very beginning have been waiting for a flagship — a real showstopper: the Lumia 900.
And while we still don’t have exact word on pricing and availability, it would seem that employees at the Microsoft Store are offering pre-orders of the 900 in both black and white. → Read More
Forget about the Lumia 900 for a minute. Nokia just announced white Nokia Lumia 800 is finally on the release block and scheduled to hit stores later this month. Availability will be limited to Europe initially but it will eventually hit other countries as well.
Other than the stark white exterior, it’s essentially the same phone as its colored counterparts. The albino edition (not the official name) still has the same 3.7-inch screen, 16GB of storage, 1.4GHz processor and WinPhone 7.5 operating system. → Read More
Nokia’s UK YouTube account has posted a video promoting the pink Lumia 800, and shockingly enough it seems pretty targeted toward women.
Here’s the thing: It’s pretty obvious that, with a pink phone, the majority of its owners will be teenage young ladies. That’s fine. But doesn’t a commercial that shows only women enjoying the phone kind of ruin it for guys? What if there’s a young man in the UK that was really excited about the pink Lumia 800? He’s probably not so excited after seeing this commercial. → Read More
Nokia earnings are out, and the contrast with Apple’s blow-out quarter results is astonishing. The Finnish phone maker, still the largest in the world by volume, reported a Q4 net loss of 1.07 billion euro, down from a 745 million euro profit in the fourth quarter of 2010.
The company’s smartphone sales decline paints an even bleaker picture: Nokia sold 19.6 million units in Q4 2011, down a whopping 31 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago (even though it’s up 17 percent from Q3 2011 thanks to somewhat decent Lumia sales).
Nokia says it sold “well over” 1 million Lumia devices to date (not just in Q4) and that it plans to bring the Lumia series to additional markets – including China and Latin America – in the first half of 2012. → Read More
Does the term S40 mean anything to you?
It’s a mobile operating system built by Nokia for its feature phones back in 1999, and first appeared on the 7110. Well, apparently a lady over in São Paulo, Brazil has today purchased the 1.5 billionth phone running the operating system in the form of the Nokia Asha 303. Nokia is calling it “one of the most significant milestones” in company history. → Read More
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was all too eager to show off the Lumia 900 at this year’s CES, but he unfortunately kept to himself when it came to its price or release date. Now, thanks to a timely leak, it looks as though Nokia’s flagship Windows Phone could hit AT&T’s shelves on March 18.
That’s apparently the plan, anyway. The date, given to BGR by their anonymous sources, seemingly confirms earlier rumors about the device’s launch window, though they’re quick to note that the date isn’t set in stone since the 900 hasn’t yet completed the technical acceptance process. → Read More
Nobody wants to give Windows Phone a chance except for Robin and a whole bunch of analysts. Back in September, IDC and Gartner predicted that Windows would overtake iOS for the number two spot in the market by 2015, and Windows Phone head of marketing Achim Berg called that prediction conservative.
Now iSuppli has joined in, predicting that Windows Phone will grab a 16.7 percent market share by 2015, while Apple’s market share is expected to decline from 18 percent to 16.6 percent in 2015. → Read More
Ah, so close yet so far. Nokia’s new flagship Lumia 900 handset was on display here at CES 2012, and though we couldn’t quite get our hands on it, we did the next best thing — we shot some video.
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