New market share data from Kantar Worldpanel show Windows Phone seeing significant increases in adoption in a number of major markets for the three month period ending February 2013. Year over year, Windows Phone’s share of the U.S. smartphone market rose to 4.1 percent from 2.7 percent; in Great Britain, it rose to 6.7 percent from 3 percent; in Australia, it rose to 3.4 percent from 1.7 percent; and, in Italy, it posted a gain of 7.7 percentage points, rising to 13.1 percent from 5.4 percent.

Not tremendous growth by any means, but given the market and the chokehold that incumbents like Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS have on it, it’s certainly worth noting.

Also worth noting: Windows Phone’s growth seems to be coming at the expense of BlackBerry and Nokia’s Symbian OS, which both lost significant market share during the period. In Great Britain, for example, BlackBerry’s share fell to 5.1 percent from 16.8 percent, an 11.7 percentage point decline (and that’s in one of BlackBerry’s strongest markets). In the United States, it fell to 0.7 percent from 3.6 percent. Meanwhile, Symbian’s share fell to 0.6 percent from 2.4 percent in Great Britain; to 0.1 percent from 0.5 in the United States; and to 3.7 percent from 17.6 percent in Italy — a staggering 13.9 percentage point drop.

Nokia said Thursday that it sold 86.3 million mobile devices. Of those, 15.9 million were smartphones, and of those, 4.4 million were Lumias running Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS. Another 9.3 million were from Nokia’s Asha portfolio — a line of handsets targeted at emerging markets. And 2.2 million were Symbian smartphones.

Taken together with lower-than-expected operating expenses, those handset sales were enough to push Nokia’s Devices & Services division into “underlying profitability,” beating a pretty ugly Q4 forecast. It might even be enough for it to post a small profit. We’ll find out on Jan. 24, when Nokia releases its full quarterly financials.

Either way, this uptick in Nokia’s fortunes is great news for the struggling company. Nokia has posted losses for three consecutive quarters now, racking up about $6.3 billion in losses since it first bet on Windows Phone in early 2011.

Said ETX Capital analyst Markus Huber, “After almost consistently posting mostly negative results and missing frequently estimates for several quarters it might just seem that Nokia is finally on the way up, having beaten estimates and their own previous outlook.”

At $4.41, Nokia shares are up well over 17 percent in early trading.

For the three months ending in October, comScore figures that Android captured 53.6 percent of the market, an increase of 1.4 percentage points from the prior period. In contrast, iOS nabbed a 34.3 percent share, bolstered by a nearly 1 percentage point increase. So Android’s currently got a nearly 20 percentage point lead over Apple’s mobile OS in the States.

Unless you believe Kantar, in which case iOS has a 1.4 percentage point lead over Android. So platform zealots on either side of this argument have research with which to support their theology.

Whose data is the more accurate? That’s tough to say, as the two firms differ in their methodology. But, regardless of whose data you believe, there is one inescapable conclusion: Though many aspire to create it, there is currently no viable third mobile platform.

In the three months comScore surveyed, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Nokia’s Symbian captured 7.8 percent, 3.2 percent and .6 percent of the U.S. smartphone platform, respectively — all of them after suffering some sort of decline.

In other words, those three platforms together aren’t challengers to either Android or iOS, let alone separately. Google and Apple control nearly 88 percent of the smartphone OS market in the U.S. With both companies on point in the smartphone space, it’s going to take a massive disruption to slow their inexorable market-share gorging.

And there are few signs of one at Microsoft. Or Nokia. Or RIM, which is scrambling to bring its new third platform candidate, BlackBerry 10, to market. Those companies already appear to have lost the race to become the coveted third mobile platform.

There are seven billion people in this world and only 1.2 billion computers — but close to six billion cellphones. That makes the commercialization ability and growth potential for the mobile Internet massively greater than that of the PC-based Internet. China, the world’s biggest Internet market, recently surpassed the U.S. in smartphone activation, and the mobile browser is once again coming to the forefront. Here’s why.

In emerging markets such as China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, the mobile browser is a critical channel that connects people to the Internet in ways that the PC browser never did. For many people, it is their only connection point to the Internet — take Indonesia, for example, where linking its thousands of islands by a fixed nationwide network was prohibitively expensive, so they prioritized the build-out of a mobile network.

