Nokia will exit Symbian and low-finish telephone businesses in North America, says the Wall Street Journal. The company will put all its muscle into Windows Phone in the United States and Canada, reports Ina Fried.
In an interview with AllThingsD, the head of Nokia’s U.S. subsidiary said that the business will also focus exclusively on sales by way of conventional wireless carriers.
“When we launch Windows Phones we will basically be out of the Symbian company, the S40 business, and so on., ” Nokia President Chris Weber stated in the interview. “It will be Windows Phone and the accessories about that. The reality is if we are not profitable with Windows Telephone, it does not matter what we do (elsewhere).”
I previously mentioned that Nokia asked me to work with them on five reviews for the Ovi Daily Apps site and I wanted to let you all know they posted my review of SugarSync for Symbian this morning. This is a review I have been meaning to write here for quite some time because I have checked out most every cloud sync/storage solution and found SugarSync to be the best, especially for multi-platform guys like myself.
As you can read in my review, SugarSync is available for S60 3rd Edition, 5th Edition, and Symbian^3 devices. You get a whopping 5GB for free with other storage capacities available at reasonable rates. I hope they eventually add streaming capability of music like they do on other platforms, but just having access to files and the ability to get to them from my Nokia N8 is valuable to me. You can’t go wrong giving it a try for free.
Last month at CES Slacker Radio announced it was coming soon to Symbian devices. I just read a Tweet from the NokiaUS account and saw that Slacker Radio is now available in the Ovi Store. I popped my SIM back into my Nokia N8 and downloaded it immediately. Keep in mind, the initial download to get the software is 1.3 MB so make sure you have a solid connection or are connected via WiFi before downloading.
Keep in mind, Slacker is a service with support for those in the US and Canada so this service is only available for these two countries. I understand many other countries have Spotify so it looks like we finally get a client/service in the US before others
I have been using Slacker Radio on my Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 devices for over a year as my primary streaming music client and find it works very well at providing just the right mix for me. I actually have a Slacker sticker on my MacBook Pro since I love the service. The great thing is that favorite stations are synced to your account so you can pick up a different smartphone and listen to your favorites on any device. I like how the client on other platforms lets you cache music for offline listening so you can load up tunes for your next flight and then stream again when you land. This offline caching feature is not yet in this new Symbian client, but we may see it in the future.
This news for Slacker Radio is timed particularly well since Last.fm is going to start charging a monthly fee to stream music.
As stated on the Ovi Store description:
Listen to free personalized radio on your Nokia phone. The award-winning Slacker Radio application gives you access to the entire Slacker music library featuring millions of songs from thousands of artists. Listen to over 130 expert programmed radio stations or create your own custom stations. Learn more about the music you hear by reading the artist bios and album reviews. Slacker Personal Radio is the best way to discover new artists and hear your favorite songs.
Basic or Radio Plus?
The free account you setup with after downloading Slacker Radio gives you full access to Slacker Radio music, but you are limited to 6 song skips per hour, per station, there are some ads, and you get no lyrics. You can upgrade to Radio Plus and pay $3.99/month to have ad free listening, unlimited song skips, complete lyrics, and ABC News Radio. On my N8 this can actually be billed through T-Mobile. I like the service so pay for the Radio Plus upgrade.
UPDATE: OK, I am using it up here in Alaska and when connected via EDGE the music streams flawlessly. However, if I switch to the task manager or another app the music pauses for 1/2 second and then starts back up again. This is going to be real annoying if I am trying to multi-task with Slacker Radio playing. Hopefully this is something they can fix easily enough and soon.
Also, don’t forget my tip that you can Zune Pass music on your N8 and get a taste of what kind of services a Nokia Windows Phone 7 device will provide.
This strategy will transition the installed base of 200 million Symbian owners. Nokia expects to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the years to come, but the smartphone platform of the future is Windows Mobile.
Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy.
Nokia will help drive and define the future of Windows Phone. Nokia will contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.
Nokia and Microsoft will closely collaborate on development, joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.
