Nokia appoints Marko Ahtisaari to Nokia Leadership Team

News No Responses »
Jan 262012

Nokia has made a strategic change in the leadership team and has appointed Marko Ahtisaari as Executive Vice President, Design, and a member of the Nokia Leadership Team, effective February 1, 2012.

According to the press release

Nokia Corporation
Stock exchange release
January 26, 2012 at 13:45 (CET +1)

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced that Marko Ahtisaari has been appointed Executive Vice President, Design, and a member of the Nokia Leadership Team, effective February 1, 2012. He reports directly to President and CEO Stephen Elop.

Ahtisaari will continue to lead the Nokia design team, responsible for the industrial design and user experience design of all Nokia products. He has lead the team since 2009 during which time Nokia Design has created critically acclaimed products such as the Nokia N9, the Nokia Lumia 800 and the Nokia Lumia 900.

Previously, Ahtisaari was an entrepreneur, as CEO and co-founder of Dopplr, a social network for international travelers, and Head of Brand and Design at Blyk, an advertising-funded mobile network. Prior to this he was Director of Design Strategy at Nokia, and held roles in corporate strategy and venturing. Ahtisaari was also a Fellow of the Faculty and lecturer at the Graduate School of Arts and Science at Columbia University, and a composer and professional musician. He serves on the Board of Directors of Artek and WITNESS.

"One of the key differentiators of Nokia is the elegant and head-turning design of our products," said Stephen Elop, president and CEO of Nokia. "As we have charted our new course, Marko Ahtisaari has ensured that we elevate the importance of distinctive design, which is evident in the industry’s response to our award-winning Lumia and Asha products. By appointing Marko to the Nokia Leadership Team, we believe his influence will ensure that design leadership becomes part of everything we make and also everything we do."

CV and photo of Marko Ahtisaari are available on press.nokia.com

Nothing much to add here.

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 5:54 pm Tagged with: ,

Nokia: delusion, Android and China style

Editorials No Responses »
Jan 202012

An article from Forbes – inaccurately titled How China Ate Android – is currently making circles all over Nokia employee’s Twitter streams.

It contains the following passage, which is highlighted by the Nokia folks:

How is it possible the mid-tier Android vendors cannot eke out revenue growth with that kind of global Android unit explosion still going on?

The most likely explanation is the rapid expansion of the low-cost Android phone vendors, particularly ZTE and Huawei. I

Sadly, they fail to read on – as it contains the following passage, also:

… they are also eyeing other device segments. ZTE’s Windows model Tania is debuting in the UK at the monthly contract rate of 10 pounds – half of what the Nokia 710 will cost.

If you ask me, Nokia would have fared best with a proper version of Symbian – with Android being the second best. The reason for this has been outlined here before: while Windows Phone 7 is a nice platform, it is, by design, unsuitable for creating high end phones.

However, all the eeking and squeaking mainly takes place in the mid-range area. High-end Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy Note have little to fear from Chinese manufactutrers – they prefer the cushier mid- and low-range markets to the cold winds faced in the profitable, but challenging high-end market.

Let’s quote Winston Churchill: “I am not a person to be prodded. If anything, I am the prod”.

Sadly, Nokia has all but given up that position. So, better invest in impact dampers – and get aquainted to that prod…

Posted by Tam Hanna at 11:27 pm

Brand Trust Report 2012 declares Nokia as most trusted Indian brand

News No Responses »
Jan 182012

The Brand Trust Report 2012 has named Nokia the most trusted brand in India, surpassing giants like Tata, Bharti ad Reliance Industries. According to The Economic Times

Nokia, Tata and LG are amongst most trusted brands in India, said a survey Tuesday.

The revelation was made by ‘Brand Trust Report 2012′ which lists India’s 1,000 most trusted brands.

Nokia, Tata and LG were followed by Samsung, Sony, Maruti Suzuki, Bajaj, LIC and Airtel on the list of the most trusted brands.

"The research is conducted with 2,718 ‘influencer’ respondents from 15 cities, generating more than two million data-points from 12,000 hours of research," Trust Research Advisory firm which conducted the survey said in a statement.

Nothing much  to add here other than this news brings a sigh of relief to Nokia. With Nokia Lumia failing miserably, the silver lining of the Nokia Microsoft deal is almost turning black.

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 7:58 pm Tagged with: ,

Necessitas alpha 3 update 3

Development No Responses »
Jan 182012

So we received this email from android Qt team on behalf of  BogDan Vatra which clearly mentions that the final update of the alpha 3.

