Stephen Elop - Nokia

Nokia is to stop using the Ovi brand to sell music, games and mobile apps.

The company said it planned to wind up the four-year-old project and would be offering services under the Nokia name in future.

In its early days, critics claimed that Ovi was an ill-conceived, rushed reaction to Apple’s app store and iTunes.

However, by 2011, its worldwide user base was downloading an average of five million products every day.

The changeover was announced on Nokia’s Ovi blog by editor Pino Bonetti.

He wrote: “The main reason for this change is so we can leverage the high-value of the Nokia master brand to better support future plans to deliver disruptive and compelling mobile experiences globally.”

Mr Bonetti assured users that the only change to the service would be its name.

Confusing brands

Industry watchers said that it made sense for Nokia to ditch the Ovi brand following its agreement with Microsoft to use Windows on its smartphones.

“The problem was they created a brand out of something that did not need to be branded,” said Stuart Miles, editor of Pocketlint.com

“With the move to Windows Phone 7 they are not going to be able to keep the Ovi store. That was going to get very confusing.”

Steve Buller - Microsoft

Microsoft’s Windows Phone allows users to download applications through its dedicated Marketplace store.

Although Nokia plans to use the platform for all future smartphones, the majority of the handsets it makes run on Nokia’s own, less sophisticated operating system.

Software for those will continue to be made available through the rebranded Ovi platform, leading some analysts to question whether the new setup will be any simpler.

“If you are going to abandon Ovi, I would imagine you would want to have a single app store offered by both companies,” said Dr Windsor Holden, a telecoms analyst with Juniper Research.

“It seems a very strange way of going about it at the present time,” he added.

Business rethink

Nokia has been forced to rethink its strategy in recent years as it feels the pressure from rival manufacturers.

Its global market share fell from 33% in April 2010 to 29% in April 2011, according to Strategy Analytics.

In its core business of producing low end, simple handsets, competition has come from companies such as Samsung, which recently passed the Finnish firm as the leading mobile retailer in Western Europe.

The Finnish firm’s decline has been even more precipitous in the rapidly growing smartphone segment, with Apple’s iPhone and Google Android-powered devices eroding its long standing dominance.

According to figures from IDC, Nokia’s share of the smartphone market fell from 57% in 2009 to 20.8% in 2011.

In an attempt to turn the tide, it announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft in February 2011.

Nokia said that there would be substantial job losses as a result of the deal.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone allows users to download applications through its dedicated Marketplace store.

Although Nokia plans to use the platform for all future smartphones, the majority of the handsets it makes run on Nokia’s own, less sophisticated operating system.

Software for those will continue to be made available through the rebranded Ovi platform, leading some analysts to question whether the new setup will be any simpler.

“If you are going to abandon Ovi, I would imagine you would want to have a single app store offered by both companies,” said Dr Windsor Holden, a telecoms analyst with Juniper Research.

“It seems a very strange way of going about it at the present time,” he added.

Business rethink

Nokia has been forced to rethink its strategy in recent years as it feels the pressure from rival manufacturers.

Its global market share fell from 33% in April 2010 to 29% in April 2011, according to Strategy Analytics.

In its core business of producing low end, simple handsets, competition has come from companies such as Samsung, which recently passed the Finnish firm as the leading mobile retailer in Western Europe.

The Finnish firm’s decline has been even more precipitous in the rapidly growing smartphone segment, with Apple’s iPhone and Google Android-powered devices eroding its long standing dominance.

According to figures from IDC, Nokia’s share of the smartphone market fell from 57% in 2009 to 20.8% in 2011.

In an attempt to turn the tide, it announced a strategic alliance with Microsoft in February 2011.

Nokia said that there would be substantial job losses as a result of the deal.

Credits to BBC Tech
Edited and Posted by Stephen Joell-Ireland

App Of The Week:

Osfoora is a twitter client very similar in style to Tweetie / Twitter for iPhone. For this weekend only the iPhone app is free and the iPad’s ‘Osfoora HD‘ has dropped to £0.99. The App is very nicely presented and has several nice features including the ability to post a song from your library or the song that is ‘#NowPlaying’ complete with hashtag. Hop onto the App store and download it for free… it’s worth a try, surely?

The tweet your music function.

An example of the slick menus.

The tweet composer.

The timeline layout.

After the controversy that was Gizmodo iPhone 4G debacle, several websites have posted updated prototypes of the iPhone 4G. Sites such as Taoviet (via Engadget) posted  the video below of a prototype that was nigh identical to the Gizmodo model with the only aesthetic changes being the removal of lower screws, which could hint that it was a production model.