Bing will power Nokia’s search services across Nokia devices and services. Microsoft adCenter will provide search advertising services on Nokia’s line of devices and services.
Nokia Maps will be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience.
Nokia’s extensive operator billing agreements will make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low.
Microsoft development tools will be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach.
Microsoft will continue to invest in the development of Windows Phone and cloud services so customers can do more with their phone, across their work and personal lives.
Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.
Under the new strategy, MeeGo becomes an open-source, mobile operating system project. MeeGo will place increased emphasis on longer-term market exploration of next-generation devices, platforms and user experiences. Nokia still plans to ship a MeeGo-related product later this year.
It’s serious business. Nokia plans to phase out Symbian, the most popular mobile phone operating system on Earth, almost completely. The latest version, Symbian^3, was officially released in Q4 2010, first used in the Nokia N8.
Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker previously predicted the shift to mobile (above). IDC predicts worldwide shipments of smartphones and media tablets will reach 284 million in 2010. In 2011, makers will ship 377 million of these devices, and in 2012, the number will reach 462 million shipments, exceeding PC shipments, says IDC.
Only nine million of India’s 1 billion people have access to broadband. India’s Department of Telecoms hopes the country will have about 48 million broadband users by 2012, and 100 million by 2014.
ABI Research says more than two billion of the world’s population is now being covered by high-speed data networks, with more than 500 3G networks, and over 300 WiMAX and LTE announcements to date. World-wide, mobile devices with integrated wireless broadband are expected to top 2 billion by 2014, according to research firm In-Stat.
I really enjoyed playing with the Nokia E7 at Nokia World last Fall and was thinking I might pick one up. My orange Nokia N8 is performing quite well at the moment and I cannot justify the $800+ likely unlocked price of the E7 so unless Nokia sends out an eval unit for a bit I won’t be writing a review here on Nokia Experts. However, my buddies over at All About Symbian will indeed be providing full coverage of the device and now that the E7 is shipping you can check out Rafe’s first part that covers an overview of the hardware and some first impressions.
In the past, the Eseries devices have all been priced quite low compared to Nseries smartphones, but with the E7 that looks to have flip-flopped. Rafe’s first part is very detailed and after reading it I started trying to figure out what I could sell to pick one up for myself
I have to try the keyboard though to see if that is enough for me to give up the better camera, smaller form factor, and expandable memory of the lovely N8. As great as the E7 looks, I am not sold that a physical QWERTY keyboard justifies getting rid of my N8.
How many readers are planning to pick up an E7 when they become available?
Those of us Nokia fans in the US have been bummed out with all of the overseas talk of Ovi Music and Spotify. We do have Mobbler (Last.fm support) for the Nokia N8, but it is always good to have options. On my Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 devices I have been using the excellent Slacker Radio service and rather excited to reveal that Slacker is coming to Symbian^3 in February. Yes, us Nokia N8 owners in the US will finally get the ability to use Slacker Radio on our devices.
The Slacker Radio for Nokia client will support the following features:
Music library featuring millions of songs
High-quality stereo playback from any available wireless connection
Create custom artist stations based on artists or songs
Over 130 professionally programmed and customizable genre stations
View artist biographies and photos
View album art and read reviews
Rate songs as favorites
Ban songs and artists from stations
The Slacker Radio application will be available for free in February. It was developed using the Qt application development framework and should run on all Symbian^3 devices.
It is encouraging to see Slacker coming to Symbian and now I have my hopes set on Amazon or Barnes & Noble bringing their ebook clients to Symbian too.
I was sent a link to the Skype blog announcing a brand new version of Skype for the latest Symbian phones, including the N8, C7, and E5. I fired up my web browser and went to the skype.com/m website and discovered that the Skype Verizon deal here in the US blocks ANYONE outside of specific Verizon handsets from getting Skype. However, I was not going to stop there and figured out all you need to do is switch your device to offline mode and then use a WiFi connection to go to the Skype site and get the .sisx file to install on your device.
