Nokia Rebuilding Ovi Store as Downloads Near 1M a Day
By Jason Ankeny
Nokia said it is at work on rebuilding its Ovi Store mobile content storefront, stating that its current iteration was always designed as a stopgap to bring together the handset giant's assorted portal efforts like Download and MOSH. Speaking at a roundtable event in London, Nokia's vice president of media products George Linardos said Nokia is currently revamping Ovi Store for a proposed spring 2010 launch, emphasizing greater speed and reliability as well as an improved user interface. "We're doing just under one million downloads a day, and our download numbers are growing 100 percent month-on-month," Linardos said according to Mobile Entertainment. "All the while there's been this new platform being built in the background, which we'll be talking about in the next couple of months."
According to Linardos, Nokia is constructing the revamped Ovi Store largely from the ground up--a handful of legacy components will be retained, but phased out over the course of subsequent updates. "So it'll probably be about 75 percent from scratch, and three or four months after that it will be 100 percent," Linardos added. [FierceMobileContent]
Nokia's Comes With Music Barely Tops 100k Users Worldwide
By Jason Ankeny
A year after the U.K. debut of Nokia's all-you-can-eat Comes With Music service, digital music research firm Music Ally reports the mobile music effort has signed up slightly more than 107,000 users worldwide. According to Music Ally, 32,728 consumers signed up with Comes With Music as of July 2009--Australia follows with 23,003 subscribers, trailed by Singapore with 19, 318. Music Ally notes that Comes With Music is faring more successfully in emerging markets than in developed Western nations, where the competition is stiffer.
"Comes With Music has been a live service for 12 months in the U.K. and over the last eight months, has also gone live in 11 other countries," a Nokia spokesperson told Music Ally. "This is a very fast rollout for a service of its kind, especially when you consider the music is a mix of global and local content for each location. In terms of innovation, Comes With Music is a significant shift for both consumers and the industry alike. Nokia will continue to bring new services to market and we will continue to add further countries and partners to our Comes With Music rollout. We look forward to being able to share more details on this over the coming weeks. With regard to the statistics presented in your article, as per our longstanding policy we do not comment on industry speculation or rumors." [FierceMobileContent]
Nokia Invests $70M in Obopay
By Phil Goldstein
Nokia is investing a large amount of money, presumed to be around $70 million, in mobile payment firm Obopay, lending its clout to the burgeoning mobile payment industry.The amount of the investment was not disclosed, but Obopay, a Redwood City, Calif.-based company, made a regulatory filing earlier this week showing the sale of $70 million worth of preferred stock. In addition, Nokia's head of corporate business development, Teppo Paavolo, will be seated on Obopay's board of directors.
Obopay, which currently operates in the United States and India, allows people to fund accounts with cash or by linking the account to a credit card. Users can then send money via text message. Those receiving the money can then sign up for an Obopay account of their own or just transfer the money directly to an account. Obopay charges a 25 cent fee to send up to $1,000 and no fee to receive the money. The value of mobile payments will exceed $300 billion internationally by 2013, according to a recent report by Juniper Research.
There are other competing mobile payment services out on the market, including mFoundry, which is backed by, among others, Motorola and eBay's PayPal, and was a FierceWireless Fierce 15 winner in 2008. [FierceWireless]
Nokia Leaves The Enterprise Solution Business
By Claudio Castelli, Senior Analyst at Ovum
Mobile UC involves high complexity and vendors should concentrate on their strengths instead of trying to provide end-to-end solutions.
With an ambitious plan to provide end-to-end UC on mobile devices, Nokia took the acquisition path to create a comprehensive set of mobile applications. Its software solutions for enterprises include applications such as email, voice, device management and mobile access to business back-end systems. However, in contrast to its main enterprise rivals, Nokia never had a PBX installed base or a software collaboration footprint. As a result, its direct relationship with enterprises was weak.
