Nokia shows mobile users the door
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia Corp. revealed its new online multimedia strategy on Wednesday, and showed mobile users the door. It also unveiled a range of new phones for playing games and music, and demonstrated a new user interface for future multimedia phones. Ovi, the Finnish word for door, is Nokia's new umbrella brand for online gaming, music, mapping and social networking services, and also the name of a portal where they will appear. The portal, accessible from a mobile phone or a PC, will also be open to other vendors' services, executives said at a news conference, held in a former fish market in London. The first service to appear on the site, from November, will be an updated version of Nokia's mobile gaming platform, N-Gage Arena, which currently works only with the company's N-Gage mobile game consoles, but will soon work with other Nokia devices too. "We believe it will become the largest online gaming platform by far," said Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's general manager for multimedia. The strategy is to make the service compatible with many of Nokia's existing N-Series multimedia phones, and all future N-Series models based on the S60 software platform. Nokia had originally promised game developers 6 million users of the service, but has only managed to deliver 3 million so far, Vanjoki said. Game publishers including Capcom Co. Ltd., Electronic Arts Inc. and Gameloft Inc. have pledged support for the service, he said. Nokia will offer free trials of the games on Ovi, which can then be bought for between â¬6 and â¬10 or rented by the day or week. After games, Nokia will add an online music store to Ovi. The store will open in the U.K. and other large markets in Europe in the fourth quarter, with Asian markets to follow. Plans to offer the Ovi platform in North America were not discussed. "Our philosophy is to offer all the music in the world, everywhere, to all the people, at a reasonable cost," he said. The store will offer millions of tunes for download over the Internet to PCs, or over the air direct to mobile phones for â¬1 each or from â¬10 per album. A subscription for unlimited streaming will cost â¬10 a month. Users will be able to copy tunes from their PC to their phone and back again, but copying will be limited by Microsoft Corp.'s DRM (digital rights management), he said. Nokia also unveiled some new phones. The simplest models, the 5310 and 5610 XpressMusic, each have 4G bytes of memory and dedicated keys for playing music. The 5310 will go on sale in the fourth quarter for around â¬225, and can play music for 18 hours between charges. The 5610 slides open to reveal its keyboard, has a 3.2M-pixel camera, and will play music for 22 hours nonstop. The company will release an upgraded version of its N95 multimedia phone in early October, with 8G bytes of memory and a larger, 2.8-inch, screen. It will cost â¬560 before operator subsidies and sales tax. Another new multimedia phone, the N81, connects to 3G (third generation) mobile and Wi-Fi networks. A version with 8G bytes of memory will go on sale in the fourth quarter for â¬430 before subsidies and tax. The N81 has a new 3D menu system, one of the first elements of a new user interface that will appear progressively in new phones over the next year, Vanjoki said. Future version of the interface will take cues from Apple Inc.'s iPod and iPhone: Pressing a touch-sensitive panel below the screen allows navigation through a series of menus -- left and right to choose the menu, up and down to pick an option -- while stroking the panel in a circular movement familiar to iPod users will scroll through music collections or other long lists. Asked about the similarity with Apple's interface, Vanjoki said he didn't know who had copied whom.
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Nokia (NOK1V.HE), the world&#39;s largest  mobile phone maker, on Monday unveiled three new mobile  handsets, including some with enhanced music and multi-media  capabilities.
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Nokia Corp. , the world's dominant cellphone maker, is positioning itself to compete against the likes of MySpace, iTunes, and Google, and is anchoring a key part of its new business in the Back Bay.
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Courtesy of Nokia, mobile content distribution and transaction will reside in a one-stop-shop, making life easier for mobile networks and perhaps more interesting for the owners of some 350 million Java-enabled handsets (at last count.
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The world's largest cell phone maker Nokia  unveiled a new all-in-one multimedia phone and a new slimmer model targeting U.S. consumers, at an event to showcase its multimedia devices on Tuesday.
