This is the part of Nokia that makes smartphones (and soon) tablets.

Microsoft will pay 3.70 billion Euro for Nokia’s devices business. That’s nearly $5 billion is U.S. dollars. Microsoft will also pay an additional 1.65 billion Euro ($2.2 billion U.S.) for the rights to Nokia’s patents.

All together, the deal will cost Microsoft about $7 billion U.S.

Microsoft will also take on about 32,000 Nokia employees. Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop will transfer to Microsoft too. (Elop used to work at Microsoft before becoming the Nokia CEO.)

The joining of Microsoft and Nokia isn’t a huge surprise. Nokia is the only manufacturer that exclusively uses Microsoft’ Windows Phone 8 operating system for its top-tier smartphones. Meanwhile, Microsoft has struggled to gain significant market share for Windows Phone as Android and the iPhone continue to dominate.

Nokia’s flagship Lumia phones are most likely the best-selling Windows Phones today. The company sold 7.4 million last quarter. A lot of those sales are due to the fact that Nokia attacks the low-end of the smartphone market with cheaper devices. It also makes high-end phones like the Lumia 920, 925, and 1020.

This can also be another sign that Microsoft is taking its transition from a software company to a “devices and services” company much more seriously. Until last year, Microsoft did not make any major products (besides the Xbox) itself. That changed with its line of Surface tablets that run the new Windows 8 operating system. The company announced that it was making the transition to a company that provides both devices and services.

But Microsoft has yet to make a smartphone of its own, despite numerous rumors that it had plans to. By buying Nokia, Microsoft now has its own manufacturer that it can work closely with.

Microsoft’s purchase isn’t likely to annoy other manufacturers that make Windows Phones either. Most of those manufacturers (Samsung, HTC, etc.) have been able to make more money from Android devices than an alternative operating system like Windows Phone 8. Nokia is the only manufacturer that relies almost entirely on Windows Phone 8.

Finally, there’s Elop. He’s one of the names that have been floating around as a potential replacement for Steve Ballmer as Microsoft’s CEO. Ballmer announced last month that he plans to retire within a year. A special team of Microsoft board members is now on the hunt for a new CEO.

Nokia claims the infringements involve technology used to enhance speech and data transmission and antenna innovations for compact devices.

This is the latest salvo in a long-running legal battle between the two companies.

Nokia and Apple are embroiled in another dispute concerning the iPhone.

“We’ve taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation,” said Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at Nokia.

In a statement, the company said that during the past two decades Nokia has invested about $51bn (£34bn) in research and development and has rounded up 11,000 patents.

Last year Nokia filed a similar lawsuit which claimed that various Apple products infringed Nokia patents. Apple responded with a countersuit against Nokia for infringing Apple patents with its smartphones.

Meanwhile, Apple is also involved in another legal row with Taiwan’s HTC, maker of Google’s Nexus One phone, which it says has infringed patented technology.

Patent disputes are common in the technology industry and often end with some kind of licensing agreement, correspondents say.

The Nokia lawsuit came on the day Apple announced that its iPad tablet computer will go on sale in nine countries outside the US on 28 May.

Resource:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8669529.stm

The N8 phone has a 12 megapixel camera and allows people to record and edit High Definition video clips, as well as watch web TV services.

Analysts said the phone was a “pivotal device” in efforts “to make Nokia’s high end phones credible again”.

It is also a chance for Symbian to prove itself alongside Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iPhone.

Despite being the world’s most popular smart phone software, Symbian has lost “mindshare” against more high-profile software, according to industry experts.

Analysts at CCS Insight described the Symbian 3 software as “evolutionary not revolutionary” but said it was a “key first step if it proves reliable”.

Cinema support

It is the first version of the software since the Symbian foundation announced that it had made its code open source in February.

The Foundation – which includes Nokia, Motorola and Samsung amongst others – gave away the code to developers for free in the hope that it would help speed up the pace of improvements. Any organisation or individual can now use and modify it.

The software in the N8 allows the phone to have multi-touch and multi-tasking, meaning more than one application can be open at any one time.

The device will be Nokia’s flagship smartphone. It can be plugged into home theatres and supports surround sound as well as high-quality video.

Social networks, such as Twitter and Facebook, can be displayed on the home screen in a single application.

Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said he was “stoked” that Nokia had chosen to use the operating system on its phone.

The phone will ship in the third quarter of 2010, following delays.