Nokia will no longer develop software solutions for enterprises. The company has recognized that it is unable to advance into the enterprise market as a standalone mobility solutions provider. Nokia will now concentrate its efforts on developing powerful user interfaces for its devices, which will be supported by its UC partners on their platforms – they include companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent. By focusing its efforts, Nokia will be able to exploit its main strength and is more likely to succeed.
Enterprise mobility is not an independent component
Mobility is emerging into the mainstream of the enterprise communication and collaboration platforms. Increasingly, enterprises will treat mobility as an extension of their office solutions rather than as an independent solution.
UC solutions require a lot of integration, and this is particularly true when mobility is added. Enterprises expect solutions to embrace open standards and they expect their vendors to partner, allowing them to choose best-of-breed applications without having to worry about interoperability. Nokia has recognized that it is not well placed to play the application integration role and has decided to leave this to its better-qualified partners.
Renewed focus on enterprise devices
Nokia will focus its enterprise activities on its E-Series devices. It aims to build on the success of its E66 and E71 devices and to leverage developments from its consumer devices into its business products. This will include utilizing its consumer market partnerships, as well as building on its Ovi consumer services to support business professionals. Nokia’s enterprise device software assets and expertise are being moved from its Services and Software group into its Devices group to support its objective to develop competitive devices.
Leveraging the investment
Nokia will halt further development of its Intellisync products and will cease developing or marketing its own behind-the-firewall business mobility solutions, but it says it is not abandoning Intellisync altogether since it will be able to utilize significant parts of the technology for carrier-based messaging products for the consumer market. Further security product development will be focused on the device, and Nokia has announced that it is in the advanced stages of the sale of its security appliance business to a financial investor. /PR
Nokia Media Network Adds European Media Heavyweights
Nokia has announced the expansion of the Nokia Media Network to include some of the biggest players in media from across Europe.
The Nokia Media Network is a a mobile advertising network that currently reaches more than 100 million consumers around the globe. The Nokia Media Network allows advertisers to target consumers on the pages of premium mobile internet publishers, operator partners and Nokia services, with click-through rates on the network averaging 10 percent.
The new additions to the network include the following companies:
- Agence France-Presse, France
- RTL Mobile, Germany
- Cuatro, Spain
- Grupo Prisa, publisher of El País, Spain
- Unidad Editorial, publisher of El Mundo, Spain
- CNET, UK
- Telegraph Media Group, UK
- Trinity Mirror, UK
- International Herald Tribune, pan-European
“Agence France-Presse has joined the Nokia Media Network, because Nokia has demonstrated leadership in building a global mobile advertising service,” said Otman Meriche, Agence France-Presse business development manager. “Our advertisers are looking for brand-safe, high performance media, and Nokia’s understanding of the mobile channel is unrivaled.” [MobiAdNews]
European Media Giants Join Nokia Media Network
By Jason Ankeny
Nokia today announced the expansion of the Nokia Media Network, a mobile advertising network that reaches more than 100 million consumers around the globe. Some of the biggest players in media from across Europe have joined the Nokia Media Network, furthering its reputation of providing global audience reach on high-quality mobile sites.
The Nokia Media Network allows advertisers to target consumers on the pages of premium mobile internet publishers, operator partners and Nokia services, with click-through rates on the network averaging 10 percent. The new European publishers join other flagship Nokia Media Network publishers such as Reuters, Cosmopolitan and AccuWeather, operators like Sprint and Airtel, and Nokia services including Nokia.mobi, MOSH and Widsets. The additions include the following publishers:
- Agence France-Presse, France
- RTL Mobile, Germany
- Cuatro, Spain
- Grupo Prisa, publisher of El País, Spain
- Unidad Editorial, publisher of El Mundo, Spain
- CNET, UK
- Telegraph Media Group, UK
- Trinity Mirror, UK
- International Herald Tribune, pan-European.