 

> Hello folks,
> >
> >    Today we push the last update of alpha 3 release, this update
> > should fix a few issues of new keyboard implementation [1].
> >
> >    Regarding alpha4 and beta1 schedules, I can’t tell you much today,
> > because it depends *IF* more people will join me or not, to finish the
> > style plugin and the menus integration. Both of them are very
> > important for all applications, so alpha4 release depends by this
> > features.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > BogDan.
> >
> > [1] https://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/tickets/132/

You can visit the above link for more info. Nothing much to add here except that we wait impatiently for the alpha4 release. Stay tuned…!!!

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 7:50 pm Tagged with: ,

mHealth applications market reached $US 718 million in 2011

Metrics Maid No Responses »
Jan 182012

mHealth applications are proving to be a boon for patients and doctors alike. With smartphones coming to “everyman’s reach”, mHealth apps have seen a spurt in growth.

Research2Guidance, the ever number crunching firm, has released a report  which gives an insight into the mHealth app market.

2011 was the first year of substantial business in the market for mobile health services delivered via smartphone applications.

The smartphone application market for mobile healthcare increased by a factor of 7 to reach $US 718 million in 2011. Nevertheless, the mHealth market is still in an embryonic state. Theoretically the market potential is enormous given the overall worldwide healthcare market size of US$ 6 trillion (WHO estimate) and the potential use cases and benefits for mobile patient healthcare support.

Within the last year, the growth in the mobile healthcare market has greatly accelerated. The main drivers for this growth have been the increase in the smartphone user base on the demand side, and the doubling of the number of mHealth applications on the supply side. These findings are part of research2guidance’s new Mobile Health Market Report 2011-2016.

A majority of the big healthcare companies have discovered mHealth applications as an innovative way to promote and deliver healthcare services and products. A testament to this is that a number of these large players published mHealth apps in 2011 that go far beyond a simple allergy tracker or pill reminder, e.g. Sanofi Aventis’ sensor-based iBGStar Diabetis monitoring app.

chart mHealth 1.2012 mHealth applications market reached $US 718 million in 2011

We are undoubtedly witnessing a transition phase, and mHealth apps will surely become a “must have” for doctors and patients alike.

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 7:45 pm Tagged with: ,

We’ve been hacked – but are alive

Internal No Responses »
Jan 182012

Dear Readers,
I am unhappy to inform you that we have had a minor break-in into our systems – an attacker of unknown provinience exploited the software used to host the Tamoggemon Content Network, as to insert content to “spam” the Google search engine with ads for his own products.

As this was a purely Google-targeted attack, no post data was damaged and no user data was stolen. We have been able to remove the hack fully from all sites already.

This disclosure is made only to satisfy our legal obligations. The following sites were affected:

  • TamsS60
  • TamsBlackBerry
  • TamsIJungle

Should you recognize any oddities, please let us know immediately!

With best regards
Tam Hanna / Jatinder Singh

Posted by Tam Hanna at 12:04 am

Meet /me at Mobile Developer Conference

Internal No Responses »
Jan 162012

This one goes out to all true Tam Hanna fans who happen to be in Germany in February – you can meet yours truly at the Mobile Developer Conference.
mdc europe Meet /me at Mobile Developer Conference

I will be speaking about data persistance on Windows Phone 7 – and most definitely, attendants can expect a few surprises!

Find out more via the URL below:
http://www.mobile-developer-conference.de/

Posted by Tam Hanna at 10:08 pm

Lumia 900 – or – Windows Phone 7 is unsuitable for Nokia’s needs

Editorials No Responses »
Jan 122012

Even though I know that it is a sign of bad taste to kick a looser, Nokia’s recent announcement re the Lumia 900 was too surreal – had I read it three years ago using a fortune teller, I would have wanted my money back.

But, well…after X lines of blah blah describing ‘yet another WP7′, we get this:

- A partnership with EA to bring over 20 of the world’s most popular games to the Windows Phone marketplace, coming first to Nokia Lumia devices.

The comedy of this becomes clearly visible if you think about past hit devices like the N95…tbat device managed to truly stand out from the crowd with advanced hardware and software.

Such devices could also be built with with Windows Mobile…but Windows Phone 7 is not intended as a platform for market defining products.

Right from the start, Microsoft promised its developers ‘a level platform’, one where all devices behave the same. This policy is enforced aggressively towards developers who, for example, are banned from selling typing trainers which would require a specific hardware QWERTY keyboard.

And, in a world of desktop Linux, Microsoft is well advised not to suck up too much to a manufacturer. Keep in mind that convergence is pushed forcibly in the TV space by Samsung, LG and – probably – soon Panasonic, who are now starting to produce smartphones again in order to complete the offering portfolio.