In the latest posting on Taiwanese site apple.pro, pictures show an never before seen all white 4g. Although not a new concept, as the 3gs was released in black and white models, the images of the iPhone prototypes seem to be near enough the same. The below pictures may be close to what the final 4g model will look like.

iPhone 4g Prototype

Txt sex users will love it!

The biggest gripe with this phone is the fact it’s running on Symbian OS 9.4 which is we’re brutally honest, it sucks. Menu navigation is slightly cumbersome and it seems that Nokia have a penchant for hiding away the best features of the phone itself. It has all the usual features we would expect with the Ovi Store and Ovi maps and its phone entry book has more entry space than the yellow pages. Phone calls are pretty charming with the ability of adding a picture to the caller and we really like the vibration you get when you press down on an application.

Once again the phone’s biggest high point is the stunning 5 mega-pixel camera and VGA video camera. It’s an exact replica of the X6 and that is no bad thing. Image quality is stunning and the plethora of image editing options, make it as good as a digital camera. You can take a look at our road test of the camera functions here. The phone runs on a 434 Mhz processor so it feels fast and boot-up is pretty quick too. For music fans though you don’t get the free 12 month music store access you can download tracks from the music store as well as access the phones stereo FM radio with RDS. Gaming, it lacks once again the punch you’d be hoping for. It comes bundled with DJ Club Tour but the phone is without truly great games and the running speeds of them aren’t going to blow you away either.

Available in 3 colours

The Mini doesn’t just come in black, it is also available in Garnet and White, so a nice choice for those aesthetic & fashion conscious. For video playback it has a wide range of support, your standard WMV, Real Video and MP4 are all compatible and the music player features AAC+ support which is critical for some of the latest music download services now on the market. The phone also has the stupidly useless T9 option as well, which is great if you like to text like a complete moron. T9 has never worked for me, no matter what phone I use, when it tries to guess words they always end up making the sentence sound sexually suggestive, very odd indeed. If you’re Ruby Wax you’re going to love the N97 Mini. Why? Well it has 7 hours and 10 minutes of talk time (approx) per charge a mammoth amount of time for a good vocal session, not only would Ruby Wax love this phone, but those that work on sex lines, there’s nothing worse than being trapped by chords when trying to get into the moment. Why am I saying this? Okay, let’s get back into focus.

What other features does the N97 Mini have? Well, you have a voice recorder, TV-out, document viewer that’s compatible with Microsoft Office. Bluetooth and Wifi are also available and as standard the phone comes with 8Gig internal storage capacity and can hold a further 16 gigabytes of space. Whilst the phone is cheaper than the X6 in our opinion, it just doesn’t match it. Subtracting the free music, the X6 actually looks sexy. It has some beautiful lines on it and feels better to play with. To us the flip out keypad is a nice option, but only if you’re likely to take advantage of it. We were left a little underwhelmed with this phone, apart from the camera and video recorder which we’re envious with whilst we play around with our iPhones on a day to day basis. For its price it really doesn’t stand out enough, even if the phone is compatible with Qik. Unfortunately both of our Nokia sets suffer from the same overall syndrome. If you are looking to buy a phone outright, there are better phones on the market that are cheaper in the all round perspective, stick this one into the £30.00 a month contract band and it all becomes a little more appealing.

PICTURES

Music to my ears, horror for my wallet

You would have to be a complete buffoon to fork out £400-420.00 for the Nokia X6. The price is simply astonishing for what this phone is. However, throw this phone into a contract bundle and it looks allot more alluring. The phone we’ve road tested is the 32gig option, so if you can compensate for the 16gig version then the price will obviously be lower.

Navigation & Ease of Use

Now that the audience with the attention spans of ADHD monkeys have gone, let’s plough into this phone and take a look into its positives and negatives. The Nokia X6 to us seems to be the re-imagining of their wobbly Xpress Music phone which failed to set the world alight. The first thing I do like about this phone then is how it feels in your hand and its overall size. It throws back a little to the old Nokia’s but without the chunkiness and the keypad. You’ll be glad to know that primarily the X6 is a touch screen based for navigation apart from switching menu’s which will require the press of a face button. The touch screen isn’t the best though, firstly it requires you to scroll by rolling your finger down the navigation bar on the right and then sometimes for whichever reason, your required to double press some applications for them to open, or press them once in others. How bizarre. Menu navigation on Symbian is also somewhat puzzling. Features such as the camera are hidden away when it’s one of the strongest points of the phone. So, for those who aren’t a dab hand on mobile phones, it’s not the easiest to navigate, so it’s probably best you stay away from this one.