"We are pleased to announce the addition of these top European publishers to the Nokia Media Network," said Head of Nokia Interactive Advertising Tom Henriksson. "The biggest brands in the world trust Nokia with their mobile advertising because of the quality of the publishers on our network. We will continue to fortify the Nokia Media Network with leading publishers like these so that we will continue to deliver the strongest response rates in the industry."
"Agence France-Presse has joined the Nokia Media Network, because Nokia has demonstrated leadership in building a global mobile advertising service," said Otman Meriche, Agence France-Presse business development manager. "Our advertisers are looking for brand-safe, high performance media, and Nokia's understanding of the mobile channel is unrivaled."
Nokia Interactive Advertising provides brands with all they need to connect with and engage the mobile consumer, including the following:
- The Nokia Media Network, which gives reach to millions of mobile consumers through campaigns on blue-chip mobile publishers, operator partners and Nokia services.
- Nokia Interactive Solutions, which creates end-to-end, high performance mobile campaigns for brands, from banner ads, mobile Internet sites and location finders to mobile coupons, click-to-call and other advanced mobile mechanics.[FierceWireless]
The Future of Mobile Ad Networks
There’s an interesting article this week in ClickZ, looking at the development and future of ad networks for mobile. As the mobile ad industry has changed a lot over the past year or two, the ad networks themselves have also been developing.
There was an initial wave of ad network acquisitions (AOL-Third Screen, Nokia-Enpocket, Microsoft-Screentonic), but that has slowed recently. However, ClickZ thinks it likely that the M&A activity will start up again.
Greg Sterling, analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence, is quoted as saying he expects to see some big plays happen. “While Third Screen Media has already been bought, and Enpocket has already been bought…the question isn’t which ones will be bought, but which ones won’t be bought,” he said.
The article also looks at how different agencies and publishers work with the ad networks. Some use mobile ad networks exclusively, and others tend to mix them with more traditional online ad networks And some publishers continue their direct sales as well.
For a good overview of what is happening today with mobile ad networks, read the full article here. [MobiAdNews]
As Online Video Enters the Living Room, User Interfaces Begin the Transition to Web Based Technologies
While the rest of the consumer electronics and pay-TV worlds are still stuck in more traditional native code environments, the push for online video and social communities in the living room has resulted in ever-increasing interest in HTML and other web-based technologies on consumer TVs.
“ABI Research sees a strong push by some in the consumer electronics industry to explore the integration of HTML and browser engines into existing user interface platforms, and the use of the browser as a primary rendering engine for user interfaces,” says research director Michael Wolf. “We also see growth in the living room consumer-usable browser segment, where the primary use-case would be Web surfing in the living room or on a portable consumer electronic device.”
The consumer-usable living room browser market today is led by a few companies such as Opera and ACCESS, while other companies such as OpenTV, Oregan Networks and ANT Software are active in selling their browser products as part of a Web-based UI rendering solution. Nokia-owned Trolltech recently integrated Webkit into its “Qt” platform to allow CE developers to create mixed Web and native user interfaces. Lastly, the Consumer Electronics Association has developed the CE-2014 standard that leverages HTML to render user-interfaces in a connected living room, though vendor support for this effort appears limited at this time.
HTML, Adobe’s Flash/AIR, and Java are the three main contenders for the next-generation of user interfaces. While there will be many other advances in consumer user-interfaces such as 3D rendering using hardware acceleration, one of the inevitable trends will be the continued integration of Web content and Web technologies as the more online services connect to the living room. [ABI Research]
Nokia's 2Q Market Share Up, Content Business Growing
By Sue Marek
Helsinki-based Nokia surprised analysts this morning with better-than-expected second-quarter earnings. Although the company's profit was down ($1.75 billion compared to $4.49 billion a year earlier) most of that difference was because the 2007 results included $2.98 billion gain from the formation of Nokia Siemens Networks.