This new version includes Skype’s high quality audio codec, SILK, so calls should be even better than they were before. Here is what is listed on the Skype blog for the updated application:
make free Skype-to-Skype calls and IM on 3G or WiFi
save money on calls and texts to phones abroad
share pictures, videos and other files from your phone
easier to add contacts, navigate, add a photo to your profile and set your mood message
updated the interface to better fit larger screens
Two new reports have just been published giving us a world-view of just how far Android has come in terms of smartphone market share. While US reports have steadily seen Android pacing and in some cases surpassing iOS and global trends are on the up and up, the latest data gives us a more local idea of where Google’s OS is succeeding.
In Asia, Android has just surpassed surpassed long-time leader Symbian for smartphone supremacy in Q3, according to market research firm GfK Asia. Interesting to note is the rise in overall smartphone sales, up from 1.27 million to over 4.7 million from the same time last year.
In Nordic regions, QAim Oy is reporting that Android is steadily growing. Measuring access requests to Nordic web content, Android holds third place with 9.85 percent, but it is the strong growth compared to an 0.83 percent share earlier this year that has analysts projecting Android to overtake both iOS and Symbian by August 2011.
All is good news for Google and Android users, as continued growth of the platform worldwide can only lead to greater and greater innovations.
Nokia said today that it will have no adverse impact on Symbian’s device roadmaps or shipping commitments. Nokia plans to continue to invest its own resources in developing Symbian. Symbian^3 is the latest version of the Symbian platform, with over 250 new features.
About two years Nokia paid 264m euros to buy out the other shareholders in Symbian. The Finnish phone giant then teamed up with others, such as AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone to set up the Symbian Foundation to manage and dissemate the open source mobile phone operating system.
The Symbian Foundation isn’t shutting down, but it will change its role to license Symbian software. Nokia will take Symbian platform development back into its fold and make it available “to the ecosystem via an alternative direct and open model.”
The result of the changes, says Nokia, is that the Foundation will reduce headcount in operations and staff and, by April of next year, will be governed by a “group of non-executive directors responsible for licensing the OS.”
Nokia said it expects to sell more than 50 million Symbian^3 smartphones and already has some on the market, such as the Nokia N8, Nokia C7, and Nokia C6-01. The Finnish handset maker will meld Qt, its app development framework, with Symbian to improve the struggling OS.
MeeGo is the new thing. MeeGo is an open source project that was formed when Intel and Nokia merged their respective Linux mobile operating systems to create a unified platform. It combines two earlier Linux efforts, Nokia’s Maemo (which works on ARM processors) and Intel’s Moblin (which works on Intel’s Atom processors). MeeGo can run on both ARM and Atom processors.
As we wait for the Symbian^3 web browser to be released on the Nokia N8, you can try other web browsers like Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. I just received a press release that Opera Mini 5.1 was released and is written as a native Symbian app rather than a Java app so get on over to m.opera.com from you Symbian browser and download it now.
This new native Symbian version, Opera Mini 5.1, features all the same things you have seen with Opera Mini before, but with these key improvements:
Significantly faster start-up time
Improved page-load and scrolling performance, especially on older devices
Full support for device text input methods
Improved fonts
Device integration for copy & paste, email client and more
Option to choose default access point — no more annoying dialogs
I love the idea of device integration and default access point settings so I went to download it myself and now have it running on my Nokia N8.
Tip for T-Mobile USA customers: T-Mobile thought it would be cool to block access to apps they didn’t want you to use so if you go to m.opera.com with your T-Mobile SIM in the N8 you will find they won’t let you download it. Simply go into offline mode, connect via WiFi, then download Opera Mini 5.1 beta to your Nokia N8. You can then go back into online mode and use the application with no problems.
Oh yeah, here are some fast facts about Opera Mini from the press relase
The most popular mobile browser on the market
More than 71 million monthly users worldwide
More than 36.9 billion pages processed each month
The Opera Mini servers compress the webpages up to 90%
Anyone else happy with this new version of Opera Mini?
