That focus on fun and simplicity pervades Rovio’s main offices, which look as much like a playroom as a business center. Stuffed Angry Birds are practically as common as monitors or staplers.

The company’s offices, overlooking the Baltic Sea, are just a slingshot away from Finland’s best-known tech company, Nokia. Rovio began life in Helsinki as a small, struggling game maker. It moved to nearby Espoo in August 2010 after its Angry Birds game started to take off.

The company initially occupied an office designed for 50, and expanded to the building next door once its ranks swelled to 70. It now occupies four floors there, along with the original spot.

Its main business is on the sixth floor, with sales, marketing, and finance staff, along with a concept retail store featuring a slingshot chair and all manner of Angry Birds gear. A theater is home to regular employee movie days, while other employee groups meet to play board games or barbecue outside (yes, even in the snow).

The company’s game designers and animators work on other floors, hidden away from outside visitors. The second floor, with the animation team, has a more relaxed, artistic style, with unfinished wooden furniture and vintage pieces. It also has a “no outdoor shoes” policy, so people leave their shoes at the door, putting on slippers or other indoor shoes.

The third and fourth floors, home to the game teams, are more similar in style to the business floor, but without nearly as many plush toys.

Brand head Ville Heijari works near the 10-person marketing team, but he admits he occasionally goes downstairs to the other floors to get help on an Angry Birds level he is stuck on.

One has to wonder, though: Don’t they ever get tired of birds and pigs?

“So far, never,” Heijari said. That’s true of both the games and the products, he insists. “Even some of the small things that we do — completely random things — I think they are delightful.”

Of course, with essentially just one product — however big it has become — the more critical question is whether the broader public will keep feeling the same.

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RELATED POSTS:

• I Went to Espoo, Finland, and All I Got Was This Angry Birds T-Shirt (And Plush Toy and …)
• Rovio Shows Off Angry Birds Space — From Space
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• How the Angry Birds Almost Died Before the First Level

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120308/i-went-to-espoo-finland-and-all-i-got-was-this-angry-birds-t-shirt-and-plush-toy-and/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120301/tablets-that-have-a-certain-feel-to-them/ http://allthingsd.com/20120301/tablets-that-have-a-certain-feel-to-them/#comments Thu, 01 Mar 2012 18:13:48 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=179612 Given that most Android tablets look the same, a couple of companies are showing technologies in Barcelona that make sure they don’t feel the same.

One of those companies is a Finnish start-up called Senseg. Its technology, which it says is just now ready to go into products, lets you rub your hand over a flat glass tablet screen and feel texture that is eerily like a real world object. Touch a picture of kitchen tiles, for example and it feels smooth until the bump where the grout is.

A different approach is offered up by Immersion, a longtime player in this field, which is showing off a new generation of electronics that open the door to far more realistic sensations than the current vibrations or simple touch feedback from a virtual keyboard.

Haptics — or the technology that enables adding a sense of feel to electronics — has been around for a while. Immersion, for example, demoed how a phone or tablet could gain a better sense of feel back at our D7 conference in 2009.

Early devices just rumbled or vibrated at certain times. Touch feedback has already made its way in more limited uses, with the most common being virtual keyboards that offer a physical sensation when a key is pressed.

But the field has continued to evolve. Some of the technology just on the horizon reproduces the way things feel much more authentically.

At its booth this year, Immersion was showing a phone with digital maracas that feel like you’re actually rattling rice. Then there’s the roller coaster video that gives you both the click-click-click as you climb and the “whoosh” as the descent begins. Yet another demo app adds to any music playback a bass track you can feel.

Both Immersion and Senseg also demonstrated haptics used another way — as a physical cue to something in a long list of data. Imagine, for example, scrolling though email and feeling a physical bump when you get to a message from your spouse or boss.

Similarly, varying amounts of touch feedback can be used to indicate the popularity or rank of something. Immersion had a demo app, for example, where users could flip through a set of images and feel increased touch sensation when they scrolled to a photo with lots of comments.

The technologies from Immersion and Senseg have some similarities, but work in different ways. Immersion’s technology uses a rectangular bar-like component called a piezo module, that physically vibrates the device in varying locations and frequencies. Senseg, meanwhile, uses the combination of a custom chip and a special screen coating to create an electric field on the front of the display.

Senseg’s approach requires developers to explicitly write their software to use the technology, meaning it could be most attractive to device makers that want to add a feel to their user interface skin. Immersion, meanwhile, has programming interfaces that developers can use, but also has a mechanism to add haptic feedback even to apps that were not designed for it.

The two technologies are also at different stages. Senseg is just now looking to sign its first customers, while Immersion says its newer technology is already in a tablet from Pantech and will come soon to other tablets. Phones should also get the new touch tech, once the piezo modules are reduced a bit in size.

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• Barcelona Subway Strike Averted on Eve of Mobile World Congress
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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120301/tablets-that-have-a-certain-feel-to-them/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120227/with-lumia-610-nokia-aims-to-take-windows-phone-to-a-new-low-price/ http://allthingsd.com/20120227/with-lumia-610-nokia-aims-to-take-windows-phone-to-a-new-low-price/#comments Mon, 27 Feb 2012 08:20:51 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=177922

As hard as Nokia has been working to improve upon Windows Phone, it has been working perhaps even harder to find ways to bring the phone further downmarket.

That’s because it badly needs models that can fill the spots occupied by its waning Symbian platform to sell in strongholds like China and Indonesia.

With the Lumia 610, introduced on Monday, Nokia is not only hitting the lowest price for a Windows Phone but also going into new languages.

“The expansion of the portfolio downwards in price points is obviously quite important,” Nokia VP Ilari Nurmi said in an interview last week at Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland.

The 610 is made possible in part by a new version of Windows Phone that has lower memory requirements, but also through lower-cost display and processor technology.

As a result, Nokia says it can sell the Lumia 610 for 189 euros unsubsidized ($252), roughly $100 less than it charges for the Lumia 710, and less than half the price of the Lumia 800.

Despite the cost-cutting moves, Nurmi insists that the core of the Windows Phone experience is preserved, something he said is not always the case with low-end Android phones.

It is true that its lower amount of memory means that not all Windows Phone apps will run, but Nurmi insisted that “a supermajority” of programs will run.

Nokia is also announcing global availability for the Lumia 900, announced for the U.S. with AT&T at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. The global version of the device, however, will feature an HSPA+ modem, as opposed to the LTE one being used for the U.S.

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• RIM Exec: Developers Like Us Just Fine, Thanks
• Intel Announces More Phone Customers, Plans for Speedier Chips
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• Sony Insists It’s Not Just Playing Around When It Comes to Phones
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• Nokia’s Strategy Comes Into Focus in Barcelona
• HTC Introduces the One Phone It Hopes Will Help It Regain Footing (Well, the Several Phones)
• Sony Aims to Remake Name for Itself in Phones
• LG Shows Its Hand in Barcelona (After Already Tipping It)
• With Latest Galaxy, Samsung Looks to Project Its Android Lead
• Barcelona Subway Strike Averted on Eve of Mobile World Congress
• Complete Coverage of Mobile World Congress

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120227/with-lumia-610-nokia-aims-to-take-windows-phone-to-a-new-low-price/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120224/nokias-challenges-one-cabbies-perspective/ http://allthingsd.com/20120224/nokias-challenges-one-cabbies-perspective/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:30:14 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=177664 Mika Saaristo has been driving cabs in Helsinki for 25 years, and he has been a solid Nokia customer for almost as long.

Recently, though, he bought a pair of Samsung Galaxy devices.

“All my friends, they wanted to have the iPhone,” Saaristo said. Not one to follow the crowd but still wanting a powerful smartphone, Saaristo bought a Samsung Galaxy S II, as well as a Galaxy Mini to use with his second SIM card.

In perhaps an even more troubling indicator, Saaristo has seen a marked decline in the number of trips he makes to drive partners to Nokia’s offices. It used to be at least once a week that he was taking a foreigner to one of Nokia’s offices in Espoo, Finland, or in the Helsinki area.

Now, he said, it is more like once a month.

“Maybe not even that much,” he said, as we drove from central Helsinki to the airport.