On the good news front, Nokia said that its global market share for handsets is at 40 percent, up from 38 percent a year ago. In addition, the company upgraded its forecast for the global handset market saying that mobile device volumes could grow more than its previous estimate of 10 percent in 2008.
In the U.S. market, where Nokia has been weak, the firm saw significant improvement thanks to two handsets, one that is offered by T-Mobile USA and another by AT&T. Nokia executives expect this to improve even more as the company has had its first CDMA handset approved by Verizon Wireless for use on its network.
On the services front, Nokia says that with the additional support of Sony BMG Entertainment for Nokia Comes With Music service, the company now has three of the top music labels signed on for its service giving it access to 80 percent of the music catalog. The Nokia Music Store is now available in 10 markets and the company expects to have 14 stores open by year-end. In addition, N-Gage mobile games service, which became available during the quarter, has had more than 406,000 downloads. [FierceMobileContent]
Nokia Advertising Alliance To Simplify Mobile Advertising
Nokia Interactive, the mobile advertising arm of Nokia, has announced a new alliance aimed at making mobile advertising easier for brands. The alliance will integrate advertising solutions from multiple companies into a single Nokia interface.
The intent of the program is to bring together a variety of mobile advertising formats to give brands a better way to increase consumer engagement. Through the alliance, advertisers will be able to plan, execute, and measure campaigns that include a wider variety of customer engagement points.
Several companies have already been certified as Members of the alliance, including i-movo, Mobile Acuity, Mobiqa, and uLocate. These companies provide a range of mobile advertising technologies, including digital coupons, image recognition, mobile barcodes, and location-based targeting.
This effort directly addresses one of the biggest issues in mobile advertising:
- a key strength of mobile is that it is very flexible and can actively engage a consumer in many ways at many times of the day.
- one of the biggest challenges often cited by advertisers and their agencies is the difficulty of running mobile campaigns, and the fragmented nature of the industry.
This objective has been appreciated by people in the industry. Scott Heron, Director of Digital Services at Wunderman said “To realise truly integrated advertising, it’s imperative that major brands can make use of a range of mobile services. The Advertising Alliance brings together the most innovative technologies in the market, and brings trust to brands who want to use them.”
Brian Bos, Senior Vice President, Convergence Director at MindShare-Team Detroit said “Mobile is maturing into an effective advertising medium, however, the fragmentation of certain technologies makes it hard for some programs to scale. We applaud Nokia’s efforts to streamline this evolving market and make it easier to manage our clients’ mobile advertising investment.” [MobiAdNews]
Nokia Buys Symbian to Give it Away
By Jason Ankeny
The open source arena opened up wide last week when Nokia made the surprise announcement it will acquire the remaining shares of mobile software licensing company Symbian Limited and team with Sony Ericsson, Motorola and NTT DoCoMo to pool the Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP technologies to create a single open mobile software platform. The firms will also collaborate with other industry bigwigs to establish the Symbian Foundation, a non-profit initiative dedicated to accelerating the availability of new services and mobile experiences.
Nokia said it will contribute all of its shares in Symbian as well as the Symbian and S60 software to the foundation, with Sony Ericsson and Motorola agreeing to hand over UIQ technology and DoCoMo contributing its MOAP assets. Together, these components promise a unified platform with a common UI framework available to all foundation members under a royalty-free license, with the first devices based on the Symbian Foundation code expected to arrive in 2010.
As Nokia pointed out during its press conference, the Symbian move heralds the biggest-ever single release of proprietary code into the open-source wild. The obvious question is why Nokia would make such a bold decision, but while the announcement no doubt dropped a few jaws when it hit the newswires, the more you think about it the more sense it makes.
Despite its dominance in the international smartphone market, Nokia has never rested on its laurels, and with good reason: Consider how radically the mobile device business has changed in just the last 12 months. First there was Apple's iPhone, then there was Google's Android, and then Verizon Wireless announced its Open Device Initiative--and don't forget continued strong showings from the Windows Mobile and BlackBerry platforms.