Resource:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8646715.stm

Similarly, Nokia new messaging service aggregates multiple e-mail accounts through one client and can support and mobilise up to 10 e-mail accounts.

This service will be available through all leading operators and consumers will only have to pay the basic data download charges. And as part of the Nokia Messaging Service (NMS) portfolio, it will also offer free Instant Messaging (IM) services, preloaded on select devices.

“Nokia’s e-mail proposition offers different kinds of e-mail options depending on the need of the user. The service is already in use by over 30-lakh people in more than 100 countries.

“India is among the top five countries for the service and we are confident that with our decision to offer it for free, we will see a significant surge in adoption of e-mail and messaging services in the country,” said Nokia’s Executive Vice-President (Markets) Anssi Vanjoki.

According to Nokia India Managing Director and Vice-President D. Shivakumar, “People are looking at messaging services as an enhanced business tool. There are 30-lakh mail users on mobile in India.

“The number is expected to touch 13-crore in 2014. Interestingly, 78 per cent of web e-mail users want to browse their e-mails on their mobile phones, while mobile e-mail users are growing at 96 per cent.”

Resource:
http://beta.thehindu.com/sci-tech/gadgets/article411001.ece

Apple’s iPad sold 300,000 units by midnight April 3, including pre-orders, on its first day of general release: enough to ensure the device as a commercial hit, at least in the short-term. In a larger way, though, those sales numbers represent not so much a victory for Apple but a sign that a market indeed exists for consumer-oriented tablets. As companies ranging from Hewlett-Packard to Nokia prepare similar tablet PCs in coming months, Apple’s hardware choices and rollout could become the competitive benchmark by which these competitors map their own choices and strategy.

Some signs of that shift are already present in HP’s strategy for its upcoming tablet, with videos and a company blog showing off the device’s ability to video conference and snap images. HP has also highlighted its Slate’s support of Adobe Flash, which powers rich content on many popular Websites. By contrast, the iPad does not support Flash, nor does the current version include a camera—both things that HP seems eager to highlight as the competitive differentiator for its own offering, due at an as-yet-unannounced point later in 2010.

“With this slate product, you’re getting a full Web browsing experience in the palm of your hand. No watered-down Internet, no sacrifices,” Phil McKinney, vice president and chief technology officer for Hewlett-Packard’s Personal Systems Group, wrote in a March 8 posting on the company’s Voodoo Blog. “A big bonus for the slate product is that, being based off Windows 7, it offers full Adobe support.”

McKinney followed that up a few weeks later with another Voodoo Blog post touting the HP slate’s other abilities.

“Think about the last time you chatted with friends over Skype on your notebook,” McKinney wrote on April 5. “Or uploaded a picture from your mobile phone to Facebook or Flickr. How about the last time you viewed images or video from an SD card or USB device. We know that you expect to be able to capture and share digital content on your mobile devices.”

That same day, Engadget posted an image of what it claimed was an internal HP presentation comparing the specs of the company’s upcoming tablet PC to the iPad. That document suggested that the “HP Slate” would retail for between $549 and $599, and feature a 1.6GHz Intel Atom Z530 processor, inward-facing VGA Webcam and outward-facing 3-megapixel camera. Windows 7 Home Premium, tethered to a proprietary HP touch-optimized user interface, will serve as the operating system.

Nokia is also developing a tablet competitor for entrance into the market later this year, according to recent online reports.

“Right now the supply chain (for a Nokia tablet) is being primed up for a fall release. It has to be on the shelf by September-October to meet demand for the holiday window,” Rodman and Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar told Reuters on April 7. “You don’t want to give that much of a lead to Apple because otherwise it becomes insurmountable.”

Nokia apparently declined to comment on those supposed developments. Other manufacturers, including Fujitsu and Fusion Garage, have tablets in some stage of active development. This year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas highlighted a number of laptops with touch-screen functionality, including the HP Touchsmart tm2 and Fujitsu Lifebook T4410, designed with an eye towards both the tablet and traditional PC markets.

But how will these tablets market themselves? HP and Fusion Garage, creator of the JooJoo tablet, are already touting their Flash support in a bid to slice off some iPad market-share. (Recent online reviews of the JooJoo’s Flash support have been unkind.) Other manufacturers could follow that same route, using Flash support to set themselves apart, whether or not their device uses Windows 7 or another, more proprietary user interface.

“By ignoring a pervasively widely used technology like Flash and treating its parent company with disrespect,” Charles Kind, an analyst with Pund-IT Research, wrote in a March 10 research note, “Jobs opened the door he must have preferred to leave closed: providing his competitors the opportunity [to] define these devices, technologies and markets far more clearly than he himself has done.”