If Microsoft would coddle up to Nokia too much, I could very well envision aggressive reactions from LG or Samsung. So, no exclusivities for you…

P.S. This is NOT an Anti WP7 rant. WP7 is a great operating system…the concept of “unified platform” is great. But this is not what Nokia needs – a Boeing 747 is not a bad aeroplane because it cannot drop nuclear bombs, it just isnt a nuclear bomber…

Posted by Tam Hanna at 11:42 am

Qt 4 moved to open governance

Development, Qt (for Symbian) No Responses »
Jan 102012

As a matter of fact, Qt 4 has been moved under open governance by the Qt team. As per their blog

Since we released Qt under open governance on qt-project.org, there was always one piece missing. The Qt 4 repository was so far still handled in the old system. This was done as a simple prioritization, to get the parts of Qt that we considered most relevant for the development community out first.

The main problem has been the additional work required to integrate Qt 4 with the continuous integration (CI) system used on qt-project. Thanks to the efforts of Sergio, Rohan and others this has now been (mostly) solved. We run the full CI setup (that includes both compilation and running the test suite) on both Linux and Mac OS X for Qt 4.8. On Windows we currently only run compile tests, running the automated tests on Windows is coming soon.

You can now find the Qt 4.x repository on codereview. Pushing and reviewing changes works the same way as for Qt 5.

Approvers and Maintainers are the same as for the respective areas in Qt 5, but it should be noted that I don’t expect a lot of further development to happen in Qt 4.8. The focus here should be on bug fixes, and patches should be reviewed with this in mind.

The Qt 4.6 and 4.7 branches are not CI tested, so extreme care should be taken when submitting to these branches, and I’d like to see a review from a Maintainer for any change going in there. Changes in these branches should be limited to security issues and severe bugs that can’t be worked around in user code.

Any pending merge requests in gitorious should be resubmitted through gerrit, as we’ll close merge requests on gitorious and turn the repository there into a readonly copy.

Enjoy!

Nothing much to add here…!!

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 7:40 pm Tagged with:

Research: Market for mobile app development services reached $US 20.5 billion in 2011

Development, Metrics Maid No Responses »
Jan 102012

Research2guidance, the ever number crunching company has produced it’s latest report concerning development for smartphones.

In 2011 publishers created $US 6.8 billion in application download revenues while app development revenues reached $US 20.5 billion. The development service became a mass market almost 3 times of the size of the application download market today.

chart 1.2012 Research: Market for mobile app development services reached $US 20.5 billion in 2011

The market for mobile application development services, including application creation, management, distribution and extension services, has reached $US 20.5 billion vs. $US 6.8 billion in app downloads in 2011. Thus the development market surpassed the content market by the factor of 3.

Today most app project revenue is generated from “classical” app creation services (concept creation, design and coding). New service types like app libraries, white label solutions and multi platform app development tools have become more and more popular, but do not yet take a major share of the market.

Prices for application development services vary significantly between regions. UK developers charge $US 626 per day whereas competitors from India charge, on average, $US 138 per working day.

App development partners using price as the main criteria for selection will not be lead to an optimal solution as most of the price differences are offset by the additional time needed by offshore app developers.

App developers can get a copy of the 98 page report from http://www.research2guidance.com/the-market-for-mobile-app-development-services-reached-us-20.5-billion-in-2011/

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 7:05 pm Tagged with: , ,

Windows Phone advertising networks: A comparison

Development, Metrics Maid No Responses »
Jan 102012

 

Xeno bits, the developer for Windows Phone, took a look at in-app advertising on the platform. The comparison between Pubcenter, Inneractive and Smaato was made for the revenue from advertisement loaded within their app.

image thumb Windows Phone advertising networks: A comparison

  • “Google’s AdMo received no attention and stood last among them due to issue with SDK”
  • “Smaato is best in terms of analytics with good SDK. Although it does not let you earn much”
  • “Inneractive tools are easy to use and solve issues through their technical support”
  • “The Pubcenter SDK is the best. Although the limited availability is as issue for many developers”

What’s interesting to note is how low eCPM is on the smaller networks.

  • Smaato reported just $0.075,
  • Inneractive at $0.2, while
  • Microsoft was at a reasonable $0.56

Although there have been several points of comparison. Yet, only you can decide the best for you.

Good luck!