Last week Nokia made a couple of important announcements that I meant to cover and just became too busy to focus on what was said. One announcement was on the steps to accelerate its transfomation that unfortunately includes laying off 1,800 employees. The other announcement was very encouraging as Nokia refines its development strategy and does away with the Symbian^3 and Symbian^4 distintion and more. There are some extremely important bits of information in these announcements that should encourage all of us Nokia fans for the future, including the possibility that our wonderful Nokia N8 devices will be upgradeable for quite some time.
When it comes to Nokia strategy and their future, I look to my good friend Rafe Blandford for answers since he is the most knowledgeable person about Nokia and Symbian that I have ever met in my life. I highly recommend you go read Rafe’s article on the future of Symbian. I think you will come away from it as encouraged and excited as I am about the future of Nokia and Symbian.
Symbian Imploding As Foundation Head Resigns
It’s not just the OEM partners that are abandoning Symbian ; its executive staff is jumping ship too. The Symbian Foundation announced that Executive Director Lee M. Williams is stepping down, effective immediately. Symbian Foundation CFO Tim Holbrow has…
Samsung to Discontinue Symbian Developer Support; Not a Good Start for the Nokia Corporate Re-vamp
Samsung has announced today that the company would no longer support the development of Nokia’s Symbian platform. The announcement was made in a letter via Samsung mobile innovator forum. The brief announcement gave the rollback schedule, pointing towards the complete shutdown for Symbian support till the end of this year. Symbian Platform was launched in 2008 [...] Samsung to Discontinue …
At the Samsung Mobile Innovator site, the company stated that “Samsung Mobile Innovator will discontinue its Symbian support service from December 31st 2010…. Registration and certification of Symbian applications for the Samsung Apps store will cease from 08:00am on the 31st of December 2010.”
Samsung hasn’t announced any Symbian-based smartphones since last February and is focusing its efforts on the Android and Windows Phone 7 platforms, as well as its own proprietary OS, Bada.
Symbian remains the leading smartphone OS worldwide, controlling 41.2 percent of the global market according to research firm Gartner. A year ago, Symbian-based devices represented 51 percent of the market. Android now accounts for 17.2 percent of the smartphone market, third overall behind Research In Motion’s BlackBerry (19.0 percent) and ahead of Apple’s iOS (14.2 percent).
Remember earlier this week, when the CEO of Nokia, Anssi Vanjoki, likened companies who use Android to little boys who pee their pants to stay warm when it’s cold outside? Now, Sony Ericsson has announced that they are dropping any devices set to release with Nokia’s Symbian OS, and their pants look perfectly dry.
In a statement to Bloomberg, Aldo Liguori, spokesman for Sony Ericsson said:
“We have no plans for the time being to develop any new products to the Symbian Foundation standard or operating system.”
Although Sony Ericsson’s Vivaz line is doing moderately well, it is relatively clear that Symbian isn’t going to be in the runnings much longer; even Nokia is opting out of Symbian for their new Meego platform.
This announcement is much less concrete and, well, rude as Nokia’s new stance on Android. Sony Ericsson isn’t saying they will never again use the platform. The statement runs in line with rumors that Sony will be releasing a Playstation phone that runs Android 3.0, said to end up sporting a 3.7″ screen and a 1GHz processor.
Do you think Sony Ericsson is making the right move? Be sure to let us know in the comments.
Nokia debuts trio of Symbian 3 phones
Nokia gets serious about Symbian 3 and unleashes three new smartphones at Nokia World. Meet the Nokia E7, C7, and C6. Originally posted at Dialed In
IDC issued their latest smartphone projections ranging from 2010 to 2014 and the good news for Nokia is that even four years from now analysts see Symbian dominating the market with 32.9%. This is a drop of 18% from the current reported 40% market share, but keep in mind these are just projections and as the new Symbian OS develops through Symbian^4 and on we may see Symbian market share increase rather than decrease. Interestingly, they project Apple’s iOS to drop 25.8% to just 10.9% of the worldwide market share.
