Join Now

Software architect working in Symbian/S60 area since 2000 and still being enthusiastic about mobility. Please visit my introduction page on Forum Nokia Champions web page.

Treading on shaky ground

tote_b5 | 11 October, 2007 17:23

If I were Dumbledore, then I could put my thoughts, memories in my pensive to keep my mind clear and fresh. But I'm not him at all and my mind now feels overburdened with news that I can't keep in - so I let them out.

You know, it's a great thing to tag blog articles. It keeps them categorized, easy to look for, easy to oversee, etc. What I'm now about to write, though, fits in a new category (well, at least to me): treading on shaky ground. What is it? You'll see, just read on!

Everybody paid immediate attention to one of Nokia's recent acquisitions, the agreement for Nokia to acquire NAVTEQ. You know, two things couldn't escape most people's attention: first, the huge amount of money Nokia is willing to pay ($8.1 billion!), second, that it is such an area (GPS and location-based services) that hasn't been fully explored yet. They must foresee something (and of course play an active role in it) that others haven't been thinking of yet!

And it's not the only acquisition Nokia was recently involved in: for example, they also merged with Enpocket. This deal is to give a boost to advertisement after the public announcement that Nokia is opening to the Internet. Not as if we didn't know that NSeries is open to anything, we now know that to the Internet, too. In addition, and I'm sure most of you already know, Nokia has launched new services for content download & consumption lately, check out Ovi and MOSH to see what I mean.

So good, so nice. But you know what? There are some parties who are not happy with Nokia opening to Internet and offering content online. It's said to be the operators (carriers in US) who will lose the most money if Nokia happens to be successful in this area. Although their online offering (mostly ringtones and themes) can usually be described with one word, pathetic, they're still the biggest revenue generator for Nokia. What happens, for example, if some UK operators refuse to sell new Nokia models? What happens if others follow them? Although, as I've already pointed out, Nokia might not be really affected by such a sudden(?) move in the US, it'd still be an unpleasant thing to happen to Nokia. I sort of have a feeling that what we see happening around is a total war between Nokia and others (operators, mobile manufacturers, OS vendors, etc.). That's the way how it goes.

As to mobile operating systems, the competition is also getting more and more tough. Although it's nicely put by Atmasphere that iPhone is a feature phone, in contrast with N95, the über-smartphone, Apple definitely has influence on newer phones not only from Nokia, but other handset makers, too. It's also worth noting what he found about the afore-mentioned two phones:


The iPhone is for consuming content, while the N95 is for creating it.

So from that point of view, Apple might not pose a considerable risk to Nokia's position yet. But how about Google? Even though it's a bit of an old news that Google is working on a mobile OS, I'm wondering how it will threaten Symbian's future. It's said to be a Linux variant (a new distribution to make the market even more fragmented?) and of course will be ad-supported (== cheap). Looking forward to it!

Thanks for being my pensive so far, I feel really relaxed now. And also eager to know what you think about all these things I've mentioned!

Original from http://mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com/.

Cheers,

Tote

Business Opportunities/Services, General, Location Based Services | Next | Previous | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

Comments

Re: Treading on shaky ground

Sorcery-ltd | 12/10/2007, 14:34

Sorcery-ltd Hi Tote,

Really interesting blog!

I think that Nokia have made a good move buying NAVTEQ. What I suspect the price really points to is how many devices we can expect to support GPS (or some decent location solution) in the near future. In a similar way to Nokia becoming the worlds leading digital camera consumer/producer a few years back they will soon become the world leader in GPS/Navigation/LBS. If they're selling 200+ million phones with maps in a couple of years then they will have saved themselves a huge amount of royalty payments by buying the map provider now!

I expect the relationship between Nokia and the major network operators to continue to evolve in interesting ways. I think it will really come down to whether customers vote with their feet. Would you change network operator because they didn't offer the phone model you wanted? I would but how many others feel that way? I don't care who supplies my data connection as long as it isn't restricted to a walled garden. I do care about my phone model. I believe Nokia will eventually win this battle because the network operators are finding it very difficult to differentiate on anything other than price and phone models (why was there such a huge fuss over who got the iPhone?). While the operators are paying for the phones though I'd expect more of these deals where the operator services have the most prominent position in the device but the Nokia ones are still in there.

