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Nokia showcases its strength at Nokia World 2009
okia’s version of Mac World, Nokia World 2009 was held in Stuttgart last week and true to the company’s strengths the event lived up to its
billing in terms of scale; 1800 people, telecom representatives from across the globe and a flood of announcements, both in terms of new products and services. Olli Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia’s President and CEO inaugurated proceedings by announcing the event as a ‘transformational’ moment in the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer’s 144 year old history.
And ‘transformational’ would probably be an apt word especially when you consider the big product launch which grabbed all the headlines from the event, Nokia’s foray into the consumer hardware space with the launch of their first netbook, the Booklet 3G.
Sleek and stylish, the Booklet 3G is exceptionally light at 1.25 Kg and comes equipped with a 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom processor Another launch at Nokia World was the new Nokia X series (No...we aren’t talking BMWs here). The X series is what the Nokia Xpress Music series
will now be called and the company announced the launch of two handsets in the series, the Nokia X3 and the Nokia X6. Priced at 459 Euros (approx. Rs 32,300), the Nokia X6 is completely ‘Comes with Music’ compatible. This means users will be able to use the phone to download an unlimited number of songs from the Nokia Music Store, all of which can be stored on the 32 GB hard disk of the phone. The other product release, the X3 is far more reasonably priced at 115 Euros (Rs 8,200) and has an impressive 3.2 megapixel camera. At the price-tag, the phone certainly looks like a steal and the company is betting on the phone becoming a big success in India. Apart from the X series, Nokia also launched a new version of the N97 — the N97 mini. But for the reduced memory of 8GB, as compared to its big brother’s 32 GB and a sleeker design, it isn’t much different from its predecessor. Nokia explains its launch as a more affordable version of the N97, more suited to a younger, web-friendly audience, but given the high price of 450 Euros many believe that Nokia has got the pricing completely wrong here.
All the products are completely Ovi integrated, have the Ovi store embedded and are built around services like Nokia Music and Maps, echoing their President’s clear statement of solutions and services being critical to the company moving forward. As far as services go, the biggest launch was Nokia Money, a money transfer service which Nokia has launched in association with global money transfer player Obopay. The service is expected to launch in India after it receives the required RBI clearances.
In a bid to provide a fillip to the Ovi store which has seen a modest 10 million application downloads to date, Nokia launched the Ovi SDK (Software Development Kit) which will allow independent developers across the world to create applications that can be sold on the store.
All in all, with such an array of product launches across verticals, it left most present there wondering who Nokia was now competing with and if they were in fact spreading themselves too thin. Vanjoki, who is also Nokia’s second-in-command, made it clear when he said: “On the hardware side we are now competing with players like Dell and HP, on the mobile services side we are now competing with players like Apple and on the internet side we are competing with legacy internet players (Google). We, no doubt, will win against all three.” The battle lines have clearly been drawn and with 1.2 billion of their handsets in use across the world one can’t argue with their tremendous reach. What remains to be seen though is the swiftness of the execution of their new services, something their competitors have certainly beaten them to in recent times. 120 GB of hard disk space. The 3G functionality means that users will now be able to slip their SIM cards into the booklet to experience 3G connectivity, provided of course that their telecom operator offers it. Apart from this, the Booklet comes with a stellar 12 hour battery life and will run on the Windows 7 operating system. While the Booklet certainly impressed with its slickness, there were concerns both on its price of 575 Euros (Rs 40,500 approx.) and the fact that the 1 GB of RAM which it comes with isn’t upgradeable. The Booklet’s launch date in India is still uncertain though industry insiders point to it being sometime during the middle of next year.
