Nokia Cuts 4000 Jobs Globally
Nokia has just announced, according to Reuters that it is cutting down 4000 jobs in Finland, Hungary and Mexico as it struggles for better profitability. Finnish Helsingin Sanomat expects that the factory in Salo will see some 1000-1200 jobs cut as part of downsizing the output to match demand in Europe.
Yandex Moving International Maps Over To NAVTEQ
Russia's largest search engine has announced it has purchased map licenses from NAVTEQ, the Nokia maps subsidiary. The digital maps will be used to develop a detailed world map for the Yandex.Maps service, which currently shows a more "artistic" than realistic cartography of international locations (a current map of Helsinki is shown below). NAVTEQ's service includes highly detailed maps of Europe, North America, Australia and developed countries in Asia, and show intercity motorways, urban traffic networks, streets and buildings. Yandex says it will gradually add new content both to its desktop version and to its mobile application that supports all major platforms.
Nokia Counts 1.5 Billion S40 Phones Sold
Nokia announced yesterday it has sold the 1.5 billionth Series 40 phone to a 21 year old woman in São Paulo Brazil. The phone sold was a Nokia Asha 303, which comes with a touch screen and a pre-installed version of Angry Birds Lite-- a big step up from the Nokia 7110, the first S40 phone sold in 1999. This comes on the heels of Apple's attention grabbing earnings and sales numbers, where it reported it has sold 138 million iPhones since they came into existence in 2007.
Microsoft Finland To Send A Team To Imagine Cup
Editorial note: This is a sponsored blog post by Microsoft as part of their series Hear it from startups.
Imagine Cup is an annual competition aimed at students worldwide, who are looking to change the world. Each year students compete against each other in many different categories for the best application. Applications are judged by their real world potential in changing the world, but also how viable they are business wise.
This year the finals will take place in Sydney, Australia and Microsoft Finland will be sending one team from Finland to the finals. The team however, has to win the semi-finals in Finland first.
Imagine Cup has multiple different categories available, but if you choose to enter the competition local semi-finals will be held for the Windows Phone Challenge as well as the Software Design categories.
Risto Siilasmaa Set To Become Chairman Of Nokia
According to Helsingin Sanomat (in Finnish), and two of their independent sources, Risto Siilasmaa will be proposed to become the next chairman of Nokia. Currently, the Chairman of the board is Jorma Ollila. Siilasmaa is the largest shareholder and also the founder of F-Secure, a computer security company.
Nokia Announces In-App Purchasing For The Asha 303
For developers, having as many payment models as possible gives better flexibility for your app's business plan. This is especially important when targeting the frontier of new untapped markets, such as those where the affordable Nokia Asha 303 is expected to expected to be popular. Nokia just announced that they are now supporting in app purchasing for the Asha 303, which is the first for the Series 40 platform.
Nokia To Launch Windows 8 Tablet Next June
In an interview with Les Echos, a French business publication, the director general of Nokia France made a remark that that the Nokia tablet would be coming out in June of 2012, and that it would be running Windows 8. Microsoft has not confirmed a launch date of Windows 8, and the details of the new Nokia tablet have been kept to the minimum. At the Nokia World conference last month, CEO Steven Elop spoke positively about Windows 8 the partnership with Microsoft:
Send High Quality Unlimited Multimedia Messages For Free With Jongla
We talked about Jongla a couple of years back. The Finnish startup promised to leverage the personal capabilities of the mobile devices and become personal marketing tool. The startup offers smartphone users the ability to send unlimited text messages, videos, images etc across the globe for free. Sounds quite a useful tool for bulk marketing.
The core issues or problem addressed is with the limitations that we have when it comes to the size of the multimedia files we share via SMS or MMS and the quality that we do share is awful by all mean (could be my personal opinion). With Jongla, users are freed of this size and quality limitations with the traditional methods. With Jongla you can share all these files directly to their friends. So this means another application, another setup file, a whole new registration or account association. Well not exactly.
Angry Birds On Nokia Asha Is A Big Deal
Earlier this week at Nokia World, Nokia announced that it had partnered with Rovio and Angry Birds. In practice this means that all new Nokia Asha family phones will have Angry Birds pre-installed on it. A little earlier in the keynote, Stephen Elop announced that Nokia is making 14 phones each second. Think about it. It adds up to 1,2 million phones a day. Most of those phones aren't smart phones - they're phones being built for the emerging markets. Nokia Asha will be replacing the Series 40 phones and therefore, most of the phones Nokia makes - will come with Angry Birds pre-installed.