Since cellphones are much cheaper than computers, and the mobile Internet is much more accessible than fixed-line Internet in emerging markets, users purchase their first cellphones much earlier than their first computers, which sets user habits to surf the Web through cellphones.

In fact, Internet traffic flow on mobile devices surpassed that of the PC in India in May of this year, and the number of mobile Internet users overtook that of the PC in China just a month later.

The graph above is slide 18 from Mary Meeker’s 2012 Internet Trends presentation

In addition to user habit, technological advancement has contributed to the widespread use of the mobile Internet. For example, cloud computing has made mobile browsing work where bandwidth and mobile devices’ computing power are lacking. Before, in many parts of the world, browsing the Web through a cellphone with its native browser was extremely inconvenient and slow. Opening a Web page took almost a minute — intolerable to most users, particularly those accustomed to surfing on a PC. It was also ridiculously expensive. For example, opening a 2MB Web page in China (the typical size of a homepage for popular Chinese Internet portals), would cost 60 RMB, or almost $10. With cloud computing, data can be compressed by 80 percent or more, offering much faster and affordable Web surfing.

With the bandwidth issue easing and mobile devices becoming more capable, the cloud computing technology approach makes mobile browsing accessible to a much larger worldwide population, and gives users an overall improved mobile Internet experience.

Mobile Apps vs. the Browser

People in the industry have made sweeping generalizations like “The Web is dead.” Yes, apps are important, but they will never replace browsers. Internet surfing has gone has through three stages: the first was browser-centered (Netscape), the second was client app-centered (Apple). With Web surfing on cellphones, particularly in emerging countries, the third stage is back to being browser-centered. Here’s why:

• Security. This is a serious issue on cellphones. Installing an app means opening up a myriad of ports, which is like punching holes in a wall. Cellphones are closely connected to a user’s identity and financial information, which attracts thieves. The browser has been created with a high level of security; the browser sandboxes the Web apps running on it, hence providing an extra level of security over apps.
• Service. What users really want is the functionality that an app provides — not the app itself. With the Internet browser becoming more capable, Flash-based games can run on a browser, as can videos. For a long time, people used dedicated video software, but with YouTube, people have become accustomed to watching videos on a browser — and may not need a video player at all. The apps are still there, of course, but they’re morphing into Web apps.
• Standardization. Today we need to develop for different platforms like Android, iOS and Symbian. This takes a tremendous amount of resources from developers, and users are reluctant and annoyed with having to update their apps all the time. But for a Web app, it’s “develop once, run on multiple platforms.”

What’s Next for the Browser

By nature, the browser is a user’s access point to the Internet. Software companies such as Netscape and Microsoft went against nature by developing products as isolated pieces of software. Both Apple and Google are innovation leaders in the Internet industry, and serve as great examples for newcomers. The lesson learned from Netscape and Microsoft is that we should not view the browser simply as a single software tool; instead, it should be treated as an Internet service platform. Google knows this with its platform, and tries to fulfill the needs of vastly different users by enabling them to customize their browsers with plugins and Web apps.

Users turn to the browser for three reasons: Information gathering, entertainment and daily life enhancement. The capabilities browser companies provide must match those service areas, like personalized navigation. Smart technologies can now adjust picture and text size, provide voice control, offer different reading modes or change delivery priorities based on the network environment.

Browser companies gain customers and market share with industry-leading performance, but that is far from enough to build a service platform. To build a global ecosystem of users, there also needs to be a strong business-building component, like account management and billing services, or platforms developed specifically for game use. Dedicated operations teams need to conduct research in market dynamics and actively monitor user feedback to drive timely updates that satisfy the ever-changing needs of users.

Only by focusing on the diverse needs of users wherever they reside can we fully realize the value of the Internet browser. The time is now for the tech industry to take more of a global view of what that means.

Yongfu Yu is the chairman and CEO of UCWeb, whose mission is to provide a better mobile Internet experience to billions of users around the world. Earlier in his career, he was a VP at Legend Capital. Yu graduated from Nankai University in 1999 with a bachelor’s degree in economics and minor in computer science.

Maggie Osterberg

Finnish software services outfit Digia, which acquired a portion of Qt about a year ago, has agreed to purchase the remainder of the mobile application development framework business.

Price? That’s undisclosed. But sources familiar with the deal say it’s “nowhere near” the $150 million that Nokia paid for Qt in 2008. But it’s something, and now that Nokia has cast its lot with Microsoft’s Windows Phone, it doesn’t have much need for Qt, whose cross-platform application development framework was intended for its now-abandoned Symbian and MeeGo operating systems.