Saaristo is hopeful that the company’s bet on Windows Phone will pay off, but notes that it is more a matter of pride than economic necessity, observing that Finland’s once Nokia-dependent economy has diversified significantly.

(Note: While my time in Finland is at an end, I still have a bunch more stories to tell about Rovio, Nokia, the Finnish start-up scene and my first experience ice fishing. I’ll tell as many as I can before Mobile World Congress, though some may have to wait until after Barcelona.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120224/nokias-challenges-one-cabbies-perspective/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120224/at-nokia-a-stroll-down-cellular-memory-lane/ http://allthingsd.com/20120224/at-nokia-a-stroll-down-cellular-memory-lane/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:34:28 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=177199 While most of my time in Espoo, Finland, was focused on learning about what’s coming next from Nokia, I took a little bit of time to revisit a bit of cellular history.

In the center of its grand Nokia House headquarters, the company has a showcase for some of its long-ago devices, with many more showcased in the Nokia Lounge, a swanky conference room used to meet with important visitors.

All the greatest hits (and a few of the misses) are there.

Phones of all shapes and sizes are featured, from the nearly suitcase-sized 1982 Mobira Senator to the first Communicator smartphone, among the earliest to flip open to reveal a QWERTY keyboard. There are phones with circular keypads, phones with square keypads, and a few devices with no keypads at all.

Even the ill-fated N-Gage gaming devices are there.

While there is much to admire about the modern smartphone, the Nokia collection is a reminder that physical hardware design has gotten a lot more uniform — and, quite frankly, boring — compared to some of the wacky designs from days gone by.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120224/at-nokia-a-stroll-down-cellular-memory-lane/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120224/an-exclusive-look-inside-nokias-smartphone-torture-chamber/ http://allthingsd.com/20120224/an-exclusive-look-inside-nokias-smartphone-torture-chamber/#comments Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:30:02 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=177139 Teijo Makinen grabs an unreleased Nokia smartphone, a product that engineers have been working on for five years to make a reality. He gives it a quick glance, then straps it to a machine and lets it free fall from about five feet onto a slab of concrete. Then he picks it up, sets it at a slightly different angle and gives it another drop.

Makinen, a hardware test specialist, has been abusing cellphones for years. It’s all part of Nokia’s effort to make sure that the devices can handle the same abuse once they are in the hands of customers.

“The purpose is to break things,” says Teemu Ala-Hynnila, director of quality operations at Nokia. That way, they can spot weaknesses and correct them before the products are released. Plus, he said, they don’t want customers to have to protect the phones with ugly rubber cases.

One room over, more prototypes are enduring other hardships. One chamber cooks phones to 55 degrees Celsius, while another sees how they do at -15 degrees Celsius. A third produces somewhere between 93 percent and 95 percent humidity.

In each case, a Nokia worker is able to pull the phone out, press a button and take a picture without delay.

The torture area is just one part of Nokia’s testing labs in Tampere, Finland. AllThingsD got a rare peek inside an area normally off-limits not only to visitors, but to most Nokia employees.

The labs themselves are a mix of old and new technology. One room resembles a 1970s sound studio. In there, enough sound is pumped in to simulate the noisiest of New York restaurants, while a robot talks into a cellphone. The robot is barely audible in the room unless you get right next to it. On the call, though, the sound is clear.

A few rooms over, a human-shaped plastic mold is filled with liquid, an effort to recreate the human form in order to test how much of a phone’s radiation is making it inside the body of a person using the phone.

Nokia is certified to do its own radiation emissions, a key step in getting new devices approved by the Federal Communications Commission and other regulators across the globe. Having its own labs, while costly, helps Nokia save the time needed to send new devices for outside testing, a move it hopes will help it crank out new devices faster.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120224/an-exclusive-look-inside-nokias-smartphone-torture-chamber/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120223/how-the-angry-birds-almost-died-before-the-first-level/ http://allthingsd.com/20120223/how-the-angry-birds-almost-died-before-the-first-level/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 21:01:23 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=176364 Mikael Hed almost pulled the plug on Rovio while the Angry Birds were still in development.

After several years in business, his mobile game company had yet to produce a hit. Rovio’s chief backer, Hed’s father, Kaj, was struggling to figure out how to keep the company going.

“He told me that he wanted to mortgage my grandparents’ flat so he could put some more money in the company to keep it afloat,” Mikael Hed said in an interview. “That was pretty tough. I certainly did not want to be the person responsible for putting my grandparents on the street.”

Angry Birds was in development and Hed thought he might have a winner on his hands. But at the same time, the company had made dozens of games already without striking it rich, and even the best iPhone games weren’t making that much money.

“Just looking at the odds, we shouldn’t take that kind of a risk,” Hed recalls thinking. But his father went ahead anyway.

“I’m glad he did,” Hed said, noting his grandparents still have their home. “Now I am glad he did, but it was a big gamble.”

The move has clearly paid off. According to figures made public and noted this week by a Finnish newspaper, Kaj Hed owns nearly 70 percent of the company, worth by some estimates between $6 billion and $9 billion.

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• Rovio’s CEO on Growing His Flock and Whether to Fly Solo
• How the Angry Birds Almost Died Before the First Level

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120223/how-the-angry-birds-almost-died-before-the-first-level/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120221/from-the-land-of-angry-birds-nokia-and-linus-torvalds/ http://allthingsd.com/20120221/from-the-land-of-angry-birds-nokia-and-linus-torvalds/#comments Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:14:21 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=176554

Once again, AllThingsD is taking a roundabout path to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

Last year, we made a stop in London to hear Nokia announce its big tie-up with Microsoft.

This year, we’ve traveled to Nokia’s home country, Finland, to see how that partnership is going and to get a closer look at a company that remains one of the biggest players in mobile, despite its recent struggles.

Also on the itinerary, another notable mobile company: Angry Birds maker Rovio. Like Nokia, Rovio is based just outside Helsinki, in Espoo. Unlike Nokia, Rovio has been on a rapid growth track, thanks to those unflappable birds.

We’ll have plenty in the coming days from our visits to both companies.

But it hasn’t been all work and no play. In just the first two days, we have also managed to visit the site of the 1952 Olympics, sip coffee at a cafe whose tables and chairs are controlled remotely over the Internet, and take a ferry through icy waters to see a fortress that was originally designed to protect the Swedish from the Russians.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120221/from-the-land-of-angry-birds-nokia-and-linus-torvalds/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120208/nokia-to-cut-4000-manufacturing-jobs-as-it-shifts-production-work/ http://allthingsd.com/20120208/nokia-to-cut-4000-manufacturing-jobs-as-it-shifts-production-work/#comments Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:55:32 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=172417 Nokia on Wednesday announced it plans to cut around 4,000 jobs as it reduces production at plants in Hungary, Mexico and Salo, Finland.

The three affected plants focus on smartphone production, and Nokia said it planned to shift much of that work to Asia, in order to be closer to its suppliers and speed up the time it takes to get products ready. Nokia will continue to do some customization work at all three plants.

“With the planned changes, our factories at Komarom, Reynosa and Salo will continue to play an important role serving our smartphone customers,” Nokia Executive VP Niklas Savander said in a statement. “They give us a unique ability to both provide customization and be more responsive to customer needs.”

The cuts will be phased in through the end of the year.

Nokia, of course, is in the midst of a major transformation, as it makes Windows Phone its primary operating system, shifting away from its homegrown Symbian OS.

The company previously announced other rounds of job cuts, including one related to the closure of a plant in Romania.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120208/nokia-to-cut-4000-manufacturing-jobs-as-it-shifts-production-work/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120120/sari-baldauf-to-leave-hewlett-packards-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20120120/sari-baldauf-to-leave-hewlett-packards-board/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:14:34 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=166044 Hewlett-Packard just filed an 8K with the Securities and Exchange Commission saying that director Sari M. Baldauf, a Finnish executive and former head of Nokia’s Networks business, will not be standing for re-election to the company’s board of directors. She has been a director since 2006. She sits on the board’s Audit Nominating and Governance committees.

Baldauf was Executive Vice President and General Manager of Nokia’s Networks business from 1998 until 2005. She had joined Nokia in 1983 and held several executive positions there, including VP of its Asia Pacific unit from 1997 to 1998, and president of Nokia Cellular Systems from 1988 to 1996. She sat on N Executive Board of Nokia from 1994 until January 2005. She’s also a director of German automaker Daimler and of three Finnish companies one of which is the computer security firm F-Secure.