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Nokia Corp. on Tuesday demonstrated the use of IPv6, the next generation Internet protocol, on a handset. The Finnish company demonstrated what it called the industry&#39;s &quot;first Mobile IPv6 call.
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia released on Tuesday the newest addition to its E-series lineup of mobile phones for businesses, revamping the user interface for easier navigation, executives said during a London product launch. The E51 is a dual-mode model, working with GSM networks and Wi-Fi hotspots for businesses eyeing or already using so-called "converged" services -- VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) technology alongside traditional phone networks. Nokia is hoping toÂ spur businesses to adopt its E-series phonesÂ by convincing IT managers they'll save money over the long term by using the mobiles in combination with VOIP software. The unsubsidized price of the E51 will be â¬350 ($485) and should be available in the last three months of the year. Cost savings through converged fixed line and mobile networks are a "door opener" for IT managers, said Mary McDowell, executive vice president and general manager of Nokia's Enterprise Solutions division. Expensive data plans -- which increase the total bill for companies every time employees read e-mail -- remain a barrier, although Nokia has brought the issue up with operators, McDowell said. Still,Â Nokia sees big opportunities, as 44 percent of businesses still lack plans for mobile usage by their employees, said Antti Vasara, senior vice president for the mobile devices unit of Enterprise Solutions. Nokia simplified the E51's main navigation window and added setup wizards for functions such as e-mail to make it easier during the initial set-up, Vasara said. Those improvements came to address user complaints that those functions were "more difficult" than on other models, Vasara said. Another improvement lets users access frequently used features, such as e-mail or their calendar, with the push of only one button, he said. The E51, which runs the S60 series operating system, may be built for business, but it's shiny, slim and attractive, forgoing a fattening QWERTY keypad to keep its figure. It has a 2-megapixel camera and an FM radio. The device will perhaps fill the void caused by Nokia's E70 mobile. Despite the full, fold-out keyboard that extended to the left and the right of the main screen, the E70 has not been very popular despite doing well in initial user trials, McDowell said. The E51 is compatible with Nokia's Intellisync Call Connect software for businesses using equipment and software from Cisco Systems and Alcatel-Lucent. The Intellisync software enables desktop phone functions -- such as call forwarding, extension dialing, hold and conferences, among others -- for mobiles. BT GroupÂ will test a client version of its BT Corporate Fusion software next month on the E51, with expanded trials by the end of the year, said Rakesh Mahaja, global director of mobility for BT Global Services. BT's Corporate Fusion software uses Wi-Fi to let mobile devices communicate with the fixed network, and runs applications and other calling management functions through an IP network. Â
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New Communicator 3GSM Nokia said business use of mobile phones and internet access still has a long way to go as it unwrapped a slew of high-end business phones today at 3GSM.â¦
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Consumers are giving PDAs the hand as they move toward smart phones.
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Nokia (NOK1V.HE), the world's  top cell phone maker, unveiled two new multimedia phones and a  music service in an effort to find new revenues and win back  popularity lost to rivals like Motorola .
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The world's top cellphone maker,  Nokia (NOK1V.HE), unveiled on Tuesday several new mid-range  phones at an analysts' meeting in Amsterdam.
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The world's largest cell phone maker  Nokia unveiled a new all-in-one multimedia phone and a new  slimmer model targeting U.S. consumers, at an event to showcase  its multimedia devices on Tuesday.
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In an attempt to increase its share of the business market, the mobile phone maker Nokia on Tuesday announced a sleeker version of its Communicator smart phone and expanded the number of mobile phones equipped with the BlackBerry e-mail application, a
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For companies seeking ways to increase the efficiency of their field forces, Nokia has introduced a one-touch system to connect teams with their back-office systems.
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A revamped interface joins GSM and Wi-Fi functions in Nokia's newest business model.
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Nokia has introduced three new phones at their Mobility Conference, the 7710 widescreen multimedia smartphone, the 3230 megapixel smartphone and the 6020 camera phone.
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Nokia unveils the Nokia N81 multimedia smart phone for European markets.