In a separate transaction also announced this morning, Nokia is selling some 500 wireless patents to video-ringtone company Vringo. The patents cover a broad range of cellular infrastructure tech, and 31 of them are said to be standards-essential. Vringo paid about $22 million for the portfolio, and could end up paying Nokia even more if the patents generate more than $22 million in revenue.

For Nokia, which is struggling to right itself after stumbling badly in the handset market, the proceeds from these two transactions will help shore up its finances as it prepares to release a new line of smartphones running Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 OS.

(Image courtesy of Mediawench/ Flickr)

For the three-month period ending in June, Google’s Android was the most popular smartphone OS in the U.S., with a 51.6 percent market share — up .6 percentage points from the March quarter. With a 32.4 percent share, Apple’s iOS was the second-most popular and also the biggest market-share gainer for the period, charting a 1.7 point increase.

And bringing up the rear? Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, Microsoft’s Windows Phone and Nokia’s Symbian, with market shares of 10.7 percent, 3.8 percent and .9 percent, respectively. Notably, BlackBerry suffered a 1.6 point decline during the period.

In the handset manufacturing market, the breakdown was also same as it ever was. Samsung led the market with a 25.6 percent share, down .4 percentage points; LG followed with an 18.8 percent share, down half a point. Apple ranked third with a 15.4 percent share, up 1.4 points. And Motorola and HTC came in fourth and fifth with shares of 11.7 percent and 6.4 percent, respectively.

Perhaps the most notable shutdown is the iGoogle personalized home page, which many people still use and rely on. As an indication of the size of that user base, Google is waiting all the way until Nov. 1, 2013, to retire the product, a full 16 months. Everything else in the batch is shutting down later this summer.

Google said today that iGoogle’s value had “eroded over time” with the growth of personalized, real-time apps for Chrome and Android.

IGoogle launched in 2005, though it wasn’t officially given the name until 2007, after becoming Google’s “fastest-growing product” with tens of millions of users, according to a report from the time.

Also, in a show of support for the Meebo Bar, for which Google just paid $100 million, Google is shutting down an embedded chat product called Google Talk Chatback and encouraging Web sites to use Meebo instead.

Another cut is Google Mini, part of Google’s enterprise search products since 2005. Some customers are still under contract with that product, and Google said it would continue to support them.

Google Video, the one-time YouTube competitor that somehow hasn’t died yet, will finally cease hosting content, with everything left set to be migrated as private videos to YouTube. The Google Video team now works on video search.

And last, Google is retiring its Symbian Search app and encouraging users to use the mobile Web instead.

The additional subtractions bring Google to a total of about 35 discontinued products over the past nine months, including Gears, Knol, Wave, Buzz, Code Search, Aardvark, Google Labs, Slide, One Pass and the Google Flu Vaccine Finder.

According to the latest numbers from research outfit comScore, nearly 110 million people owned smartphones during the three months ending in May. Of those, 50.9 percent used Android handsets, up from 50.1 percent from the period ended in February; and 31.9 percent had iPhones, up from 30.2 percent.

Microsoft’s share of the market also increased, but only slightly — to 4 percent, from 3.9 percent.

As in quarters past, those gains came at the expense of rivals Research In Motion and Nokia. Both companies’ share of the smartphone market declined between February and May, with RIM’s falling two points to 11.4 percent, and Nokia’s Symbian slipping to 1.1 percent from 1.5 percent.

In terms of the overall market, including feature phones, Samsung remains the top handset maker, with a 25.7 percent share of the market to LG’s 19.1 percent, Apple’s 15 percent, Motorola’s 12 percent and HTC’s 6.1 percent.

[Image credit: Counting Coots]

The move was expected after a tease from Nokia last week that something big was planned for Monday. That started a brief frenzy that Nokia was teaming up with Microsoft on the tablet. However, we poured cold water all over that, citing sources as telling AllThingsD the news would be the U.S. availability for the 808 PureView.

In addition to its huge camera, the phone also packs “rich recording” capabilities that are designed to give you by far the best concert bootleg of any smartphone.

The Finnish phone maker has essentially stopped selling Symbian-based phones in the U.S. but had said it would look for a way to offer the 808 given interest in its unique picture-taking abilities.