The filing reads in full:

On January 18, 2012, Sari M. Baldauf notified the Board of Directors of Hewlett-Packard Company (“HP”) that she will not stand for re-election at the next annual meeting of stockholders. Ms. Baldauf will continue to serve as a director of HP until HP’s next annual meeting of stockholders, which is scheduled to be held on March 21, 2012.

It’s not entirely clear whether HP will move quickly to put another director on its board or not.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120120/sari-baldauf-to-leave-hewlett-packards-board/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111020/nokia-beats-views-as-low-end-shines-2/ http://allthingsd.com/20111020/nokia-beats-views-as-low-end-shines-2/#comments Thu, 20 Oct 2011 15:15:09 +0000 Christopher Lawton and Arild Moen http://allthingsd.com/?p=134971 Nokia swung to a second successive net loss in the third quarter, but reported better-than-expected results thanks to higher sales of its low-end cell phones. Its shares rose more than 8 percent, as results highlighted an increase in shipments of its cheaper feature phones. The company’s American depositary shares jumped over 8%, as results highlighted an increase in shipments of its cheaper feature phones owing to strong sales of dual-SIM handsets, which allow users to have multiple phone numbers. Nokia shipped 89.8 million feature phones in the quarter, up 8% from a year earlier.

The world’s largest cell-phone company by volume posted a net loss of €68 million ($93.6 million), beating Wall Street expectations of a €321 million loss. Sales dropped 13% to €8.98 billion.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111020/nokia-beats-views-as-low-end-shines-2/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110912/for-data-center-google-goes-for-the-cold/ http://allthingsd.com/20110912/for-data-center-google-goes-for-the-cold/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2011 07:00:10 +0000 Sven Grunberg and Niclas Rolander http://allthingsd.com/?p=119424 Google Inc.’s opening of a €200 million ($273 million) server hall in Hamina, Finland, over the weekend is boosting Scandinavian hopes that other big Internet companies will choose to build data centers in the region, attracted by its cold climate and low electricity prices.

Along with other Internet giants, Google has spent large amounts on building server capacity, to allow users remote access to stored files and programs through so-called cloud computing. In the past two years, it has converted an old paper mill close to the small town of Hamina, on the Baltic Sea coast of Finland, into a massive data center.

The mill was built to produce paper for magazines and newspapers, but the paper industry has seen demand for its products decrease as competition from online media has left many newspapers struggling. Paper manufacturer Stora Enso Oyj closed production at the mill in 2008, and Google saw the opportunity to fill the structure with the technology that contributed to the demise of papermaking in Hamina. A main attraction for the U.S.-based company was the cool Finnish climate.

Read the rest of this pst on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110912/for-data-center-google-goes-for-the-cold/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110810/angry-birds-spreads-wings/ http://allthingsd.com/20110810/angry-birds-spreads-wings/#comments Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:00:45 +0000 Nick Wingfield http://allthingsd.com/?p=108056 “Angry Birds” is flapping from touch screens to big screens, books and toys, testing whether one of the best-known mobile apps can become an entertainment franchise akin to Mickey Mouse and Iron Man.

Finland’s Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the game’s developer, this month will publish the first in a line of books, “Bad Piggies Egg Recipes,” with such fare as egg-salad sandwiches and egg sushi. The title refers to the game’s porcine thieves, who become targets for an enraged group of birds after stealing their eggs.

Next up: Angry Birds in the classroom.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110810/angry-birds-spreads-wings/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110711/the-honeymoon-over-microsoft-and-nokia-get-down-to-business/ http://allthingsd.com/20110711/the-honeymoon-over-microsoft-and-nokia-get-down-to-business/#comments Mon, 11 Jul 2011 13:30:16 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=95472 Like many marriages, the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft began with a lot of celebrating and travel and presents. And reindeer antlers.

As both companies’ chief executives announced their partnership in London in February, the Windows Phone team gathered at Daman’s, a watering hole near Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters. Having sealed the most important mobile deal in the company’s history, the workers toasted each other with a custom concoction they dubbed the Noble Finn:

A combination of Finlandia vodka, Chartreuse, sparkling soda, sugar and lemon juice, stirred with a reindeer antler.

The next month, Windows Phone engineering head Terry Myerson and a group of his co-workers traveled to Finland to get to know some of their Nokia compatriots better. The teams went snowshoeing (pictured right), then hit a dry sauna to warm up.

“We ran out of the sauna on fire and rolled around in the snow to survive,” Myerson said. “It was indescribably hot.”

The next day, with the courtship phase over, it was down to business, as Myerson and his team toured Nokia’s factory in Salo, Finland.

So far, executives on both sides of the partnership insist the marriage is a happy one.

“We’ve spent the last couple months working really closely together to get first products really materializing,” Nokia’s Jo Harlow, who is in charge of Smart Devices at the phone giant, said in an interview. “We all feel confident about where we are.”

Although the deal was announced in February, the paperwork wasn’t signed until April.

Well before all the i’s were dotted and t’s crossed, though, the engineering teams had already been hard at work, the companies said. Nokia had prototype hardware designs running prerelease versions of the next Windows Phone software.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has been boasting for a while that he is carrying something along those lines, and a recently leaked video shows him with an early version of the hardware.

Harlow declined to comment on that leak, but says she is increasingly confident in the first product that will arrive this year, and that the company may yet have multiple devices for sale before the end of the year. The first Nokia phones are expected to arrive this fall alongside Mango, the first major update to Windows Phone 7.

“I’m committed to one model this year,” Harlow said. “More would be great.”

For next year, though, Harlow said there will be a steady stream of releases — something that Microsoft badly needs as it tries to keep up with rivals, particularly Android devices, which are released on a constant basis.

If Microsoft was close to the latest hardware when it released the first Windows Phones last fall, it is fair to say that its models now look dated when stacked up against the latest Android models, some of which boast 3-D screens, dual-core processors, high-definition video recording and other features.

“I’m hoping that won’t be an issue next year,” Myerson said.

Harlow said her goal is that Nokia will have more frequent hardware updates, keeping the company, and by extension Windows Phone, front of mind with phone shoppers.

As the two companies settle into working with one another, they are using a variety of methods to manage their long-distance relationship.

Although most physical travel involves workers from one company visiting the other, the two companies have also found an in-between location to meet — Reykjavik, Iceland.

Why? Because it’s roughly in between Finland and the U.S., and there are direct flights from both Helsinki and Seattle. On occasion, executives have often met at Iceland’s government-owned Culture House, a spot just a couple blocks from the Höfði, the spot where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev held a now-famous summit in 1986.

While the Americans and Soviets often struggled to find peace after a long Cold War, Harlow and Myerson say they share a good deal of common ground.

Nokia and Microsoft find themselves in a similarly tough position in the mobile space. Both companies have fallen behind Android and Apple’s iPhone in the smartphone race and have bet their future on each other as the way to recover.

There are other ties binding Myerson and Harlow: Both graduated from North Carolina’s Duke University; Myerson got his engineering degree in 1991, and Harlow, who graduated in 1984, was captain of the women’s basketball during her time in Durham. To honor the shared heritage, workers at Nokia presented both executives with custom Nokia E7 phones emblazoned with the logo of Duke’s mascot, the Blue Devil (pictured left).

While Harlow said she expects to rack up plenty of frequent-flier miles as a result of the deal, the intercontinental travel has been reduced thanks to a video conferencing technology known as Halo.

“We were planning on going to Finland, but decided to give Halo a try first, and decided we didn’t need to fly over there [as much],” said KC Lemson, who works for Myerson on the Windows Phone camera team.

Myerson echoed the importance of Halo, which he said he hadn’t used before the Nokia deal came together. The customized room lets a team in one place seem like they are separated only by a window from colleagues sitting halfway around the world.

“It’s as if we are sitting in the room with people in Finland or London,” Myerson said. “It’s like something out of ‘Star Trek.’”

Halo is used, on average, five or 10 times per week to bridge the engineering teams from Nokia and Microsoft.

