Treading on shaky ground

If I were Dumbledore, then I could put my thoughts, memories in my pensive to keep my mind clear and fresh. But I'm not him at all and my mind now feels overburdened with news that I can't keep in - so I let them out.

You know, it's a great thing to tag blog articles. It keeps them categorized, easy to look for, easy to oversee, etc. What I'm now about to write, though, fits in a new category (well, at least to me): treading on shaky ground. What is it? You'll see, just read on!

Everybody paid immediate attention to one of Nokia's recent acquisitions, the agreement for Nokia to acquire NAVTEQ. You know, two things couldn't escape most people's attention: first, the huge amount of money Nokia is willing to pay ($8.1 billion!), second, that it is such an area (GPS and location-based services) that hasn't been fully explored yet. They must foresee something (and of course play an active role in it) that others haven't been thinking of yet!

And it's not the only acquisition Nokia was recently involved in: for example, they also merged with Enpocket. This deal is to give a boost to advertisement after the public announcement that Nokia is opening to the Internet. Not as if we didn't know that NSeries is open to anything, we now know that to the Internet, too. In addition, and I'm sure most of you already know, Nokia has launched new services for content download & consumption lately, check out Ovi and MOSH to see what I mean.

So good, so nice. But you know what? There are some parties who are not happy with Nokia opening to Internet and offering content online. It's said to be the operators (carriers in US) who will lose the most money if Nokia happens to be successful in this area. Although their online offering (mostly ringtones and themes) can usually be described with one word, pathetic, they're still the biggest revenue generator for Nokia. What happens, for example, if some UK operators refuse to sell new Nokia models? What happens if others follow them? Although, as I've already pointed out, Nokia might not be really affected by such a sudden(?) move in the US, it'd still be an unpleasant thing to happen to Nokia. I sort of have a feeling that what we see happening around is a total war between Nokia and others (operators, mobile manufacturers, OS vendors, etc.). That's the way how it goes.

As to mobile operating systems, the competition is also getting more and more tough. Although it's nicely put by Atmasphere that iPhone is a feature phone, in contrast with N95, the über-smartphone, Apple definitely has influence on newer phones not only from Nokia, but other handset makers, too. It's also worth noting what he found about the afore-mentioned two phones:

The iPhone is for consuming content, while the N95 is for creating it.

So from that point of view, Apple might not pose a considerable risk to Nokia's position yet. But how about Google? Even though it's a bit of an old news that Google is working on a mobile OS, I'm wondering how it will threaten Symbian's future. It's said to be a Linux variant (a new distribution to make the market even more fragmented?) and of course will be ad-supported (== cheap). Looking forward to it!

Thanks for being my pensive so far, I feel really relaxed now. And also eager to know what you think about all these things I've mentioned!

Cheers,

Tote

Being featured by Nokia

I am honoured to be the featured Forum Nokia Champion this month. However, to be honest I was not prepared for the increased interest about me and my work and surprised to see the flood of e-mails day by day asking me for help regarding this and that problem. I try to answer these e-mails as thoroughly as I can, however, I'm afraid I can't give perfect answers to all of them.

Nevertheless, e-mails are only one thing. People are asking me to let them join my LinkedIn network, too. Although the way they're asking it varies case by case, I'm afraid I have to refuse these requests all. You know, my biggest concern is that I wouldn't like to acknowledge that I know someone with whom I've never met. And since giving referral of someone is one of the core features of this networking site, it simply doesn't make any sense for me to do so.

But the last thing that happened to me just the other day is that I got an e-mail from Sargam Bansal. Yes, right from him (her?). I don't know where he took my e-mail address from or if it has anything to do with me being featured by Nokia, but it doesn't matter at all: he found me. Let me cite his e-mail in its entirety:

to: my e-mail address
cc: Olli-Pekka.Kallasvuo@nokia.com

Dear Sir,

I ve been using Nokia for past 5-6 years.
I had submitted my Phone NOKIA 3250 at Nokia Care Centre Sector 3 Noida(JOB SHEET NO:-1200196776 ; Serial No :- 357933005291399) for the problem it used to hang when music was on & some call used to come.

I got my cell after 15 days & after that the phone's condition was horrible. Itwas completely damaged , not even it was able to switch on. The Phone was submitted again. It been over one month & on each visit they are delaying the date.Not only me many people coming there are totally frustrated for the service being provided by Nokia care centres .