AllThingsD got the inside story on the PureView during a visit to Finland in February, just ahead of the device’s introduction at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress.

For those who want a subsidized device or to see the PureView camera paired with a different OS, Nokia has said the technology behind the 808 PureView will at some point find its way into Windows Phones.

Nokia put some teaser images on its U.S. Facebook page on Friday, with images overlayed with Monday’s date, leading some to immediately conclude that it must be tied to Microsoft’s tablet event, scheduled for the same day in Los Angeles.

Not so, though. A closer look at one teaser image shows that it is of Hawaii, which happens to have the area code 808. That’s also the model number for Nokia’s 41-megapixel PureView camera phone.

Sources say that is indeed the reference that Nokia was making, and that Monday’s news has to do with the U.S. availability of the phone. Nokia had indicated it would look for a way to bring the Symbian-based phone to the U.S.

However, it’s likely to come to the U.S. in the same way that other Symbian phones have — that is to say, in a pricey, unlocked fashion. That said, it won’t be tied to a contract or carrier, so one could choose to use it as a second phone for when they really want high-end photos.

For those who need a refresher, the PureView is a high-end phone based on Nokia’s waning homegrown operating system, rather than Windows Phone. It packs some top-of-the-line features, though. In addition to its super-zoom-capable camera, it has a “rich recording” audio feature that makes it perfect for bootlegging concerts.

Another photo posted to the Nokia U.S. Facebook page shows an audio board, also with Monday’s date. (Update: It’s actually the Roland TR 808 Drum Machine … 808 … I get it now.)

AllThingsD got an up-close look at the PureView and how it came to be during a visit to Finland in February, just ahead of the device’s launch at Mobile World Congress.

India and Russia will be among the first markets to get the PureView, Nokia said. The company also said it was extending its exclusive camera deal with Germany’s Carl Zeiss, its longtime imaging partner, whose lenses power the PureView and the N8.

“We are getting much more than just the optics components from Carl Zeiss,” said Nokia head of imaging Juha Alakarhu, in a telephone interview. “This is really a true partnership with Carl Zeiss. They have a big role throughout the development of our cameras.”

Nokia is counting on imaging to remain as one of its selling points as it shifts its weight from its homegrown Symbian operating system to building phones based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone software. Nokia reiterated that it plans to adapt the PureView technology to future Windows Phones.

The company still isn’t going into any details on that front, nor is it saying when the first Windows Phones with the technology will ship. Nokia plans to sell the Symbian-based PureView in markets beyond Russia and India, but has said it does not plan to bring it to the U.S.

“We will bring PureView to future smartphones — all the parts in the product, from great optics [to the] processing, the whole experience,” Alakarhu said.

During a visit to Finland in February, AllThingsD was among the first outsiders to see the PureView, ahead of the formal launch of the device at that month’s Mobile World Congress.

Since then, Alakarhu said he has been traveling a lot with the phone, taking it on various work trips, including a recent visit to Indonesia, and this week’s May 1 celebrations in Finland. Alakarhu said he gets lots of amazed reactions, adding that he is probably most pleased that his usually critical photography enthusiast friends are impressed.

“I was able to show the photos, and I was happy to see their happy faces,” he said.

Nokia has also promised it has more photo tricks up its sleeve, though Alakarhu wouldn’t spill the beans.

“I probably shouldn’t say anything about our future surprises,” he said. “We are working hard on imaging technology.”

Nokia spent five years developing the camera technology behind the PureView.

Nokia reported that quarterly sales were 7.4 billion euros, down from 10.4 billion euros a year ago. On the earnings side, the company lost 25 euro cents per share.

The company also announced on Thursday that top sales executive Colin Giles is leaving the company. His direct reports will now funnel to Niklas Savander, executive VP of markets.

Nokia had said last week that it would fall short of its goal of near-break-even results, and cautioned that things in the current quarter would only be about the same as they were in the disappointing first quarter.

“We are navigating through a significant company transition in an industry environment that continues to evolve and shift quickly,” CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement. “Over the last year we have made progress on our new strategy, but we have faced greater than expected competitive challenges.”

In particular, things have been rough at the low end of the market, where Android is gaining quickly on the kinds of feature phones that have historically made up much of Nokia’s profits. In both smartphones and lower-end devices, Nokia saw significant drops in both the number of phones being sold and in the average prices those phones were fetching.