But sometimes that’s not enough, of course. Nokia has transferred a top executive — Waldemar Sakalus — to Seattle to oversee the Microsoft relationship, and is spreading hardware development work across several locations, including San Diego, Calif., and Beijing, as well as two sites in Finland: Salo and Tampere.

Nokia also hired Kevin Shields, a former member of Myerson’s Windows Phone team, to oversee Nokia’s efforts to build on top of Microsoft’s operating system.

For its part, Microsoft said it has shifted its priorities to make sure that Nokia’s needs are being met first. The company has increased its focus on going global more quickly, as Nokia counts on Windows Phone to quickly fill a gap created by the rapid decline in its existing Symbian phone business.

“We had been focused on North America and Western Europe,” Myerson said of the company’s early efforts. That, he said, has now changed.

Although Microsoft is also working with its other partners, Myerson isn’t shy about saying that he is pouring more energy into his partners in Finland. After all, while HTC and Samsung build Windows Phones, they also make phones running Google’s Android software. Nokia, meanwhile, has pledged to make Windows Phone the core of its smartphone strategy.

“We are prioritizing work proportionate to Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone, which is unlike anything we have had before,” Myerson said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110711/the-honeymoon-over-microsoft-and-nokia-get-down-to-business/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110525/supercell-raises-12-million-to-develop-games-for-the-hardcore-social-gamers/ http://allthingsd.com/20110525/supercell-raises-12-million-to-develop-games-for-the-hardcore-social-gamers/#comments Wed, 25 May 2011 15:00:04 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://allthingsd.com/?p=77854 What do you get when you cross a social game like FarmVille with elements from a hardcore online game like World of Warcraft?

You get Supercell.

“The company was founded on the idea that there’s a gap between the social games on Facebook, like FarmVille, and the hardcore MMOs (Massively-multi-player online games) like World of Warcraft. We are trying to build a bridge between the two with a very deep and rich game experience and combine that with the power of social networks,” said Ilkka Paananen, Supercell’s CEO.

Today, Supercell is announcing that it has raised $12 million in capital and that its first game, Gunshine, is coming out of beta.

Finland-based Supercell was founded in June 2010 by a number of former Digital Chocolate employees. Paananen, who is CEO, also worked there for about a decade, most recently as President. He joined Digital Chocolate following the acquisition of a game company he founded in 2000.

Accel led the financing along with Klaas Kersting, the founder of Germany’s Gameforge and CEO of flaregames, with London Venture Partners also participating. Other previous investors of the company include Initial Capital, Cerval Investments and Lifeline Ventures.

Kevin Comolli, a Partner at Accel Partner’s London office, said the Supercell team has a huge amount of experience in the gaming sector.

“The more time we spent with them, the more I was impressed with their knowledge and insight into the next generation of online gaming,” he said, adding that the team is creative while still being grounded by business acumen and defensible technology.

The funding will be used for growth, including expanding its 20-person team. It also wants to release more games, and is exploring other platforms such as tablets and mobile phones.

Supercell’s games are free to play and supported by users paying for virtual goods from inside the games. They are accessed from the browser, meaning they don’t require any downloads. Users can sign in with their Facebook credentials in order to invite and play games with friends.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110525/supercell-raises-12-million-to-develop-games-for-the-hardcore-social-gamers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110303/disney-confirms-acquisition-of-rocketpack-for-browser-based-gaming/ http://allthingsd.com/20110303/disney-confirms-acquisition-of-rocketpack-for-browser-based-gaming/#comments Thu, 03 Mar 2011 23:23:33 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=3277 Disney has acquired Helsinki, Finland-based Rocketpack, which is working on developing games for the browser using HTML5. In a statement, a spokesperson said: “We can confirm that The Walt Disney Company has acquired Rocketpack, an integrated solution for plugin-free browser game development.” Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Rocketpack will be a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, reporting into Disney Interactive Media Group. The acquisition was first reported by TechCrunch.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110303/disney-confirms-acquisition-of-rocketpack-for-browser-based-gaming/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/massive-layoffs-expected-at-nokia/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/massive-layoffs-expected-at-nokia/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 15:02:18 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=57658 Nokia’s decision to make Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS its primary smartphone platform is a bold move. It’s also one that presages a tough next couple of years for the Finnish company, which must restructure to pull it off. As we heard earlier today, there’s already been some significant executive upheaval, with Alberto Torres, who had been overseeing development of Nokia’s MeeGo OS, leaving the company to pursue other interests. And soon there will be cuts in Nokia’s rank and file as well–significant ones, according to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.

“We are not announcing how many and in what country,” Elop said this morning. “But there will be substantial reductions in employment in various locations around the world, and that too will affect Finland.”

The Finnish government is already bracing itself for the hit. ”You’re talking about 20,000 people, it’s a big number,” Minister for Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen told YLE. ”We’re talking about far and away the biggest process of structural change that Finland has ever seen in the new technology sector.”

Ugly.

That said, as I’ve noted here before, Nokia’s R&D spend is nearly three times that of its rivals and about five times that of Apple.

Oh, and don’t fret too much, Nokia staffers. Google’s hiring …

UPDATE: Reached for comment, Nokia refused to confirm Pekkarinen’s number. But it didn’t deny it either. “Stephen mentioned that there would be significant changes but the impact of the new strategy on personnel is not known yet until the planning process for implementation of the new strategy is started,” a spokesperson told me. “We have a strong track record and positive experiences of supporting employees in this kind of a situation and will aim to support the employees with different solutions. As always, when impact on employees are known we will announce them, and if job reductions are warranted we will follow all relevant legislation and practices.”

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

• Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talks to Mobilized About the Big Microsoft Deal (Video)
• Massive Layoffs Expected at Nokia
• Nokia’s Microsoft Partnership: Does the New Strategy Add Up?
• Live From the Nokia-Microsoft Press Conference: It’s a Windows Phone World After All
• More From Nokia: Forecast Gets Cloudy, Plus Expected Executive Changes
• Nokia-Microsoft: What Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop Have to Say in Their Joint Letter
• Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership With YouTube Video
• R&D Spending: Nokia Vs. Apple Shows Size Doesn’t Matter
• Not Seeing Much Return on That Massive R&D Spend, Are You, Nokia?
• Nokia: Big and Slow

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/massive-layoffs-expected-at-nokia/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20110211/live-from-nokias-investor-meeting-does-the-new-strategy-add-up/ http://allthingsd.com/20110211/live-from-nokias-investor-meeting-does-the-new-strategy-add-up/#comments Fri, 11 Feb 2011 12:02:08 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3904

Nokia has already announced the key piece of its strategy–a shift to Windows Phone for future smartphones. Now the company is set to talk about the financial implications of that and go through the rest of its strategy, which includes a mix of Symbian and even a dash of MeeGo.

The investor event is scheduled to start shortly and due to run until about 2 pm London time. Mobilized will have live coverage, providing our battery holds out. I’ll try to mention only the high points, however. Mobilized loves numbers, but it is awfully early for a whole lot of financial speak, especially for the U.S. insomniacs tuning in.

12:02 pm: Still waiting for things to get going. But if you really want something to do, we have plenty of earlier coverage, including the press conference and the YouTube video of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, as well as a chat with Elop on how he made his big decision.

12:05 pm: Okay, things are getting going as Elop takes the stage (the same one as the earlier press conference.

12:06 pm: Elop is reviewing things. Lots of talk of both challenges and gems. If you read his memo, or anything else he’s said recently, you have heard this.

Battle of devices to war of ecosystems, etc. Mobilized has this part memorized.

12:09 pm: Smartphone strategy is just one piece.

Reviewing the three alternatives that Elop considered–MeeGo, Android or some partnership with Microsoft.

As for Google, Elop says it is the case there are some advantages for that approach.

“There’s something happening there. There’s no denying that.”

However, Elop says the company was worried it would be late and be just one of many, and was not sure how it could leverage assets like its Navteq location-based services.

“Our sense was differentiation could be a pretty big challenge,” Elop says. “The risk for commoditization would increase dramatically.”

Feels profit would have eventually moved to Google, with handsets becoming a commodity.

“It felt a little bit like giving up and not enough like fighting back,” Elop says.