Live From Nokia World 2011
Nokia World, taking place in London, is the annual event of the mobile phone giant to showcase its new devices and also share plans for the future. Nokia has announced two new smart phones, Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710. In addition to this, Nokia also announced a new smart phone family for the emerging markets - Nokia Asha. This post is a log of live updates from the morning keynote by Stephen Elop.
Interview With Kalle Koutajoki Of Foodie On Developing For Symbian
In our series with Nokia we continue to discuss possibilities of developing for Symbian. This time we interview Kalle Koutajoki of Foodie.fm about their application and why they decided to go ahead with development on Symbian. Foodie provides an online service around recipes and shopping. Their application is able to give you a shopping list based on the recipe and also helps you see where the products are in the actual store and order the goods to your home door. Let's go ahead with the interview!
Xbox Live On Windows 8 Promises Asynchronous Cross Platform Games
We've covered Microsoft's new Windows 8 quite extensively this week on ArcticStartup from the Build conference, but the truth is - all this will have a lot of implications in the different ecosystems regarding mobile operating systems, app stores and what not. Furthermore, enabling Xbox Live to run as an application on Windows 8 OS will have huge possibilities for gaming companies.
Ballmer On Microsoft Moving Forward And Nokia
Yesterday at the Build conference Microsot CEO Steve Ballmer made a surprise visit on stage to talk more about how the company views new technologies and what this means for developers. He came out to further promote the importance of Windows 8 for Microsoft and what it also means for the whole company, looking forward. In addition to this, he also mentioned Nokia in his talk, but not in an extensive fashion. According to Ballmer, not only does Windows 8 change the approach to pretty much everything Microsoft works with, but it also changes the way how Microsoft views technology - the release itself will make Microsoft pivot and look at new technologies in a Windows centered fashion.
Microsoft Opens Up Windows 8
ArcticStartup is reporting from Anaheim, California this week from the Build event taking place until September 16th. I'm pretty excited about the new things Microsoft presented today to an audience of about 5000 developers. Why so, you may ask? With Windows 8, Microsoft basically outlined their tablet strategy and it has implications to their mobile platform as well. This of course makes the news extremely important for developers and startups looking at this space, including those working with Windows Phone and Nokia.
Remake The Nokia Tune With Audiodraft
Audiodraft, the Finnish audio crowdsourcing service (and startup by the same name) has landed a major partnership with Nokia to remake the hugely popular Nokia Tune. The most liked tunes on the Audiodraft page are actually very good and I'd seriously be thinking of using one for my iPhone.
Tero Ojanperä Leaves Nokia To Work With Vision+
Tero Ojanperä (pictured left), a member of the Nokia Leadership Team, will be leaving the company. Forget all the drama that you always affiliate with top executives changing jobs - this sounds really good actually. Ojanperä will be actually moving to work as a partner with Vision+, an investment fund that will be investing into mobile applications to foster the development of the Windows Phone ecosystem.
According to the press release, Ojanperä has built a long career inside Nokia, 21 years to be exact. Ojanperä has been working as the Executive Vice President of Services will leave the company at the end of September.
Nokia Goes NFC: First NFC Enabled App In Ovi Store
A recent update to Nokia's Symbian operating system (called Anna) activates the NFC chip installed in their C7 phone and the first application featuring NFC technologies has just been added to Ovi Store. Xchange app lets user exchange business cards, photos and other information by touching other NFC-enabled devices. After the touch, information is sent to users by email and contact details are automatically saved in the contacts section. Symbian's update signifies Nokia's efforts to reassure developers and consumers that the company is not abandoning the platform and is going to support it until at least until 2016.
Fluid Interaction Wins In Nokia's Calling All Innovators
Fluid Interaction is a Finnish tech startup working to innovate in the space of user interfaces. We covered the company back in April as they released Different Tack, a new way to view one's Twitter stream. Today they announced the company won Nokia's Calling All Innovator's Social Media category with their Different Tack app. This resulted in $150 000 as a cash prize.
World's Largest Stop-Motion Animation Filmed With A Nokia Phone
Nokia's been pretty good at pulling off stunts here and there with their devices. However, this one deserves a special mention. The film itself (embedded below) looks pretty normal and is a short story about a sailor. But only towards the end do you begin to understand the sheer size of the whole setup. Do take a minute or two to watch the making of video as well, it's embedded below the actual stop-motion animation itself. For the record, the phone used in the filming was a Nokia N8.