Now Nokia controls an open platform that offers something Android can't: An operating system already ingratiated into the wireless ecosystem, free from Google's plans for mobile revenue domination. Giving Symbian away free could turn out to be the most profitable decision Nokia ever made. [FierceDeveloper]
Nokia Simplifies Mobile Advertising with Launch of Nokia Advertising Alliance
Nokia today announced the launch of the Nokia Advertising Alliance, which will simplify mobile advertising for brand advertisers. The program brings together leading mobile marketing solutions, including couponing, location-based targeting, image recognition, and other emerging technologies, to offer advertisers a simple way to increase consumer engagement. Now brands can work with Nokia to combine the reach of mobile advertising on the Nokia Media Network with the latest mobile technologies for more effective campaigns.
Mobile is maturing into an effective advertising medium, however, the fragmentation of certain technologies makes it hard for some programs to scale," said Brian Bos, Senior Vice President, Convergence Director at MindShare-Team Detroit. "We applaud Nokia's efforts to streamline this evolving market and make it easier to manage our clients' mobile advertising investment."
"To realise truly integrated advertising, it's imperative that major brands can make use of a range of mobile services. The Advertising Alliance brings together the most innovative technologies in the market, and brings trust to brands who want to use them," said Scott Heron, Director of Digital Services at Wunderman.
Members of the Alliance are integrated with the Nokia Media Network allowing brands to plan, execute and measure mobile advertising campaigns through a single Nokia interface. A range of companies have been initially certified as Members of the Alliance, including i-movo, Mobile Acuity, Mobiqa, and uLocate, with many additional members in testing. Leading brands from the automotive to entertainment industries have built campaigns using the Nokia Advertising Alliance.
"Succeeding in mobile requires much more than a banner ad alone. Brands have the opportunity to deliver immersive, highly engaging experiences to consumers. The Alliance gives brands access to a range of novel mobile ad experiences from one trusted vendor," said Mike Baker, VP and Head of Nokia Interactive Advertising.
Nokia Interactive Advertising provides brands with all that they need to connect with and engage the mobile consumer. It includes:- The Nokia Media Network which gives reach to millions of mobile consumers through advertising on more than 100 blue-chip mobile publishers, operator partners and Nokia properties.- Nokia Interactive Solutions that creates end-to-end, high performance mobile campaigns for brands from banner ads, mobile internet sites and location finders to mobile coupons, click-to-call and other advanced mobile mechanics. /PR
Nokia Simplifies Mobile Advertising with Launch of Nokia Advertising Alliance
Nokia has announced the launch of the Nokia Advertising Alliance, which will simplify mobile advertising for brand advertisers. The program brings together leading mobile marketing solutions, including couponing, location-based targeting, image recognition, and other emerging technologies, to offer advertisers a simple way to increase consumer engagement. Now brands can work with Nokia to combine the reach of mobile advertising on the Nokia Media Network with the latest mobile technologies for more effective campaigns.
"Mobile is maturing into an effective advertising medium, however, the fragmentation of certain technologies makes it hard for some programs to scale," said Brian Bos, Senior Vice President, Convergence Director at MindShare-Team Detroit. "We applaud Nokia's efforts to streamline this evolving market and make it easier to manage our clients' mobile advertising investment."
"To realise truly integrated advertising, it's imperative that major brands can make use of a range of mobile services. The Advertising Alliance brings together the most innovative technologies in the market, and brings trust to brands who want to use them," said Scott Heron, Director of Digital Services at Wunderman.
Members of the Alliance are integrated with the Nokia Media Network allowing brands to plan, execute and measure mobile advertising campaigns through a single Nokia interface. A range of companies have been initially certified as Members of the Alliance, including i-movo, Mobile Acuity, Mobiqa, and uLocate, with many additional members in testing. Leading brands from the automotive to entertainment industries have built campaigns using the Nokia Advertising Alliance.