The projections show RIM BlackBerry holding pretty steady, Android continuing to rise, and Windows Mobile getting back into the game a bit with their Windows Phone 7 operating system.
After testing out just about every mobile operating system over the past few years for my ZDNet gig, I have to say I still prefer offerings from Nokia for the most part. It is so refreshing to have devices with no US carrier crapware loaded on them and still have excellent reception, customizability, and most all of the apps and services I need to conduct my daily business.
As I have been saying for years, the smartphone world is still quite small and there will be many players competing for customers in the future. While the projections show Symbian going down quite a bit, I think Symbian and MeeGo are too early to predict until we see more details of both mobile operating systems.
I used to be a die hard QWERTY keyboard fan and still find the keyboard on the Nokia E73 Mode to be extremely efficient and effective. However, on larger touchscreen Android devices I have come to embrace Swype and find I am very quick with it. Thus, I was extremely pleased to read over on All About Symbian that Swype is now available from the Nokia Beta Labs site for S60 5th Edition (aka Symbian^1) devices and this means we will most likely also get to use Swype on the Nokia N8. If Swype is on the N8, then any concerns I had for a hardware keyboard and funky text entry are gone.
Swype is a company based here in Seattle and just about every single person I know that has tried it out has embraced it. I plan to install it on the Nokia N97 mini and give it a shot. FYI, one of the best tips I can give for Swype is to slide your finger from the very bottom left corner (where the Swype logo key is) to the right over the Sym key and you will get a directional pad and other cool functions on the keyboard.
Swype for Symbian has been tested on the Nokia 5800, 5230, X6, N97, and N97 mini.
Have any of you tried Swype yet on your Android or S60 5th Edition device?
Do you have a Symbian S60 5th Edition device and longingly look at your iPhone and Android brethren thinking you could have a backup, sync, and cloud sharing service like Dropbox, Zumodrive, or SugarSync on your beloved device? Well, I have some excellent news for you then as SugarSync just announced their Symbian client that is available now for free and includes 2GB of cloud data capacity. We do have the Ovi Files client and it is decent, but services like SugarSync offer even more functionality that is cross platform and provides better access support.
With SugarSync for Symbian you can edit documents (with supported Symbian apps) and have the files synced back to the cloud. Documents, photos, music, video, and other file types can be shared, managed, and accessed with SugarSync. I have been looking at several different cloud storage and sharing solutions and now that SugarSync has a Symbian client I have decided they are the service I will be going with for all of my devices moving forward.
Simply point your S60 5th Edition web browser to www.sugarsync.com/symbian and download the free client. You can also purchase higher capacity on the servers with 30GB plans starting at just $4.99/month, but you do get 2GB for free to try out too. They also have a referral program that lets you increase your capacity between 500MB to 10GB of storage when a friend is referred by you.
You can access your SugarSync storage drive via a web browser or iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, or Windows Mobile device too.
According to Nick Jones of Gartner, Symbian may be “rearranging chairs on the Titanic” in terms of their market share. He says that, while Symbian is still the worldwide leader in the mobile space, they are losing ground quickly to competitors like Android and iOS. He goes on to state that Symbian is running farther off-course from consumer demand with things like WiFi Direct and audio policy packages. We have seen how far Android has come in the mobile race for market share in the recent months, but will Symbian be able to keep it’s lead, or is this the dawn of their downfall? If things go the way Jones thinks, we may end up seeing some “skunkworks projects”, or even branding redesign contests coming from Symbian in attempts to keep the platform in it’s current #1 pot.
If you would like to read the full article, click here.
I thoroughly enjoy using my large Sprint HTC EVO 4G 4.3 inch high resolution touchscreen device. Then again, I also enjoy using the T-Mobile Nokia E73 Mode. They both have their strengths and weaknesses and Steve Litchfield over at All About Symbian put together a good post titled, “10 Reasons why Touchscreens Suck“. We still see the Eseries devices coming out with non-touchscreen displays, but every iPhone, Palm webOS, and Google Android device (not to mention the first Windows Phone 7 devices) have touchscreen displays. RIM and Nokia appear to be the only ones still rolling out non-touchscreen devices, but there are several benefits to such devices.