On April 5, HP released a 30-second video demonstrating its slate’s video conferencing and image-snapping abilities, suggesting that both it and other companies may use embedded cameras as another differentiator over the iPad.

Yet despite the hoopla surrounding the iPad’s launch, and other companies’ aggressive entrance into the space, the tablet market is still nascent; as one analyst warns, simply because Apple managed to sell a few hundred thousand units during its new product’s first weekend on the open market doesn’t mean that others will be able to reproduce a similar feat, extra hardware and Flash support or no.

“The market will play host to a flood of ‘me too’ tablets in 2010, but it’s an immature product category with an unproven use case,” CCS Insight analyst Geoff Blaber told Reuters in an April 7 article. “Apple’s brand and service offering means the iPad will be an exception in a category that will struggle to gain consumer acceptance.”

Resource:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Apple-iPad-Sets-Tablet-Bar-for-Nokia-HP-Microsoft-801771/

Today’s supposed contender: Finnish phone giant Nokia, which is working with design and manufacturing partners on a new touch-screen tablet that could emerge as early as this fall–at least according to one analyst, Ashok Kumar of Rodman Renshaw.

“Nokia hasn’t fielded any breakaway products in years,” TheStreet.com quotes Kumar as saying. “This is a new window, and Nokia had better be at the starting gate if and when the product category takes off.”

Nokia, of course, isn’t new to portable Internet devices, having in the last five years come out with the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet and subsequent N800, N810, and N900, not to mention the Nokia Booklet 3G Netbook.

It’s unclear whether the alleged Nokia tablet that’s getting ink Tuesday would be a follow-on to that line of devices or a more full-featured direct competitor to the iPad and HP Slate, as well as devices sure to come from the likes of Dell, Lenovo, and any of the other companies eyeing tablet territory. The timing would suggest the latter.

Also of note: Nokia and Intel’s technology merger earlier this year fusing Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo software to form a new operating environment dubbed MeeGo. It’s expected to power a range of devices, including pocketable mobile computers, Netbooks, tablets, connected TVs, and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

Resource:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20001875-1.html

In a blog post on the MeeGo site, Director of Intel’s Open Source Technology Center – Imad Sousou – said: “Today is the culmination of a huge effort by the worldwide Nokia and Intel teams to share the MeeGo operating system code with the open source community. This is the latest step in the full merger of Maemo and Moblin, and we are happy to open the repositories and move the ongoing development work into the open – as we set out to do from the beginning.”

Developers can now get hold of the MeeGo distribution infrastructure and the OS base including the Linux kernel, the OS infrastructure and the middleware layer. MeeGo is intended to provide a common platform for all types of mobile computing, including phones, netbooks, IVI and TVs, reports HEXUS. channel.

Intel and Nokia are trying to take on Android with MeeGo and will be hoping a greater range of applications will give it a competitive advantage.

However, The N900 won’t be seeing MeeGo anytime soon and Nokia is working on v1.2 of the software for that handset.

Resource:
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/MeeGo_joins_the_Open_Source_league-nid-66818.html

In a statement about the acquisition, Nokia declares “Novarra’s mobile browser and services platform will be used by Nokia to deliver enhanced Internet experiences on Nokia mobile devices.” Novarra will enable Nokia to deliver an improved mobile Web experience to customers. However, the Novarra acquisition will probably have little effect on customers in the United States.

While Nokia is the largest maker of mobile phones in the world, it plays a more obscure role in the market in America. The most recent comScore survey places Nokia in fourth place for mobile phones in the United States, with just over nine percent market share.

Drilling down more specifically to smartphones, Nokia isn’t even on the radar. RIM’s BlackBerry is the leading smartphone platform in the U.S., followed by the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Android. Even Palm’s faltering WebOS platform manages a fifth place position with nearly six percent of the smartphone market.

“Connecting the next billion consumers to the Internet will happen primarily on mobile devices,” said Niklas Savander, executive vice president of Services for Nokiain the Nokia statement, adding “and delivering an optimized internet experience on our devices is core to our mission. By driving innovation in all segments of our portfolio, we are building one of the largest consumer audiences for web services and content. Novarra’s Internet services technology delivered on the world’s most widely-used mobile platform, Nokia’s Series 40, will help us achieve this.”