"Succeeding in mobile requires much more than a banner ad alone. Brands have the opportunity to deliver immersive, highly engaging experiences to consumers. The Alliance gives brands access to a range of novel mobile ad experiences from one trusted vendor," said Mike Baker, VP and Head of Nokia Interactive Advertising.
Nokia Interactive Advertising provides brands with all that they need to connect with and engage the mobile consumer. It includes:
- The Nokia Media Network which gives reach to millions of mobile consumers through advertising on more than 100 blue-chip mobile publishers, operator partners and Nokia properties.
- Nokia Interactive Solutions that creates end-to-end, high performance mobile campaigns for brands from banner ads, mobile internet sites and location finders to mobile coupons, click-to-call and other advanced mobile mechanics. /PR/FierceWireless
Global Smartphone Sales Grow 29 Percent in Q1
By Jason Ankeny
Worldwide smartphone sales totaled 32.2 million units in the first quarter of 2008, a 29.3 percent increase over the year-ago quarter, according to a new report issued by market research firm Gartner. North American smartphone sales totaled 7.3 million units in Q1, a 106.2 percent year-over-year increase, while smartphone sales in Europe, Middle East, and Africa totaled 11.7 million units, a 38.7 percent leap.
Nokia remains ahead of the vendor pack, commanding over 45 percent of the global smartphone market and notching a year-over-year sales increase of 25 percent--Research In Motion held on to second place, improving its worldwide market share to 13.4 percent and continuing to dominate the U.S. market at 42 percent.
Apple moved into the number three slot, with 5.3 percent of the global smartphone market and jumping to number two in the U.S. with 20 percent. Gartner anticipates touchscreens, usability and application integration will continue to drive smartphone growth, especially as vendors and operators expand their portfolios to include open-platform devices. [FierceDeveloper]
Orange Takes Nokia Services - But Not the Ovi Brand
By Michele MacKenzie and Eden Zoller, analysts at Ovum
Last week Nokia announced that it had formed a strategic alliance with Orange that will see the operator offer a range of the device vendor’s content services and applications, including its music store, maps and N-Gage games.
“The Orange deal presents Orange’s content suite alongside Nokia’s Ovi services, widening the choice for consumers and providing a more ‘open’ Internet environment. But Orange has stopped short of embracing Nokia’s Ovi mobile Internet brand, even though many of the services it will be offering are included under the Ovi umbrella. This is interesting, as Orange was one of the operators that initially showed the most resistance to Ovi. Perhaps it still has some reservations and also wants to appear consistent and show some caution by ‘cherry picking’ the key services. Other major operators have been quicker to collaborate with Nokia – Telefonica, Vodafone, TIM and T-Mobile are all offering Ovi.”
“Until recently operators have fiercely defended their turf, controlling the mobile Internet value chain, providing bundled access and content to the end user as a fait accompli. But the gradual encroachment of the Internet players in the mobile space, with their ad-funded business models and powerful consumer brands, has led the operators to rethink their strategies in the face of such powerful contenders and opt for partnerships and an increasingly more open approach. And then, if the Internet players were not enough to contend with, Nokia launched Ovi and began its transformation into a consumer Internet company, seemingly threatening to tread all over the operator turf along the way.”
“The launch of Ovi concerned some operators because Nokia’s portal would compete head on with their own offerings, and it felt very wrong coming from one of their major mobile phone suppliers. But operators have weighed up the pros and cons of partnering with Nokia and come to the conclusion that they could lose out by rejecting Ovi on principal, just as they have come to realise that opening up mobile Internet access to outside players such as Google is beneficial. Given Nokia’s powerful consumer brand (in our recent consumer survey some respondents still highlighted Nokia as their network supplier!), significant market share and considerable know how in the mobile content area, they would be foolish not to sign up with them.”
“While operators will remain wary and naturally resistant to becoming a bit pipe, it is inevitable that many of them will become just that. But on the way they will benefit from flat-rate data and mobile broadband revenues, and increased usage of the network. And the operator has every opportunity to remain prominent in the value chain through its retail outlets, customer service, billing and data strategies.”