Another big product launch at the event, the Nokia N900, was an important one for the company as it comes powered with the Linux based Maemo 5 operating system, marking the move away from the Symbian based operating system for its high end mobiles. Equipped with an ARM CORTEX-A8 processor, the pocket computer has both a resistive touch screen and a slide out Qwerty keypad. Apart from this it comes with a generous 48 GB of memory along with 1 GB of application memory. What really makes the phone stand out though is its ability to multitask and compute applications in parallel on multiple screens, something the Maemo 5 operating system lends itself very well to.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event Annsi Vanjoki, Nokia’s EVP Markets said, “The Nokia N900 is step 4 of a 5 step process which we believe will define the mobile computing device of the future.” Step 5, many believe, will be next year when Nokia launches its Maemo 6 operating system. The product, priced at 500 Euros (Rs 35,000 approx.), comes with more memory, and many believe, a better operating system and flash based browser as compared to the Iphone 3GS. The product’s launch in India is expected before the middle of next year.
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And ‘transformational’ would probably be an apt word especially when you consider the big product launch which grabbed all the headlines from the event, Nokia’s foray into the consumer hardware space with the launch of their first netbook, the Booklet 3G.
Sleek and stylish, the Booklet 3G is exceptionally light at 1.25 Kg and comes equipped with a 1.6 Ghz Intel Atom processor Another launch at Nokia World was the new Nokia X series (No...we aren’t talking BMWs here). The X series is what the Nokia Xpress Music series
|
All the products are completely Ovi integrated, have the Ovi store embedded and are built around services like Nokia Music and Maps, echoing their President’s clear statement of solutions and services being critical to the company moving forward. As far as services go, the biggest launch was Nokia Money, a money transfer service which Nokia has launched in association with global money transfer player Obopay. The service is expected to launch in India after it receives the required RBI clearances.
In a bid to provide a fillip to the Ovi store which has seen a modest 10 million application downloads to date, Nokia launched the Ovi SDK (Software Development Kit) which will allow independent developers across the world to create applications that can be sold on the store.
All in all, with such an array of product launches across verticals, it left most present there wondering who Nokia was now competing with and if they were in fact spreading themselves too thin. Vanjoki, who is also Nokia’s second-in-command, made it clear when he said: “On the hardware side we are now competing with players like Dell and HP, on the mobile services side we are now competing with players like Apple and on the internet side we are competing with legacy internet players (Google). We, no doubt, will win against all three.” The battle lines have clearly been drawn and with 1.2 billion of their handsets in use across the world one can’t argue with their tremendous reach. What remains to be seen though is the swiftness of the execution of their new services, something their competitors have certainly beaten them to in recent times. 120 GB of hard disk space. The 3G functionality means that users will now be able to slip their SIM cards into the booklet to experience 3G connectivity, provided of course that their telecom operator offers it. Apart from this, the Booklet comes with a stellar 12 hour battery life and will run on the Windows 7 operating system. While the Booklet certainly impressed with its slickness, there were concerns both on its price of 575 Euros (Rs 40,500 approx.) and the fact that the 1 GB of RAM which it comes with isn’t upgradeable. The Booklet’s launch date in India is still uncertain though industry insiders point to it being sometime during the middle of next year.
Another big product launch at the event, the Nokia N900, was an important one for the company as it comes powered with the Linux based Maemo 5 operating system, marking the move away from the Symbian based operating system for its high end mobiles. Equipped with an ARM CORTEX-A8 processor, the pocket computer has both a resistive touch screen and a slide out Qwerty keypad. Apart from this it comes with a generous 48 GB of memory along with 1 GB of application memory. What really makes the phone stand out though is its ability to multitask and compute applications in parallel on multiple screens, something the Maemo 5 operating system lends itself very well to.
Speaking on the sidelines of the event Annsi Vanjoki, Nokia’s EVP Markets said, “The Nokia N900 is step 4 of a 5 step process which we believe will define the mobile computing device of the future.” Step 5, many believe, will be next year when Nokia launches its Maemo 6 operating system. The product, priced at 500 Euros (Rs 35,000 approx.), comes with more memory, and many believe, a better operating system and flash based browser as compared to the Iphone 3GS. The product’s launch in India is expected before the middle of next year.
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