12:12 pm: As for Microsoft, Elop says both companies are bringing something to the table.

As expected, Elop is characterizing this as more strategic than just taking a license to Windows Phone. Talking about Nokia services like mapping, local advertising and other things that Nokia can bring to the table.

“It’s far more interesting than a simple licensing deal,” Elop says. This was the only strategy that makes it a three horse race with Google and Apple.

Elop says he is convinced that Nokia will be able to differentiate within the Windows Phone ecosystem on a sustainable basis.

12:15 pm: There were some challenges and potential disadvantages, he acknowledges.

Top among these is the fact that Windows Phone 7 is new on the market.

“It’s early,” he says. “Will it succeed?”

12:17 pm: Also, there is the issue of being locked in or a lack of control. Elop does not disclose terms but says the company has flexibility and “substantial control” over the future of the ecosystem.

“This is not your mother’s OEM deal with Microsoft,” Elop says.

12:17 pm: Elop says the deal is at the “term sheet” stage, noting that the companies have yet to sign the “definitive agreement.”

12:18 pm: Already the engineers are working through, and Elop says this deal will allow Nokia to move far faster than it has in recent years.

12:18 pm: He’s also making the cost-saving argument, saying Nokia can focus its investment, which he acknowledges hasn’t been getting the return it should.

Elop earlier acknowledged that the company expects significant cost savings from the move as well as substantial workforce reductions.

“Bottom line: Products that are more competitive,” he says.

12:22 pm: Operators are excited by a third viable option, Elop says.

“A two-horse race is not a satisfactory [situation] for operators,” Elop says.

Elop says that Microsoft-Nokia will be operator-friendly, as compared with Google and Apple.

12:24 pm: Elop talking about differentiation–a key concern of analysts and investors.

Elop talks about Windows Phone as offering differentiation form Apple and Google, but also insisting that Nokia has the assets and business terms it needs to stand out from other Windows Phones. He focuses on camera technologies and “unique relationship.”

Stresses again that this is not a standard handset maker agreement. But he also says that just because Nokia can change lots of things within Windows Phone, doesn’t mean it should.

Nokia, he says, must “resist the temptation to customize just for the sake of customization.”

12:27 pm: Now talking about Symbian. For those that missed it, Elop reiterates this is a transition strategy, but adds that the company still expects to sell 150 million more Symbian devices before that transition is complete.

12:29 pm: Strategy is more than just smartphones. He wants the company to be a leading force in connecting the next billion people to the Internet via phones in emerging markets. “The market for feature phones is pushing down the price curve and that is an opportunity for Nokia.”

Nokia will do incremental work in that area–things like Nokia Money for people that don’t have a bank account or telephone. Another, Nokia Life Tools, helps connect, say, farmers to market information.

This area is still a target for innovation, he says, but it also faces competition from Chinese-made phones based on MediaTek chipsets.

Elop says that the company must also plan for the future so that it can be disruptive down the road. “As they say in Finland, it is time to shoot ahead of the duck,” he says.

That’s where MeeGo comes in–the mobile version of Linux that until recently was seen as Nokia’s future. Nokia said that team will ship a phone later this year and then see where the future is headed.

12:35 pm: Want to point out this New York Times article that said both Google and Microsoft were offering hundreds of millions of dollars in engineering and marketing support in order to woo Nokia.

12:36 pm: Elop now talking about cost cuts, including significant job reductions.

“We are not announcing how many and in what country,” Elop says, but adds that the company wants to move quickly on that front.

He says that he has made changes to the business to ensure speed, including leadership structure changes aimed at ensuring accountability. “If things go well today, I’ll be the CEO.”

Of note, the two of the three business unit leaders are women–Mary McDowell, who will lead lower-end phones, and Jo Harlow, who will head the smartphone business.

12:40 pm: Nokia looking for a new leader for its services and developer division. The acting head is Tero Ojanpera, but he will soon be looking for other opportunities within Nokia, Elop says.

Also of note, Louise Pentland, who is head of the legal and intellectual property unit, is being elevated to the top leadership team.

“We have one of the strongest patent portfolios out there” he says, adding that he would encourage all players to take a license to said patents. (hear that, Apple?)

New leader of North American sales unit to be named in coming days.

“We are creating a different industry,” Elop says in closing his introductory remarks.

12:44 pm: Elop Brings on CFO Timo Ihamuotila to go through the numbers.

12:46 pm: Ihamuotila acknowledged Nokia didn’t meet the targets it had set out to achieve at its last financial analyst day.

“Our execution did not cut it.” he says.

12:49 pm: Ah, Now on to the good stuff. CFO talking financial impact from Microsoft deal. Says should be good over the long term.

Slide shows royalty payments to Microsoft causing lower gross margins, but says sales and marketing support from Microsoft should lower operating expenses.

“We will receive substantial go-to market support from Microsoft,” he says, without giving numbers.

12:52 pm: Ihamuotila talking now about the company’s long-term targets for devices and services period “after the transition period.”

Device sales to grow faster than the market, with operating margins of 10 percent or more–but this is only after the transition period, which the company has said could last this year and next.

Significant uncertainties in this period.

Ihamuotila shows a slide showing Symbian sales slowly giving way to Windows Phone with lower-end mobile phones remaining about half of sales.

12:57 pm: Ihamuotila shows chart of how it expects to cut R&D with the company investing less in services, more in entry-level phones and far less on MeeGo, though still some. The investment in Symbian will be replaced by a far lower investment in Windows Phone R&D. Overall, R&D should be a fraction of what it was.

1:02 pm: Over long term, Ihamuotila says that the Microsoft deal should help significantly boost the company’s Navteq navigation business.

“We think this new strategy is the best way to maximize long-term value, both to our shareholders and to other stakeholders,” Ihamuotila says.

On to Q&A for financial analysts.

1:03 pm: Question on how Nokia will keep employees motivated, something else and when to expect the first Windows Phone.

“Thanks for the one question” Elop quips, before addressing them in turn.

Elop says that the key is on focused innovation so they see the fresh opportunities (at least for the ones who don’t get cut by the large workforce reductions also promised).

He also pointed to his sharply worded memo, which he said was designed to convey the message that “Here is the truth, we’re making decisions and we’re moving forward.”

Won’t give date on first Windows Phone, but says again that the move will allow a substantially faster pace than the company was on with Symbian.

1:07 pm: Elop is asked about some of the challenges with Microsoft and Nokia each responsible for different pieces of software and services, as opposed to Google and Apple, where things are more integrated.

“We wanted to drive operational simplicity,” Elop says, adding that the companies talked about other arrangements, though not a full-on acquisition. The companies, Elop says, decided not to go with the operational complexity of a joint venture.

1:10 pm: Elop says Nokia has opportunities to differentiate from other Windows Phone devices, but adds it is in Nokia’s interest for there to be other strong handset players supporting Windows Phone.

“We’ve got to make Windows Phone successful,” he says.

Nokia’s mapping technology, he says, will benefit rivals like Samsung and HTC. “We’re willing to make those trades,” Elop says.

1:11 pm: Elop is asked why he feels comfortable with a “bet the farm” strategy on Microsoft, a company he clearly knows well.

Elop points out that it was harder to see how Microsoft would rapidly be successful without someone like Nokia.

“But this is now different,” he says, adding that this is now an ecosystem that Microsoft and Nokia are jointly helping to build.

Mapping and local advertising were not part of the ecosystem before the Nokia-Microsoft partnership.

As for impact of the transition, it’s hard to say, Elop says. Symbian is strong in some places where Apple and Google are present today.

1:14 pm: Asked whether Nokia will remain profitable during the transition. “It’s hard to say financially, and I am not going to provide any further specific guidance.”

1:17 pm: Elop won’t say when the first Windows Phone will ship, but lots and lots by next year at various price points.

“We’ll be shipping in volume in 2012,” he says.

1:20 pm: Another two-parter! 1) Why will Symbian be supported if it is transitioning away? 2) Why does Nokia think it will be able to have double-digit operating margins using someone else’s platform?

Elop: They recognize Symbian is key to Nokia being able to transition, but he agrees that consumers will have to want the Symbian phones Nokia builds. CFO also notes that less than half of Symbian phones are sold through carriers.