There are plenty of feature phones without touchscreens, but even many of these are launching with full touchscreens too. Maybe the best strategy is to carry one of each, depending on your planned activities for the day
According to an interview over at the Wall Street Journal with Anssi Vanjoki, head of Nokia’s Mobile Solutions unit, Nokia is very interested in being Linux based, but without any little green Androids. Nokia’s focus for their mobile devices will be primarily on their most popular platform, Symbian, along with their Linux-based “MeeGo”, which they created with the help of Intel.
While Nokia continues to release their devices and push ahead in the global scheme, Anssi promises that they have not forgotten about the US market, and asks stateside users to hold tight for future releases, such as the T-Mobile 5230 Neuron.
The first MeeGo devices are expected hit hit the market by the end of 2010. You can read the full interview between Anssi Vanjoki and the Wall Street Journal here.
For more information on Android and the current Android mobile phones, check out our Android Guides
Despite years of investment in its Symbian operating system, Nokia has picked the Linux-based MeeGo instead to go head to head with Apple’s iPhone and other higher-end smartphones, reports C/Net. Nokia will continue to use Symbian on inexpensive phones, a Nokia spokesman explained.
The Nokia N8 will be the last of the flagship N-series smartphones to use Symbian, Nokia told CNET Australia, and confirmed the move in a Reuters interview. “Going forward, N-series devices will be based on MeeGo,” said the Nokia spokesperson.
Nokia’s N8, which won’t be available until the third quarter, has a 12 megapixel camera, 3.5-inch touch screen and retails for 370 euros ($493). Nokia has four smartphone product families. The C series is focused on personal social networking. The E series phones are for business users. The X series for youth and music, and N series for the most advanced models.
Nokia bought full Symbian control from other partners, then released it as open-source software. But it wasn’t sufficient to make the operating system a top-end competitor, notes C/Net. Developers, mobile operators and manufactures have been moving to the “free”, open-source Android platform, instead.
MeeGo hopes to be in handhelds, tablets and nettops, although the Android SDK (software development kit) has first mover advantage & backing from Google.
MeeGo was announced in 2010. It combines two earlier Linux efforts, Nokia’s Maemo (which works on ARM processors) and Intel’s Moblin (which works on Intel’s Atom processors). MeeGo enables Atom-powered smartphones and tablets.
Android 2.2, running on PC-standard x86 architecture, may be MeeGo’s biggest competitor. Android originally only ran on devices that used ARM-family processors. But ARM processors are used in most smartphones, as well as many anticipated tablets and “smartbooks”.
“Our expectation is that (native x86 Android) will be based on the Froyo release and will be available this summer to developers” Renee James, Intel’s senior veep for software and services, told APC.
Code-named FroYo (from frozen yogurt), Android 2.2 is the latest Google’s OS named after a desert, following Eclair (2.0/2.1), Donut (1.6), and Cupcake (1.5).
I previously mentioned that Nokia asked me to work with them on five reviews for the Ovi Daily Apps site and I wanted to let you all know they posted my review of 
Last month at CES 
I really enjoyed playing with the 
Those of us Nokia fans in the US have been bummed out with all of the overseas talk of Ovi Music and Spotify. We do have Mobbler (Last.fm support) for the Nokia N8, but it is always good to have options. On my Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7 devices I have been using the excellent 
The Slacker Radio application will be available for free in February. It was developed using the Qt application development framework and should run on all Symbian^3 devices.
I was sent a link to the 
As we wait for the Symbian^3 web browser to be released on the Nokia N8, you can try other web browsers like Opera Mobile and Opera Mini. I just received a press release that Opera Mini 5.1 was released and is written as a native Symbian app rather than a Java app so get on over to 
I thoroughly enjoy using my large Sprint HTC EVO 4G 4.3 inch high resolution touchscreen device. Then again, I also enjoy using the 
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