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 6:05 pm Tagged with: ,

Microsoft reassures WP7 users regarding updates

News No Responses »
Jan 102012

Microsoft had earlier stated that the updates for Windows Phones will depend on the carrier requests rather than user need for bug fixes, security and features. This created a ruckus among the Windows Phone 7 users. Mary Jo Foley denied the statement and assured the worried folks.

Greg Sullivan, Senior Product Manager on Windows Phone maintained that:

“Nothing has changed in regard to how we work with carriers to deliver Windows Phone updates to our customers”.

He confirmed to Mary Jo Foley that if a carrier skips an update the next one will still include the fixes from the first. Mary was quick to note no change in the Microsoft policies and procedures to update and deliver to carriers and customers. She also pointed out the mysterious removal of “Where is my phone update” page.

But the bigger question was: If nothing has changed, why there is confusion due to poor communication by Microsoft before their major CES Nokia announcement?

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 6:02 pm Tagged with: ,

Broadcom debuts new 5G Wi-Fi chips, promises speeds up to 1.3Gbps

News No Responses »
Jan 052012

The best just got better. Broadcom, the maker behind come of the most needed chips in our smartphones and tablets (read as network chips) has introduced its first family of 802.11ac (5G WiFi) chips.

According to Broadcom, its new family of chips offers speeds up to three times faster than 802.11n Wi-Fi with up to six times the power efficiency over a broader range. The new chips use a 40nm process and deliver HD video content over longer distances nearly instantaneously. Broadcom says the chips deliver content so quickly, that the Wi-Fi radios on mobile devices can return to low-power mode faster, which results in significant power savings.

The full press release is as follows

Broadcom Launches First Gigabit Speed 802.11ac Chips – Opens 2012 CES with 5th Generation (5G) Wi-Fi Breakthrough

5G WiFi Offers Consumers the World’s Fastest, Most Reliable Wireless Coverage for HD-Quality Video and Near Instantaneous Data Synch
Innovation Attracts Support from Industry Leaders – Comcast, Lenovo, Motorola, NETGEAR and Others

LAS VEGAS, Jan. 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — CES —

News Highlights:

  • Broadcom introduces first family of IEEE 802.11ac chips based on the 5th generation of Wi-Fi (5G WiFi)
  • 5G WiFi improves wireless range in the home, allowing consumers to watch HD-quality video from more devices, in more places
  • The increased speed of 5G WiFi allows consumers to load web content on a mobile device faster, synch large video or music files quickly, all while extending battery life
  • 5G WiFi addresses the growing need for a more robust and efficient wireless network

Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today introduced its first family of 802.11ac (5G WiFi) chips designed for a broad range of product segments. The new IEEE 802.11ac chips are three times faster and up to six times more power efficient than equivalent 802.11n solutions. Visit Experience Broadcom @ CES for more news, blogs and multi-media from CES and www.5GWiFi.org for more information on consumer advantages of 802.11ac.

5G WiFi is the next generation Wi-Fi standard required for today’s mobile and video era. Based on 802.11ac, 5G WiFi is a major evolutionary step from the existing 802.11a/b/g/n networks. Broadcom’s 5G WiFi dramatically improves the wireless range in the home, allowing consumers to watch HD-quality video from more devices, in more places, simultaneously. The increased speed enables consumers to download web content from a mobile device faster and quickly synch large files, such as videos, in a fraction of the time it would take on a similar 802.11n device. Since 5G WiFi transfers the same volume of data at a much faster rate, devices enter low-power mode faster, which results in significant power consumption advantages.

Digital-content consumption is on a steep incline, with video content expected to reach approximately 90 percent of global consumer traffic, according to Cisco’s 2011 Visual Networking Index Forecast. At the same time, Internet traffic is shifting rapidly from wired to wireless networks. The increased reliance on wireless networks, the explosion of video consumption and the growing number of wireless devices being used are all putting tremendous stress on legacy 802.11a/b/g/n networks. As a result, consumers are prone to experience deteriorated performance, choppy videos and slower load times. 

By creating more reliable whole-home coverage, Broadcom’s 5G WiFi technology overcomes the digital content and wireless device challenge. Broadcom’s family of 5G WiFi solutions includes the BCM4360, BCM4352, BCM43526 and BCM43516. 