Windows Phone "Mango" Released To Manufacturing
Nokia and Microsoft have stated that the WP7 release by the codename "Mango" has been pushed onward to manufacturing. This means we should see it in stores before the year end. Mango is the name given to the latest version of the operating system installed in WP7 phones. Nokia has announced a few more details about the phone in their Ääni blog (in Finnish). Nokia has also confirmed that this is the operating system that will be in use in their first Windows Phones.
Nokia Tops 7 Million Daily App Downloads
Nokia has announced that they have topped 7 million daily downloads on the Ovi Store. The actual record amount of daily downloads is 7.62 million, which beat the previous record of 6.72 million set only a few days earlier.
Win In Copenhagen And Get Tickets To Arctic15
Startup weekend is organising a mobile oriented event this weekend in Copenhagen. It's already been of immense popularity, but we thought we'd show some support to the event in the form of offering free tickets to Arctic15 conference for the winning team. So, if you'd like to have a chance at winning the event, but also winning Arctic15 conference tickets for the whole team - participate now.
Nokia: Symbian Anna Coming Next Month
Nokia has also announced today in Singapore, that they will be introducing 10 Symbian phones in the coming 12 months. Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, said on stage that they plan to offer support and software upgrades through 2016 giving some hints on the continuity of the platform for developers. According to an article in AllThingsD, Nokia will also start shipping the new version of Symbian, Anna, on new hardware next month. Current Symbian phone owners will be able to upgrade their phones with the new version starting August.
The Nokia Ecosystem - Where They Stand Today
We're proud to announce that we've started a partnership with Nokia this month to cover the mobile phone company in greater detail. We look forward to bringing you lots of interesting details that otherwise may not have been widely written in public. This first post is about the Nokia Ecosystem and what it means today for those developing software for it. We talked to Karen Lachtanski, who works in Palo Alto for Nokia.
Apple Agrees To Pay Nokia For Licensing
Apple and Nokia have settled their licensing disputes, the companies have stated. According to the agreement, Apple will pay Nokia a one-time payment as well as on going licensing fees. "We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees," said Stephen Elop. "This settlement demonstrates Nokia's industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market."
Startup Weekend Copenhagen Goes Mobile
The concept of Startup Weekend has probably become familiar to any entrepreneur. The event gathers entrepreneurial-minded developers, designders and business master-minds to share ideas, form teams, build products and launch startups all in 54 hours. Start-up scene in Denmark has been very active with such events: a total of 6 were hosted over the last few years. Between June 24th-26th this year another such event will take place there, this time with a special twist - Mobile Copenhagen Startup Weekend. Ticket prices vary from 100-450 DKK (~13-60€) and judging by previous events they would go fast.
Nokia Rebrands Ovi To Nokia Services
I am not sure how exactly to put this, but Nokia in my opinion is finally burning all boats to head forward in the right direction. Be it partnering with Microsoft to bring Windows Phone 7 powered devices or the much hyped riddance of Nokia from its legacy of the Symbian operating system. The company yesterday announced it is going to rebrand its Ovi Store to Nokia services. The transition is expected to initiate mid July this year and will continue to early 2012.
Mobile App Download Will Exceed 44 Billion By 2016
An app for everything is where we are heading onto as almost everything goes mobile. By mobile I simply point at mobility and not just smartphones in the likes of the Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, etc, although these are the devices that take the cake away the instant you mention mobility. We have witnessed how the app stores have swarmed with applications of all sorts, from those associated to communication, social networking to gaming. You think of it and there is something available, a major reason why there is a crazy number of downloads taking places each instant.
A recent study was published by ABI Research, the gist of which states that the current trend of smartphone apps will continue successfully for at least another 5 years. Before I proceed with the exact download numbers, it would be better to jot down the number of applications available for various mobile operating systems:
Angry Birds Hits 140 Million Downloads And There Is A Lot More In China!
There is so much good to write about Angry Birds that many people would think that Rovio has always been a record breaker from day 1. It has taken Rovio 7 years and over 50 titles to bring forth this insanely popular game for the masses. By mentioning 50 titles, I simply needed to mention that I myself wasn’t much aware of Rovio before I played Angry Birds (and so did almost all my friends).
Some More On The Nokia Microsoft Partnership
Nokia Ääni blog, which is the Finnish equivalent of the Nokia Conversations blog, has just released in the past few days some interesting material regarding the Nokia Microsoft Partnership. The information trickles from a video with Kai Öistämö from Nokia's Corporate Development. In the video Öistämö outlines some interesting issues why Nokia chose to work with Microsoft.