To its credit, Nokia has been working aggressively to regain some swagger and find the edge it once had among mobile phones. Nokia is engaged in a back and forth legal struggle with Apple over patent infringement allegations–Nokia claims Apple is violating its patents, and Apple accuses Nokia of the same. Nokia also formed an alliance with Intel to combine their Linux-based mobile operating systems to create MeeGo.

Opera might have been a better acquisition for Nokia. I expect it would have cost significantly more, but it would have given Nokia an established mobile browser ready to compete on a broad range of smartphone platforms–including the iPhone if Apple approves Opera’s app.

While the Novarra Web browser may not make much of a splash in the United States, the Novarra technology is indicative of the direction that mobile Web browsers are going to meet the needs of next-generation smartphones and mobile platforms like the iPad.

Wireless broadband bandwidth is crowded, and most data plans charge per megabyte or have a maximum download capacity per month. Web browsers like Novarra’s, that can compress data for faster rendering and less bandwidth consumption, give smartphones an edge over competition.

Business professionals on the go need a mobile Web browser that is able to maximize the available wireless bandwidth and deliver a blazing fast Web surfing experience from a mobile platform. Browsers like Opera and Novarra provide the innovative technology necessary to meet those demands.

Novarra is not built on Webkit–the de facto standard rendering engine for smartphone platforms. However, Novarra has a Youtube video demonstrating that its Vision browser actually renders Web pages faster than competing mobile browsers designed on Webkit.

The Vision browser supports Adobe Flash, and includes other innovative features like password management, and the ability to manipulate Web pages to fit the screen of the device being used.

Novarra currently works with Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG, and other mobile phone manufacturers–providing Nokia with an established client portfolio for its new mobile Web browser.

Resource:
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/192644/nokia_joins_battle_for_mobile_web_with_novarra_acquisition.html

The MWC 2010 finally ended February 18, 2010. It was a hectic week full of interesting announcements, exciting new devices and almost no sleep. But thanks to Barcelona for such a warm welcome yet another year.

More than 49,000 visitors from 200 countries attended the 2010 GSMA Mobile World Congress. The event welcomed 1,300 exhibiting companies and occupied more than 56,000 net square meters of exhibition and business meeting space.

Unfortunately, Nokia didn’t make a product announcement despite all the rumors. In fact Samsung, of all manufacturers, was the only company to present a ground-breaking mobile phone (a new OS and a new type of display). But even they didn’t show anything interesting alongside it.

Anyway, we still found some interesting topics and devices to cover but we leave this year’s congress with mixed feelings – mainly due to our high initial expectations.

New announcement from Mobile world congress 2010:

• Nokia

  Nokia did not announce any new mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

• Samsung

  Samsung announcement ne mobiles phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Samsung S8500 Wave
  2. Samsung I8520 Beam
  3. Samsung C3200 Monte Bar
  4. Samsung E2550 Monte Slider
  5. Samsung B3410W Ch@t
  6. Samsung E2370
• Sony Ericson

  Sony Ericson announcement mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Sony Ericsson Vivaz pro
  2. Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini
  3. Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 mini pro
  4. Sony Ericsson Aspen
• MICROSOFT

  MICROSOFT announcement in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Microsoft announces the all new Windows Phone 7 Series platform
• LG

  LG announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. LG GD880 Mini
  2. LG GT540
  3. LG GW990 MID
• HTC

  HTC announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. HTC Desire
  2. HTC Legend
  3. HTC HD Mini
  4. HTC Smart
• ACCER

  ACCER announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Acer beTouch E110
  2. Acer beTouch E400
  3. Acer neoTouch P300
  4. Acer neoTouch P400
  5. Acer Liquid E
• Toshiba

  Toshiba announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Toshiba TG02
  2. Toshiba K01
• Motorola

  Motorola announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Motorola QUENCH (CLIQ XT)
• ELSE

  ELSE announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. ELSE Mobile First Else
• HUAWEI

  HUAWEI announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Huawei U8100
  2. Huawei U8110
  3. Huawei U8300
  4. Huawei U8800
• ALCATEL

  ALCATEL announce below mobile phones in Mobile World Congress 2010

  1. Alcatel OT-606 One Touch CHAT
  2. Alcatel OT-710
  3. Alcatel OT-800
  4. Alcatel OT-806
  5. Alcatel OT-808
  6. Alcatel OT-880 One Touch XTRA
  7. Alcatel OT-909
  8. Alcatel OT-980

Resource: http://www.gsmarena.com