I emailed over a week ago and I have not received any reply. Similarly, when people email Nokia's Customer Support they are getting no response, which is surely unacceptable.
Due to such irresponsible behaviour, there has grown immense dissatisfaction among us, the users of NOKIA & also it makes me doubted about the name NOKIA have had in the past years. Now it has became a difficult question to answer.. Can we really trust NOKIA now???

I am sure you will be concerned about this matter and I would respectfully ask for your assistance in arranging for Customers to better informed and to receive prompt responses to complaints and enquiries.I hope you can agree that this should not be too much to ask nor beyond the capability of Nokia.
Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks & regards,

Sargam Bansal

Regardless of the seriousness of this e-mail, it's quite obvious that I can't help. Other than publishing this e-mail so that other (more competent) people can also read it and possibly react on it. However, there is one thing that I hope you have also noticed: who was cc:-d in this e-mail? Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia's CEO and not other. You know, I've never dreamt of being in the same e-mail group than him, but now that I have achieved it, I think I'll make an exception with Olli-Pekka: I'm ready to accept his invitation on LinkedIn. :-)

Tote

Time of competition - a peaceful summer?

Summer is hot, silent and peaceful in Hungary. I can just sit back and watch/read what's happening around the world. And in mobile space, of course.

Well, it's not that silent as I expected. In the past few days I have noticed new signs of a tough competition between mobile- and consumer electronics device manufacturers, internet service providers, mobile operating systems. Let me go into the details!

Although Nokia is clearly a market leader, they have to listen carefully to users' demand. On smartphone market, for example, there's a new challenger who demands everyone's attention. There's been a lot of discussion over whether iPhone is a smartphone or not, but that's not my point now. They clearly showed people how easy to use a user interface (UI) can be (I also happen to know how an iPhone blends, but that's a different topic:). However, the UI is not everything: there must be great (and well-implemented) features in the phone, too. You know, just in order to make a phone smart - if that's Apple's intention at all. It's not obvious as the mass market (=biggest revenue) of mobile phones is NOT smartphones.

These times everyone is trying to imitate iPhone's behavior on their phone; even one of my friends has put a new "iPhone shell" on his Windows CE phone - just for the feeling's sake. :)
Other people, on the other hand, wonder if iPhone is really selling at the same pace how Apple claims to be. You know, it's just one thing, they say, how many phones Apple and AT&T could sell so far (not to mention how many have actually been activated), it's just the hype that keeps selling at this level. Sooner or later, however, everything (and everybody) will calm down and we'll see how successful Apple is. Let's see!

Another company is also trying to expand into this new area - at least new to them. It's been announced several days ago that Google invested in cellular technology. No surprise, we already knew they're interested in this technology area (i.e. mobile), too. What might be a sign of a new aggressive campaign is that Google makes the conditions to FCC for a wireless spectrum auction. You know, I pretty much sympathize with Google in this case and hope that not only will the rules change (free download of any applications, services or content), but the list of operators will be refreshed, too.

By the way, Russell Beattie is back. In case his name doesn't sound familiar to you, he's an American blogger (one of my favorites) from the Silicon Valley full of great ideas. This time he shared his opinion with us how he sees the future of Nokia S60 UI. He's not alone with the vision that Nokia will change to Linux from Symbian, what he adds, though, is that he expects (or rather suggests) Nokia to revolutionize their UI, too. Neither would be an easy change just a side-note.
On the Linux issue, it's been already told that royalty-free doesn't mean entirely free at all. There must be (lots of) people who customize Linux to the needs of manufacturers, operators, follow market demands, adds features to Linux that have never been implemented since Linux originally has not been a mobile OS. The interest of all the possible players is very fractioned, there're already several interest groups who are doing their own design, following their own desires, etc.
On the other hand, there're lots of things Symbian (Nokia, UIQ, etc.) could learn from Linux, especially from their developer community. For example, I'm not sure if you've heard about the service outage of Symbian Signed that happened recently. For example, one of my fellow Forum Nokia Champions, Antony Pranata, was in trouble due to this. There are other people, too, who are not too happy with the current situation and think Nokia and Symbian could make it better.
Finally, as to the UI revolution: I'm pretty sure that everybody at Nokia has already drawn the conclusion from iPhone's success. I bet they've even already started to design the new approach of a touch-based model from Nokia. I'm really looking forward to it. And finally, a side-note to Russell: not as if it was a trivial step for Nokia to get rid of their "old" UI design in a jiffy. The UI (believe it or not:) is one of the core features people love the most in their Nokia phone. They might interpret a radical change in the user interface in a way that would make Nokia, khmm, unhappy.

That's it for now, I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts!

Tote