“Some will also benefit from a strong wholesale and B2B model. And a few will even make it as a content player!”/PR
Nokia Adds Sony BMG Catalog to Comes With Music
Nokia announced that Sony BMG Music Entertainment has officially joined the handset giant's Comes With Music initiative. Comes With Music enables consumers to purchase a year of unlimited music downloads via mobile handsets bundled with Nokia's Ovi web services platform--Nokia announced a partnership with Universal Music Group International upon unveiling the service late last year, and in recent weeks the company has also confirmed negotiations with Warner Music Group, adding it is confident deals will be in place with all four major labels prior to Comes With Music's late 2008 launch.
"This initiative represents a critical new way of gaining access to music, through which fans will be able to explore Sony BMG's vast catalog of recordings for an entire year," said the label's president of global digital business and U.S. sales Thomas Hesse in a prepared statement. "We think this business model will encourage users to sample a wide range of material, expand their musical tastes and listen to more music than ever before. In the process, we think it will provide new opportunities to artists from every genre of music, and increase demand for music overall." [FierceMobileContent]
For more on the Nokia/Sony BMG deal:- read this release
Nokia Launches Ovi Sharing, Mobile Ad Network
Nokia announced its first Ovi service, Share on Ovi, a personal media sharing community that allows users to transfer content between the desktop, the mobile phone and other connected devices.
Share on Ovi is based upon open standards and supports more than 100 different file types. The service is currently available in beta and will launch in the second quarter.
At today's press conference at Mobile World Congress 2008, Nokia executives said the Nokia Music service, which is currently available in the U.K., will launch in 10 more countries during the first half of 2008. The company also is improving its mapping service with the unveiling of Maps 2.0., which offers enhanced pedestrian navigation with satellite imaging maps and turn-by-turn directions. Nokia Maps 2.0 is currently in beta and will be available commercially in the first half of 2008 on certain Series 40 devices.
During the press conference, Nokia executives were asked about the firm's recent Trolltech acquisition. Nokia CEO Olli Pekka-Kallasvuou said that the acquisition in important because it will help developers build applications independent of a handset's operating system. Although Trolltech does have a Linux platform, Nokia said that was not the driver behind the purchase.
Nokia also announced the launch of Nokia Media Network, a premium advertising network launched in partnership with over 70 publishers and operators including Sprint, AccuWeather, Reuters, Hearst and Discovery.
The turnkey solution follows Nokia´s fall 2007 acquisition of mobile advertising firm Enpocket, and leverages the firm's analytics technology to optimize campaigns, improve conversions and measure campaign performance across the network.
According to Nokia, the global ad network is already yielding click-through rates averaging 10 percent in certain channels.[FierceMobileContent]
Reuters Links Up With Nokia Ad Business For Mobile Ads
Reuters has announced that it has chosen Nokia Ad Business to provide mobile advertising solutions. Nokia’s media sales team will sell advertising space on Reuters’ UK mobile site as well as offering additional solutions such as branded mobile websites for Reuters’ advertisers.
“We are delighted to announce this new partnership with Nokia and believe it will greatly extend the breadth of our advertising reach within the mobile arena,” said Tim Faircliff, General Manager for Consumer Media, UK & EMEA at Reuters.
“Working with Nokia offers us access to premium global audiences through its advertising network and will offer broader opportunities to our existing media sales team.”
“We are pleased to work with blue chip publishers, like Reuters” said Mike Baker, VP and Head of Nokia Ad Business Unit.
Our advertising clients trust their mobile advertising to Nokia because they are looking for brand-safe opportunities to reach consumers on quality mobile properties, such as Reuters.”