As for question on margins, CFO says the company has opportunities for higher margins around services and advertising.

1:23 pm: Asked about how the company is confident Windows Phone can get to lower prices, Elop says that was a key consideration, down to which chipsets will be supported, etc.

Between the two companies there was a lot of work to get a high degree of confidence.

“That was a critical evaluation,” he says.

That said, Elop agrees there is a smartphone market below Windows Phone that Nokia will manage with an evolution of today’s Series 30 and Series 40 operating systems.

1:31 pm: Elop: Some of the hardware designs that would have run MeeGo or Symbian will be repurposed for Windows Phone. Some devices may come out with similar models for both Windows Phone and Symbian.

1:32 pm: Question again on who pays whom in Microsoft-Nokia. Is there a lump payment from Microsoft?

Elop doesn’t answer and instead refers to slide that shows opportunities on both sides. Saying value going both ways. As for Microsoft’s payments, “That is a significant part of the conversation,” Elop says.

1:35 pm: Two good questions: Can Windows Phone be put on any current devices? What happens to QT development layer that Nokia bought and had sought to unify developer approach?

Elop: It’s not as simple as plugging in and downloading on to current phones, though some technologies can be repurposed.

QT continues to be the development for Symbian and lone MeeGo device. Also could have a role on low-end devices.

However, Elop says, “We are not proposing a QT on Windows Phone” approach. Adding another development environment could fork the ecosystem, which is not good for Nokia or Windows Phone, he says. Development environment for Windows Phone will be Silverlight and XNA–Microsoft’s current tools.

1:38 pm: Asked about branding, he says in some cases you will see both Microsoft and Nokia brands. Examples could include Nokia Search powered by Bing or Bing maps powered by Nokia, though he says those are examples and not final choices.

1:39 pm: Asking about tablets, questioner points out that Nokia had an early lead in tablets, but Apple “stole the show.”

“We are not announcing today a specific tablet strategy,” he reiterates, saying that Microsoft creates opportunities.

Elop notes that there are rumors of Windows Phone and Windows that could power tablets.

“We could do that,” he says. “We might do that.”

Also an opportunity for Nokia to step back into the game using its own software.

1:41 pm: Elop wrapping up.

“We have set a new course for Nokia,” he says, adding that despite what has been written, Nokia is still an incredibly powerful company, though perhaps not in North America. “Today we are diving forward” he says. “We have a strong partner in Microsoft who is incented as are we in making this successful.”

Investor guy closes by reminding there were forward-looking statements. He’s still going as people leave the room.

COMPLETE COVERAGE:

• Nokia’s Stephen Elop Talks to Mobilized About the Big Microsoft Deal (Video)
• Massive Layoffs Expected at Nokia
• Nokia’s Microsoft Partnership: Does the New Strategy Add Up?
• Live From the Nokia-Microsoft Press Conference: It’s a Windows Phone World After All
• More From Nokia: Forecast Gets Cloudy, Plus Expected Executive Changes
• Nokia-Microsoft: What Steve Ballmer and Stephen Elop Have to Say in Their Joint Letter
• Nokia Confirms Microsoft Partnership With YouTube Video
• R&D Spending: Nokia Vs. Apple Shows Size Doesn’t Matter
• Not Seeing Much Return on That Massive R&D Spend, Are You, Nokia?
• Nokia: Big and Slow

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110211/live-from-nokias-investor-meeting-does-the-new-strategy-add-up/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110210/exclusive-nokias-stephen-elop-talks-about-how-he-made-his-big-os-decision/ http://allthingsd.com/20110210/exclusive-nokias-stephen-elop-talks-about-how-he-made-his-big-os-decision/#comments Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:00:58 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=3790 In weighing the future of Nokia, Stephen Elop has had some tough decisions to make, but at least he has lots of people willing to offer up their two cents.

Whether he is walking the halls of Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland, or even just buying groceries at the market, Nokia’s chief executive is constantly flooded with suggestions for how the company should regain lost ground.

Elop recalled being at dinner just over a week ago and being approached by three young people who wanted to share their suggestions.

“The three of them couldn’t quite agree on what the right strategy was, but they clearly each had an opinion,” Elop said.

For his part, Elop has deeply considered three possibilities for its high-end smartphone business–sticking with plans to develop around MeeGo (a mobile version of Linux), shifting to Android or adopting Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

Without tipping his hand, Elop spoke with Mobilized last week about the pros and cons of the various options. The interview came before releasing his big “burning platform” memo and literally as the final decision was being made.

For Elop, it came down to which approach would offer enough differentiation and yet would also be part of an ecosystem that would be large enough to attract developers, advertisers, carriers and all the other partners.

“It’s not just differentiation but sustainable differentiation,” Elop said. He also said that as big as Nokia is, it can’t afford to go it alone.

It is also critically important to Elop that the company be more competitive in the United States. Although the company ships more phones worldwide than any other company, its presence in North America is basically nonexistent. And yet, he said, the U.S. is where the pace is set for the high end of the market.

“We need to be in the United States in one way, shape or form,” Elop said. “We have to have a viable way to reopen doors.”

So where did that leave the various options?

Although MeeGo left plenty of room for differentiation, that option would also mean trying to be unique at the same time, as the company would have to convince others to build on the platform.

“For it to be a valid ecosystem, that also implies other [phone makers]–our competitors–would be attracted to it as well,” Elop said. “That’s one of the things that give it critical mass and credibility.”

Although Elop didn’t say so in our interview, his comments in this week’s memo suggest that his confidence there was low.

“We thought MeeGo would be a platform for winning high-end smartphones,” Elop said in his memo to staff. “However, at this rate, by the end of 2011, we might have only one MeeGo product in the market.”

As for Android and Windows Phone, Elop said Nokia could offer a significant boost to either ecosystem.

“Android is growing very nicely; it has significant market share,” he said. “The combination of Android’s existing market share plus the market share that Nokia could bring to the Android ecosystem is a very large number and would signal a very substantial shift in the dynamics of the mobile operating system market.”

As for Redmond’s operating system, Elop said it is early days.

“Windows Phone is in its early formative stages in terms of getting customer traction and so forth. It’s a beautiful product and I say that as someone who is competing with it.”

However, that may not be the case much longer. While Elop was still leaving all doors open when he spoke with Mobilized a week ago, the options appear to have narrowed significantly in recent days. His memo on Tuesday appeared to rule out MeeGo as the best option, while a tweet from Google’s Vic Gundotra suggests Android is out and a tie-up with WIndows Phone is Elop’s final choice.

But, no matter what decision gets made at the high end, Elop said that the company probably needs a separate strategy at the low end of the market, where there is intense competition from Chinese phone makers building phones around low-cost chips from MediaTek.

Friday’s investor meeting will also address other aspects of the company, including its services strategy, its plans for its Navteq navigation unit and its plans to leverage its huge patent portfolio. The announcement also comes just ahead of the cell phone industry’s big trade show, Mobile World Congress, which gets going on Sunday in Barcelona.

Mobilized is here in London and will have live coverage of the meeting, which kicks off at 11 am local time. That’s 3 am PT, so set those alarm clocks early.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110210/exclusive-nokias-stephen-elop-talks-about-how-he-made-his-big-os-decision/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101217/nokia-silicon-valley-giant/ http://allthingsd.com/20101217/nokia-silicon-valley-giant/#comments Fri, 17 Dec 2010 13:20:35 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=1015 When one thinks of Silicon Valley tech companies, Nokia is hardly a name that comes to mind. But the company has amassed a decent presence in the Valley, with about 500 people working on everything from research to inking deals with Web giants to building the features that the company hopes will someday soon return it to the forefront of the smartphone market.

In fact, the Bay Area unit was one of the first parts of Nokia that CEO Stephen Elop visited when he took the job earlier this year–in part because the company’s board had already scheduled to have its meeting in the area.

Silicon Valley has slowly become an important spot for the company, despite the fact that Nokia doesn’t sell all that many smartphones in the U.S.

Earlier this month, the company’s area employees got a new home as Nokia consolidated nearly all of its Bay Area workers in new offices in Sunnyvale (see picture above). Each floor of the Finnish-style interior has self-standing structures that from the outside look like saunas, but are actually “privacy huts” used for small group meetings or just some alone time pondering the ins and outs of the cellphone business. Nokia kept its research labs in Palo Alto and Berkeley so they could stay close to the area’s top two universities.

