Event Coverage

Nokia's New Strategies and Newborns

By Justin Ong - 16 Feb 2007

Nokia Newborns Uncovered

Nokia Newborns Uncovered

Taking place at Bangkok, Thailand, Showcase Nokia 2007, held simultaneously with 3GSM World Congress for Asia Pacific, saw top decision makers of Nokia share and discuss important strategies and product developments with journalists from the region. Of the points presented, the most significant point was that Asia Pacific will continue to remain as the biggest market segment for Nokia and that the current figure of three billion mobile subscriber base worldwide will be breached. "Nokia expects that in 2007, the 3 billion mobile subscriber mark will be crossed, with the Asia Pacific region contributing significantly to this growth. With the devices and applications that we are announcing today, and in the recent past, we are poised to lead the industry in bringing consumers opportunities to participate in the social networking and information sharing phenomena. Convergence technologies such as mobile TV, navigation, mobile email and electronic document management no longer belong to just the developed nations as we enable a more connected and technology-driven lifestyle," said Mr. Urpo Karjaleinen, Senior Vice President, Customer & Market Operations, Asia Pacific, Nokia.

Although Nokia is known to most as one of the largest manufacturers of mobile phones, nearly all the topics covered had little or nothing to do with handsets per se, revolving mainly around major areas of business mobility, mobile Internet and mobile computing. On the business mobility front, Nokia reinforced the company's commitment to dissolve barriers impeding the adoption of business mobility solutions. For this, Nokia announced a hardware/software combination of a trio of new E-series handsets namely the E61i, E65 and E90 Communicator, and Intellisync Mobile Suite 8.0 mobileware. The Nokia Intellisync Mobile Suite in particular is a comprehensive software platform designed to equip both companies and individual users with a single graphical-based point of management for Emails, files and applications, database, documents, and also Nokia devices.

The prevalence of the Internet has really allowed Nokia and other manufacturers to take product design to the next level and there's little to argue that it has single handedly raised consumer expectation and satisfaction from one of the most cherished portable devices around. With consumers just beginning to embrace mobile Internet, Nokia is meeting this growing market by introducing more handsets with Internet capabilities. These include the new Nokia 3110 classic, 6110 Navigator, N77, 6088, 1325 and 1265. Though all phones support basic web browsing, the actual Internet experience actually varies, with the N77 being the most engaging of these newborns as it has a large 2.4-inch screen and also lets you enjoy TV programming on the go via DVB-H technology. The N-series will continue to remain as the flagship series of Nokia, especially now that Nokia has cooperated with YouTube to bring YouTube videos into all N-series handsets, new and old.

Already destined to become a common feature in mobile phones, GPS is expected to break new grounds by bringing location based services to your palm. In this regard, Nokia has announced long-term plans to become a significant player of mobile phones embedded with GPS modules by providing consumers with a range of additional benefits, including access to the latest updated maps and points of interest. Granted the company has acquired gate5, a leading supplier of mapping, routing and navigation software and services, there is no doubt that location-based experiences will increasingly be at the core of the Nokia portfolio of mobile phones, be it for the enterprise sector or consumer space.

 The first version of the E61 was good in many ways but many lamented at its lack of image capturing capability. Nokia apparently listens to customers and the result is the new E61i with improved QWERTY keypad, a 2.0-megapixel camera and a metal faceplate to give it a more refined look than its predecessor.

 Sliding design has mostly been limited to consumer handsets but with the E65, Nokia has answered the wishes of executives wanting style with the robustness of Symbian 9.1 operating system.

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