Nokia Ad Business offers advertisers the reach of over 100 million mobile consumers and delivers mobile advertising across multiple formats, including mobile Web display advertising, SMS, MMS, in-application, and video. [MobiAdNews]
Nokia Acquire Trolltech: Will it Impact on the Handset Market
Nokia has announced plans to acquire Trolltech. Nokia has stated that the purpose of this acquisition is to accelerate its cross-platform software strategy for mobile devices and desktop applications, and to develop its Internet services business.
Looking beyond this initial statement, what is the real purpose of this acquisition for Nokia and its real impact on the handset marketplace?
Nokia's planned acquisition of Trolltech indicates that the company is getting serious about Linux, and signals more challenging times ahead for Symbian.
Currently, Nokia only offers Linux-based MIDs (mobile Internet devices) and even though it has not expressed any specific intentions so far, this acquisition is likely to lead to Nokia introducing other handsets based on Linux in the coming years. For Symbian, it will be a big setback and their market-share of the OS market will rapidly decline if Nokia starts offering Linux devices.
Motorola is a leading proponent of Linux and a Trolltech licensee, and one would have expected Motorola to be the most likely handset vendor to acquire Trolltech. However, Nokia claims that the acquisition is not all about introducing more Linux devices, and that it views Trolltech's Qtopia application platform as complimentary to Symbian.
Nokia believes that the acquisition will also allow it to enable a richer set of Internet services on handsets based on its S60 platform. Further, Nokia will be able to develop applications for multiple platforms from a single source code base, as well as bringing improvements in device UI and time-to-market.
The key question that this development raises, is how deeply the purchase of Trolltech will affect Symbian, and whether Symbian will become the Palm of the future. [ABI Research]
Additional Info:
Nokia announced it will make a public voluntary tender offer to acquire Norwegian open source software provider Trolltech for about $153 million. Trolltech software and application platforms are used in programs including Skype, Google Earth and Adobe Photoshop Elements.
"Common cross-platform layers on top of our software platforms attract innovation and enable Web 2.0 technologies in the mobile space," said Nokia's executive vice president of devices Kai Öistämö in a prepared statement.
"Trolltech's deep understanding of open source software and its strong technology assets will enable both Nokia and others to innovate on our device platforms while reducing time-to-market. This acquisition will also further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40, added he." [FierceMobileContent]
Mobile Phone Market Shrugging Off Economic Downturn
World stock markets have recently taken a beating and the US domestic market teeters on the edge of recession but based on just-released mobile device shipment figures, it seems no one bothered to tell the mobile handset vendors, except for Motorola.“Many economic sectors are struggling and there are fears that the global market might mimic the downturn in the United States, but virtually all the mobile device vendors experienced very festive cheer in 4Q 2007,” said ABI Research vice president Jake Saunders, after assessing vendors’ latest results. “It looks like the quarter will clock out at our forecast of 342 million devices, which takes the yearly tally to 1.15 billion: a 15.8% increase on 2006.”
“Taking into account the growing sense of global economic uncertainty, ABI Research has reduced its 2008 handset market growth forecast from 13.5% to 12%,” added research director Stuart Carlaw.Motorola was the only vendor not to enjoy the fruits of 2007. By its own admission, Motorola’s market share shrank 38% year-on-year from 23.3% to 12.4%. Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and mostly likely LG (results to be released on January 25th) were net beneficiaries.
Motorola declares that its market share in 1Q 2007 looks set to decline further, but the company is fighting back. It has been beefing up its mobile device portfolio and some of its new handset models such as the ROKR E8 have received awards from key trade shows. It should also be acknowledged that Motorola did reduce its presence in a number of emerging ultra-low cost handset markets, while Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Chinese vendors such as ZTE and Huawei are pulling out the stops to address them.
ABI Research says North America (and to a lesser extent South America) is the chink in Nokia’s armor. Despite repeated declarations from senior management that Nokia will recover its position in the North American market, it has so far failed to do so. North American carriers require more customization, exclusive sales periods, and personalization to appeal to their customers. [ABI Research]
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