The local staff is doing a range of different things. About 50 of Nokia’s Silicon Valley employees come from the company’s 2008 purchase of a Norweigian company called Trolltech, which makes an application platform called QT that is used to control everything from phones to trains and more.

There are also a variety of individuals and small groups working on various product and research efforts. Kari Pulli is a Nokia Fellow who focuses on camera technology. He helped develop a panorama photo feature that is part of the latest Nokia cellphones. His team also developed an HDR photography capability–a feature Pulli reminds people was added to Nokia’s phones before Apple included it in the iPhone. He said his team is currently working on techniques to improve cellphone pictures taken in low-light conditions.

Typically, such photos are either noisy or blurry, depending on what step is taken to compensate for the lack of light. But by taking two pictures–one picture that aims to be sharp, though noisy, and another that will be a bit blurry, but have low noise–he said that a better composite image can be created.

Pulli, who was born in Finland but has spent the past four years in Palo Alto, said he is not too worried that the new Nokia chief is not Finnish. “At least he’s Canadian,” Pulli said, pointing out it’s another cold, dark place that loves hockey. (Elop does love hockey.)

While some of Nokia’s workforce is building new features, others are working on making sure that the company has partnerships with all the important companies in the valley–especially the Facebooks and Twitters of the world.

As for the research projects, they vary widely, and many are only tangentially related to Nokia’s core phone-making business.

Tico Ballagas is a user experience researcher working on how to make technology a better tool for family communications. So he’s been spending a lot of time with Elmo as part of a Family Story Play project to see if distant relatives can better connect with young relatives by reading a story to them over videoconferencing gear.

Meanwhile, Jorg Brakensiek is working with a number of German carmakers to develop a framework known as Terminal Mode, which would allow all manner of smartphones to be usable within cars without users having to stare down at a screen to make use features like maps, email and more.

What many at the offices lament, though, is the fact that so few of the people in the U.S. get a chance to appreciate their work. While Nokia certainly has its challenges globally, it is all but invisible at the cutting edge of the U.S. market. that’s because none of the major carriers here sell a subsidized model of the company’s high-end phones.

What’s worse, the phones that the carriers do sell tend to be the most basic and boring of cellular designs. The company has plans to change that next year, when it hopes the introduction of Meego-based phones will finally sway U.S. carriers to offer subsidized Nokia smartphones, ideally by next summer.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101217/nokia-silicon-valley-giant/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101214/nokia-layoffs-stop-christmas-from-coming/ http://allthingsd.com/20101214/nokia-layoffs-stop-christmas-from-coming/#comments Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:03:49 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=54339 A colder, more brutal winter than usual for Nokia’s Finnish workforce. The company is sacking 800 employees in its home market as part of its effort to “accelerate the company’s transformation towards a leading mobile solutions provider.”

Nokia says the cuts have been on the table since October, when it announced a personnel restructuring during its Q3 results. And indeed it has. From a press release issued that month:

“Altogether, the planned changes are expected to result in a reduction of up to 1,800 employees globally, as activities are planned to be discontinued and integrated. Nokia will begin applicable consultations with employee representatives about these plans.”

News of the layoffs comes on the same day that Nokia said it will miss another shipping deadline for its new E7 smartphone. That device, which will run the next iteration of the company’s Symbian OS, was expected to launch this year. Now its debut has been postponed until early 2011.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101214/nokia-layoffs-stop-christmas-from-coming/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101206/googles-andy-rubin-dives-into-android/ http://allthingsd.com/20101206/googles-andy-rubin-dives-into-android/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 01:33:10 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=422

Although Andy Rubin’s keynote at D: Dive into Mobile is scheduled for just before dinner, expect to hear a lot of talk about dessert. On the menu are Froyo, Gingerbread and perhaps even a hint of Honeycomb.

Google did release a couple of tasty treats already on Monday–announcing plans for the Samsung co-developed Nexus S as well as the release of Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). But I hear the cookie jar isn’t quite empty yet.

In between sugary snacks, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg will pepper Rubin on the many issues facing Android and the wireless industry. Mobilized will have live coverage of the session at this spot beginning around 6:45 pm PT.

Liveblog

6:37 pm: The crowd is still settling into their seats here at the Ritz-Carlton San Francisco, the swanky home to the inaugural D: Dive Into Mobile.

6:40 pm: Lights dim. Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg take the stage. “My husband, Walt Mossberg, and I would like to welcome you to this intimate dinner,” Swisher quips.

6:42 pm: Ironically, the crowd was asked to silence their mobile devices, but Kara says they should just feel free to leave them on.

6:44 pm: It’s Rubin time (and he has brought a satchel of goodies with him).

Rubin is asked about the Nexus One and why it didn’t shake up the business model. “We bit off a little more than we can chew.” Rubin says that they were hoping for a model more like that in Europe, where people can pick a phone and then separately pick service, typically at retail stores like Carphone Warehouse. “We were trying to do that model in the U.S. and only do it online.”

6:46 pm: Kara: So have you given up on that business model?

Rubin: With Nexus S, which is the thing we announced today, we still have that notion of an unlocked phone. But we are not selling it ourselves, but through traditional channels, in this case Best Buy.

6:48 pm: Walt: How is Android doing?

Rubin: Android started as an eight-person start-up. “During that time at Google we obviously staffed up.” Now there are 172 different phone models using Android after the OS was launched two years ago with one, the T-Mobile G1.

Rubin credits the quality of the software and the open nature of it.

6:49 pm: Walt: I notice more and more they are taking on the personality of the carrier, not Google, not the handset maker. There are lots of what I would call craplets. Verizon, for example, swapped out Google for Bing. Is there a danger it is being taken over?

Rubin: That’s the nature of open. That’s actually a feature of Android.

He takes a swipe at Windows Mobile, saying that the alternative is a commoditized world where all the phones have to have a start menu in one place and all the icons have to be tiles.

6:54 pm: Kara: Do you consider yourself the Microsoft of phones in that regard?

Rubin: No. We’re probably more like the Linux of phones, and that’s a true statement.

Walt: You mean hard to get drivers for, only for geeks, no real consumer would buy it?

Rubin: No, I think we’ve already proven that wrong. Bad analogy.

6:55 pm: Discussion about all the crapware that comes on many phones.

Rubin: The consumers are voting and the consumers are voicing their opinions.

6:56 pm: Rubin has some relatively nice things to say about the iPhone.

“I think everybody is embracing the iPhone. They are pretty open.”

Rubin says that most developers actually are having a pretty easy time getting their apps approved by Apple.

6:57 pm: Kara: How do you consider Apple as a competitor?

Certainly they make great products, Rubin says–robust, solid, good user experiences. A lot of consistency across applications. More recently I see them getting involved in the other end of the spectrum–services like a bookstore, the app store.

6:59 pm: Walt: What about Apple’s massive data center? That’s another area of competition for you guys.

Rubin talks about the power of Google’s ad-based model, which allows the core advertising to fund all kinds of applications.

Walt: Do you think Apple has the DNA to do this?

Rubin: “My assumption is Apple is a company that learns from its mistakes.”

7:01 pm: Kara and Walt: Are you profitable? Is Android profitable? Does Android make any money?

Rubin: We’re making money on the advertising that’s generated through Android.

Walt: Are you profitable if it was broken out as a separate business?

Rubin: Yes. [Wow. I'm curious about the math, but maybe if you add all the searches on Android-based devices.]

There’s no way I would have ever been profitable as a start-up. I probably wouldn’t have made it as a separate company.

7:06 pm: Walt: How do you see the rest of the competition beyond Apple?

Rubin: I don’t think it’s ever going to be just two [Apple and Android]. There’s a lot of innovation and a lot of ideas out there.

Rubin says there is a fundamental advantage to Android and iPhone since they are new and designed from the ground up.

He notes even Windows Phone 7 has legacy code from the original Windows Mobile from way back when.

“You just have this package of stuff that was invented before the Internet,” Rubin says. “When the architects built that product, they didn’t have the Internet in mind.”

7:08 pm: Walt: Is there anything you do like about Windows Phone 7?