Games

Though the Ovi store will expand the plethora of games, The X6 doesn’t exactly have very good games on it. Arguably you could say that other competitors such as the iPhone don’t have any at all, but needless to say, many phones do have games attached to them. The most notable of the three games is Spore but its more like a poor man’s version of Feeding Frenzy. Either way, the hardware in the Nokia X6 isn’t as good as other mobiles out there, so I wouldn’t recommend the X6 if your intentions are to do a good portion of gaming on the side.

Applications

As a default the X6 doesn’t have a massive array of applications and tools. You have your standard calculator, currency conversion, contacts, calendar and a nice touch is the ability of adding in podcast feeds and support of RealPlayer. The major coup here is the free Ovi maps feature. Ovi maps provides a great way of navigating on a daily basis, the maps are really nicely presented with rich detail and after initial testing we were impressed and definitely preferred it compared to the iPhone’s Google Maps. As part of the phones purchase the maps are completely free, a nice touch as many plans charge for this type of service. Also bundled as expected is the Internet, its hardly surprising to see it on the phone but I do find that the browser is most certainly adequate and user friendly, despite complaints over reviews have made about it, we fail to see what the problem is.

Nokia Music Store

So, here is the money spinner right here. 1 of the 2 main reasons why this phone could be seen as a must purchase is that the X6 comes bundled with free access to the Nokia Music Store for 12 months. This gives you the ability to stream and download an unlimited amount of songs to both play on your computer or add to your X6. If taken advantage of, this really is a massive incentive to buy. We know through experience that record companies sell wholesale track vouchers at 70p a pop, thus making this a no brainer for those that love there music. Despite the phones costly entrance price if your willing to take advantage of the music for the first 12 months, you can easily make your money back from your purchase very easily. The Nokia music store itself is very impressive, its ridiculously easy to use. The small Ovi music player that resides in your computer is nice as well. Due to the unique aspect ratio of the Nokia X6 the music store application automatically converts artwork to the correct sizes before the transportation process takes place to your phone. There are simply millions of tracks to choose from too, ranging from today’s most popular artists to more niche genre’s like Movie Soundtracks, the Nokia Music Store isn’t a dusty basement full of unknown artists.

Picture & Video

The second megaton reason why you should buy this phone is down to the exceptional video and picture quality. To get an in depth view of this area, please drop by our road test of these features. Your getting five mega-pixels in terms of the digital camera with the same plethora of image set up functions that you would get with an ordinary digital camera. We tested the camera in various lighting situations and the phone repeatedly hit the mark with all our expectations. The auto-focus is extremely impressive and the phones quality is helped by the world renound Carl Zeiss lens. Perhaps what impressed me more than anything about this phone was the mind blowing video quality. If you love creating on the fly videos then definitely opt for the 32gig option, you’ll easily be able to record for at least 60 minutes without fuss. The video frame rate is smooth as silk, the audio quality is sharp and the image is colourful. Just what you need then. The video encodes to .mp4 which delivers a sharp image directly to Youtube. In some respects it totally voids touching any Flip Video products when this phone converges the video and photography aspect with absolute aplomb.

Speakers & Microphone

Enough of the praise, it’s time to get back to a negative, the speakers on the X6 are tinny and the provided headset doesn’t exactly scream quality with this phone. I often found it lacking in bite and a little tinny which is shame given the price tag on this piece of kit. In terms of the microphone, we tested it with a make shift pop-shield and whilst not as good as Apple’s 3G microphone, it’s perfectly adequate for audio commentary and dictation notes.

Conclusion

The Nokia X6 is a cute good looking phone that has some awesome styling. Symbian isn’t exactly the most user friendly phone, so be aware. The video, music and photo aspects of this phone stand out as the very best on the market and for those reasons you may want to consider taking a contract out for one of these. The standalone asking price is a little pricey to say the least but if your interests lie in the three areas we cover then don’t rule this phone out, you will be so impressed by the 12 month inclusion of free music and the stunning video quality you get with this phone. Whilst not the worst phone for gaming, you can see from the games alone that the X6 lacks the power to play anything remotely engaging. If you can get a good deal on a contract, give this phone a spin, you won’t regret it. If you have allot of money to piss up the wall then buy it outright but I still argue that it’s not worth the £400-£420 asking price. Perhaps then lay off for a little until the handset gets cheaper before taking the plunge for those that hate being held to a contract.

For full specs on this phone, check out the fantastic GSMArena website