I hear rumours that the Google OS is to be based on OpenMoko. That platform doesn't have any kind of real-time Linux kernel (if it's got a real-time kernel, is it really Linux anymore?) so I'd expect it to be limited to high-end smartphones (with 2 processors). I also think it'll be lacking a lot of common smartphone features for a while yet considering the state of development on OpenMoko. Related to the discussion on operator relationships it'll be interesting to see how the network operators take to open Linux based phones. I believe they were the main driving force behind PlatSec on Symbian so I'd think they'd want Linux phones locked down somehow. If Linux isn't open then it doesn't really have much appeal left as a smartphone OS apart from being free!

Thats a whole load of random thoughts out of my head for while. Thanks for sharing your pensive!

Cheers,
Mark
(Sorcery)

Re: Treading on shaky ground

tote_b5 | 12/10/2007, 15:36

tote_b5 Thanks, Mark, for sharing your thoughts, I really appriciate it! On the GPS thing, I really expect a positive change from this move as I found it a bit disappointing business model to pay for some services (e.g. voice navigation) that are free of charge in dedicated GPS devices. Another annoying thing (though might have nothing to do with NAVTEQ) is that why on earth does searching not work on my n95 without a network connection? Although I've downloaded the map, still no luck. I hope this acquisition will bring some new thoughts and ideas that'll make us happier than now.

As to operators vs Nokia: I agree with those saying that it shouldn't have been Nokia who should have innovated in online services, but rather operators. They didn't do, now people will get it from Nokia. In my eyes, though, it's a declaration of war to operators. I'm not saying that Nokia must (or shouldn't) fight, but they're "treading on shaky ground". :) For example, what if operators join their forces, since it's a common threat to all of them?

Finally, I welcome that Google's mobile OS will be based on an existing Linux variant. Hope that it'll be open, too, because we've already seen closed Linux mobile devices. I would say that in the near or even the mid-future I don't think mobile Linux would threaten Symbian's future - as long as they keep separated, fragmented without being able to come to agreement, that's not going to work out. On the long run, though, it must work - phone manufacturers will realize that they must put their "selfishness" aside and co-operate. It's their interest, really.

Tote

Re: Treading on shaky ground

Sorcery-ltd | 12/10/2007, 16:07

Sorcery-ltd More fascinating comments. I will join you in hoping that the teething troubles with Nokia's GPS implementation are all sorted out soon. Hopefully I'll have my N95 next week :-)

Yes, the operators should have innovated in online services years ago. I think their problem was not being able to make enough money out of it. In that area I think they had some very unrealistic expectations, or maybe they just wanted to milk the early adopters for all they were worth. Who in their right mind wants to pay 3-5 euros for a 10 second clip of a song they can buy all of for 1 euro - just because someone markets it as a ringtone?? Madness.

I don't agree that it is entirely war on the operators though. Anything Nokia do which increases mobile data usage should increase ARPU for the operators. In many cases they want a bigger slice of the value pie but they need to compete for it fairly or the anti-competition laws will be used to fight them. They certainly aren't legally allow to join forces against device manufacturers and other service providers.

I also welcome alternative OS's, particularly if they are open. OpenMoko is certainly completely open. The first phone is even being developed with open hardware. It's something I'd be happy to be involved with if it would pay the bills :-)
I can see it being a very popular platform with enthusiasts for direct sales to the public. I'm yet to be convinced as a mass market platform. My experiences developing with open source products on Linux so far is that NOTHING works properly without a bit of tweaking. I don't know if any of these guys really know what it takes to get a commercial quality product to market.

My final thought on that is, having done a bit of work with embedded Linux now, it's a terrible choice for a mobile phone OS. If it wasn't free/open source then I don't think anyone would ever have used it for such a purpose.

Thanks again, I'll look forward to meeting you in person in London!

Mark

Re: Treading on shaky ground

tote_b5 | 12/10/2007, 16:15

tote_b5 Yep, I'll be there. And thanks for your comments! :)

Tote
You must login to post comments. Login
 
 
Powered by LifeType 
     
     RDF Facets:
     
     
     qfnZtopicQUqfnBlogTopicZgeneralQ
     qfnZtopicQUqfnTopicZbusinessE5fopportunitiesE5fservicesQ
     qfnZtopicQUqfnTopicZlocationQ
     qfnZtypeQUqfnTypeZBlogContentQ
     qfnZtypeQUqfnTypeZBlogE45ntryQ
     qfnZtypeQUqfnTypeZCommunityContentQ
     qfnZtypeQUqfnTypeZWebpageQ
     qmarsZlanguageQUxhttpE3aE2fE2fswE2enokiaE2ecomE2flanguageE2d1E2fenX