Product Highlights:

  • All 5G WiFi solutions from Broadcom support the following features:
    • 80 MHz channel bandwidth that is 2 times wider than current 802.11n solutions
    • 256-QAM, a higher modulation scheme that increases data transfer efficiency
    • Transmit and receive beamforming
    • Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) Codes
    • Space-Time Block Codes (STBC)
  • BCM4360 supports the PCIe interface and implements 3-stream 802.11ac specifications, and reaches speeds up to 1.3 Gbps.
  • BCM4352 and BCM43526 implement 2-stream 802.11ac specification to reach up to 867 Mbps. BCM4352 supports PCIe interface; BCM43526 supports the USB interface.
  • BCM43516 supports USB and reaches speeds of up to 433 Mbps with its single stream 802.11ac implementation.
  • Chips with the PCIe interface are ideal for access points, routers, DSL/cable gateways and PC products; chips that use USB are ideal for consumer electronics devices including televisions, set-top boxes and Blu-Ray players.
  • Broadcom’s new 5G WiFi chips deliver better coverage and longer battery life in a small form factor that is interoperable and compatible with existing technologies.
    • Beamforming helps steer content in the direction of the intended receiver, increasing reliability and extending range; this is well complemented by STBC and LDPC code support.
    • By transferring the same volume of data at a much faster rate, devices go into a low-power mode faster than existing 802.11n solutions.
    • Designed on 40nm manufacturing process, the new chips are smaller and more power efficient, giving customers more design freedom.
    • Broadcom’s 5G WiFi solutions work with all legacy 802.11 standards and complement other wireless technologies — like Wi-Fi Direct, Bluetooth and NFC.

Broadcom is sampling 5G WiFi solutions to its early access partners including retail and PC OEMs, service providers and carriers, and will be demonstrating 5G WiFi capabilities at CES.

802.11ac has generated broad support across the consumer-electronics industry. Companies and partners across the ecosystem recognize that 802.11ac is the future of Wi-Fi and are committed to its development, integration and distribution.

Nothing much to add here except there is a horde of quotes from industry experts which can be read at the following link – http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=s637241

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 6:16 pm Tagged with: ,

Nokia to move APAC headquarters to Beijing, new chairman to replace Ollila

News No Responses »
Jan 052012

Nokia is to move its Asia Pacific headquarters from Singapore to Beijing and is reportedly favoring the founder of mobile security software maker F-Secure, Risto Siilasmaa, to succeed current chairman Jorma Ollila later this year.

The move to Beijing is aimed at improving business efficiency and achieving savings targets.

A Nokia spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires that

…the company wants to adapt its operations to the business environment.

…This includes an increasing focus on assembly in Asia, close to our suppliers.

Helsingin Sanomat reports that Risto Siilasmaa will be replacing Jorma Ollila as the chairman of Nokia. Though nothing has been officially declare as of now, the new chairman is sure to replace Ollila. Nokia might break the news in its Annual general meeting this year, or maybe earlier.

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 5:43 pm Tagged with:

Nokia launching devices in many countries

News No Responses »
Jan 052012

Nokia making all users happy this New Year!

Nokia announced the launch of Lumia 800 and 710 at various countries throughout the world.

Nokia Lumia 710 is now available in Italy from online stores for starting price of 95 Euros.

This smart phone is now available at nstore.it or redcoon. It is available in black and white shade at 299 Euros and 295 Euros respectively.

Nokia Lumia 800 is coming to Denmark on nearly all carriers on 20th January 2012. The headset will be showing up on Telia, Telenor, Callme and Telmore in all 3 colors.

Alternatively, Nokia has announced Lumia 800’s release date in Sweden on 23rd January 2012, and pre-orders have opened up on Telenor, Tele2, Telia and Tre.

Ansii Vanjoki, product manager for Nokia in Scandinavia quoted

This is one of our most anticipated products ever and it feels very good to our Swedish consumers finally get to meet Nokia Lumia 800

Peter Wissinger, business area manager for Windows Phone said

With the Nokia 800 Lumia gets Windows Phone visible to the public at large. Nokia’s total focus on Windows Phone has resulted in an amazing phone, unique both inside and out – a phone that everyone will want to have

Nokia Lumia 900 is doing rounds at the site already. The Nokia 900  is a rumored  Windows Phone with a 4.3” ClearBlack AMOLED screen, HSPA+ data speeds, and a 1.4 GHz single-core processor. It is rumored to have an 8-megapixel rear camera and 16 GB or 32 GB of storage. Front-facing camera and gyro sensor is currently unknown. It is rumored to be released Q1 2012 on AT&T. Other country release dates are currently unknown…

As per Pocketnow, the device is apparently code-named Eloko, will have both AT&T 3G and also the T-Mobile AWS 1700 Mhz band, and come with 4.3-inch WVGA display, 512MB of RAM, eight-megapixel camera, and a large 1830mAh battery and the handset will be around 12 mm thick.

Posted by Jatinder Singh at 5:16 pm Tagged with: ,
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