Rubin: It was a big bet. They struck upon that notion of the centerpiece of the main tiles. It’s a good 1.0 product. It does look different and it does look unique. It’s solid. I’m not the predictor of being successful.

He says if he were to give advice to Microsoft, he would suggest that it give more freedom to carriers and phone makers so the devices don’t look the same.

Kara: Have you gone to Finland to woo Nokia?

Rubin: I haven’t been to Finland.

Walt: Forget Finland, have you tried to convince Nokia?

Rubin just laughs (a-ha).

7:12 pm: Kara: The discussions with Nokia–talk about them in detail.

Rubin: The company has new leadership [referring to CEO Stephen Elop]. They are evaluating lots of alternatives. I’m open-minded and a big proponent of Android.

Rubin again declines to talk about any meetings he may have had.

7:14 pm: What about the challenge of iconic products like RIM?

Rubin: Talks about the challenge of legacy and points out Motorola had that problem when it became overly dependent on the Razr. Then, “they bet the company on Android,” he points out.

Rubin said RIM is doing the right things–acquiring assets like QNX and DataViz to build a more modern operating system.

7:16 pm: Walt points out that RIM will be here Tuesday–PlayBook tablet in hand.

7:16 pm: Back to the discussion about persuading companies to use Android.

Rubin: If it’s good–and we all believe that it’s good–everybody can use it.

“You don’t need to be a partner of Google to run Android.”

7:17 pm: Walt asks about tablets. Are they exciting to you? Are they important to you? Can they replace laptops for some people?

Rubin: I think what is going on in tablets is interesting. It’s fundamentally changing the model of computing interaction.

It is much more physical. You touch it. You feel it.

7:19 pm: What changes in the paradigm? It’s not a laptop. It’s not a phone.

Rubin points out that we used to have PDAs, but the cellphone eventually replaced it. The tablet is a sort of in-between device so the use case is less clear. You might definitely have it on the couch, but maybe not on the subway.

7:21 pm: Walt: What makes it more interesting and more immersive? There is something different there?

Rubin: If you do a good job, what you’ve done is make it a reflex. Like a car. You learn how to drive and you can drive almost any car. You don’t get distracted by things. That’s the result of many, many years of evolution. That’s true of any consumer product. They become almost like second nature for you.

7:24 pm: Kara and Walt ask about privacy.

Rubin: There is nothing in open source Android OS that sends keystrokes or what applications you use to Google.

He encourages people to look at the source code.

Walt: There are Google services that do collect certain things?

Rubin: Yes, like on other platforms. But he encourages people to read the company’s privacy policy.

7:27 pm: How do you overcome the perception that Google wants to collect more information than the others?

I think you just have to be transparent. You have open source–be inspectable. Any other interpretation is either FUD or just people who don’t understand.

7:28 pm: On to the goodie bag. Rubin pulls out a Nexus S. Says it is his personal device.

Kara: Oh good. She grabs it and pulls it close to her.

Now Rubin is showing the features, screen, etc. He’s talking about the Near Field Communications technology that is actually printed inside the back of the case. NFC allows a phone to scan specially printed tags.

Walt: Is that what sends all the information back to Google?

Rubin: Laughs. Goes back to demoing NFC and showing the Nexus S scanning a tag, which sends a URL for a video of the Nexus S to the phone, which then starts playing.

7:31 pm: Rubin talks about the applications: Buying coffee, getting coupons.

What we are hoping is third-party developers create a lot of cool apps. Devices can also use NFC to exchange contact info between two devices as well, kind of like beaming in the old Palm days.

7:32 pm: Rubin is talking abut the Nexus strategy.

To give a “Pure Google” phone. Google works with the hardware maker to take maximum advantage of Android’s features.

7:35 pm: What’s new with Gingerbread?

We added a garbage collector. Added broader voice over Internet Protocol support. Can cut, copy and paste without a trackball.

7:36 pm: Walt: What about video calling? I know there are third-party apps that do that. It seems like a natural thing that it belongs in the phone function.

Kara: FaceGoog or GoogleTime.

Rubin: There’s a whole bunch of software engineers hitting their keyboards back in Mountain View. If consumers want it, we’ll add it. [He strongly hints that it is coming, points out there already is Google video chat for PC.]

7:38 pm: Rubin reaches into his bag of tricks again. Pulls out a prototype Motorola tablet to show a forthcoming version of Google’s mobile map application.

7:38 pm: Shows the improved 3-D abilities and new panning and zooming options. What we are showing off here is some pretty cool performance.

“It will be available for cellphones in a matter of days,” Rubin says.

What allows the new presentation is that maps are no longer a series of tiles, but rather vector graphics.

7:40 pm: Vector data is smaller and more efficient, so users can load data in case they go offline. “You could load a whole state,” Rubin says.

This app runs on Android only for now, though it will work on tablets and phones.

Walt: What about PCs?

Rubin: That would be a natural extension.

7:41 pm: What version of Android is running on that tablet?

Rubin: Honeycomb [the next version of Android, due out some time next year]. There are no buttons on the Motorola tablet. He’s showing his personal email again.

7:43 pm: More on Honeycomb: We added new APIs to Honeycomb that allow an application to split its views to multiple views. On a a tablet they can be side by side, while on a phone they might be one after the other.

7:46 pm: On to Q&A.

7:46 pm: What about the Chrome OS team? What’s the delineation between the two?

Rubin: That’s a good question. Google was born on the Web. “I don’t think it would be doing its job unless it reinvested in the Web.”

But evolution of the Web had stagnated a bit, prompting Chrome. “It’s kind of slowed down a bit.”

Apps vs. Web?

There’s no need to argue. We’re doing both, Rubin says.

7:50 pm: What are the plans for the Android team to focus on the enterprise?

We did a little bit, Rubin says, but he likens it to baby steps. Support for VPN and some secure browsing. Gingerbread has some added features like remote wipe. Each release you will see more and more.

7:51 pm: App discovery. What are your plans?

Rubin: This is all evolving. The Android market is evolving as well. Gingerbread allows “related applications.” We are always adding features.

As a search company, if we can’t help you discover apps, I think we have a problem. We should be very easily able to organize a few hundred-thousand apps.

7:53 pm: Question about mobile payments; What is Andy Rubin’s vision? Groupon?

Rubin: I think there is a lot of opportunity. It is not an opportunity that is going to be seized by one company. Today Android does carrier billing integration, so you can put apps on your carrier bill. Creates an efficient micropayment option.

With Nexus S having added gyroscope capability, can see things from even within a store. Should help make, for example, better coupon apps.

7:57 pm: Android on TVs?

Rubin: That’s exactly what Google TV is. It is Android running on a set-top box. The first versions of that are running an Intel processor.

Have demonstrated the same app can run on both a three-inch screen or a flat-panel TV.

People are building all kinds of things. Refrigerators, ovens, automotive. Rubin says the nice thing about open source is that he and Google don’t have to be involved in every use. “We knew what to do to make it scale as widely as possible.”

7:58 pm: Question about carrier data plans and pricing.

Rubin: Average usage on an Android phone is 440MB a month. Rubin points out we are at a bandwidth crunch, but that it tends to be a cycle. New networks tend not to be overwhelmed by demand at first, but then the demands grow. Then new networks come along.

How should OEMs try to differentiate?

Rubin: I think HTC has done a really good job with Sense. Motorola has Blur. People are really differentiated.

Rubin says he often hears complaints about fragmentation. “Fragmentation” is the wrong word. Different phones do things differently, but that’s differentiation. Basically the apps are still compatible, Rubin says.

8:04 pm: Is Android too clunky? Will we see a sea change where Android really gets more user friendly?

Rubin: I would probably characterize Android today as an enthusiast product for early adopters–or wives of tech enthusiasts.

8:05 pm: Rubin says the company made some concessions that led to “geeking it out.” But then there are apps that offer easier customization and personalization.

8:07 pm: Walt points out places where it requires an extra step to do things like compose an email, while the iPhone does it in a single step.

Rubin: Yep. We get it. You will see the fruits of that investment in the tablets first and then in the phones. It’s going to get better. Honeycomb will be a good start

8:08 pm: Applause and they exit stage. ‘Night.

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