“We have a clear sense of urgency to move our strategy forward even faster,” Elop said. “We have focused our efforts in the low-end of smartphones and feature phone asset to drive improved business results and conserve cash. We are confident in our strategy and focused on responding urgently in the short term and creating value for our shareholders in the long term.”

For the current quarter, Nokia said to expect its operating margins to be worse than the -3 percent it posted during the first quarter. Nokia still looks to reduce its operating expenses by $1 billion over the next fiscal year, as compared to 2010.

“Nokia plans to accelerate and substantially deepen Devices & Services cost savings, consistent with its strategic focus,” it added. “Nokia will share further details as quickly as possible.”

Nokia noted that it did receive $250 million in “platform support payments” from Microsoft during the quarter. Nokia said that while it also pays minimum software royalty commitments back to Microsoft, it expects over the life of the agreement for the payments from Redmond to exceed those it must pay to Microsoft.

The credit firm cut long-term and short-term debt ratings by one notch. Moody’s also said its outlook was negative, meaning further downgrades are possible.

“While volatility by quarters is not uncommon, Moody’s believes that the structural challenges facing Nokia’s Mobile Phones segment may not be easy to address, such as the market share gains recorded by makers of very low-end phones or new phone promotions by Chinese carriers,” Moody’s said in a statement. “This precipitous decline is of particular concern considering that Nokia’s Mobile Phones segment was still the core income generator for the Nokia group in 2011, when it contributed 1.5 billion Euros to the group’s operating profit of 1.8 billion Euros.”

Moody’s also noted that the company’s shift from Symbian to Windows Phone-based devices “is proving more challenging than expected given that sales of Symbian-based devices are falling off very quickly while Lumia sales are only ramping up slowly.”

The ratings move follows Nokia’s warning last week that its business was weaker than expected and that it sees another rough quarter ahead. Nokia is slated to deliver its full earnings report on Thursday.

For its part, Nokia said it is “quickly taking action” to address concerns about its business.

“Nokia will continue to increase its focus on lowering the company’s cost structure, improving cash flow and maintaining a strong financial position,” CFO Timo Ihamuotil said in a statement.

Nokia was hit with downgrades last year after announcing its plans to focus on Windows Phone.

Moody’s did note that Nokia “has maintained a strong liquidity position and capital structure” and had about twice as much cash and marketable securities as it did debt as of the end of March.

The company said it expected negative margins of 2 to 3 percent for its devices and services business, as compared to its earlier expectation of roughly break-even results.

“Our disappointing Devices & Services first quarter 2012 financial results and outlook for the second quarter 2012 illustrates that our Devices & Services business continues to be in the midst of transition,” CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement.

Nokia cautioned that it will take “tactical price actions” in its low-end phone business, and also warned that further painful moves could be on the horizon.

The Finnish company said it “will accelerate planned cost reductions and will pursue additional significant structural actions if and when necessary.”

“We are continuing to increase the clock speed of the company,” Elop said. “The change is tangible, and we are proud of the way Nokia employees are quickly responding to the needs of consumers and partners.”

Elop tried to paint as good a picture as possible of things.

“Within our Smart Devices business unit, we have established early momentum with Lumia, and we are increasing our investments in Lumia to achieve market success,” Elop said. “Our operator and distributor partners are providing solid support for Windows Phone as a third ecosystem, as evidenced most recently by the launch of the Lumia 900 by AT&T in the United States.”

Of course, even there, things have been bumpy. Nokia confirmed late Tuesday that a software glitch is causing some Lumia 900 customers to be unable to connect to the Internet. The company is rushing out a software fix and offering a $100 credit to all early Lumia 900 buyers.

Nokia said that it sold more than two million of its Lumia phones in the first quarter, at an average selling price of 220 euros. It added that the number of Lumia phones being activated has continued to grow each month, although that’s probably to be expected as the company brings its Windows Phone products to more markets.

Research outfit Kantar Worldpanel ComTech reports that Windows Phone has captured about 2.5 percent of the U.K. mobile market, edging out the dusty Symbian line, which captured just 2.4 percent — down from 12.4 percent a year ago. Driving its push into the market: Nokia’s Lumia 800 smartphone, which accounted for 87 percent of Windows Phone 7 sales in Europe.

Encouraging news for Nokia, in that there are now signs that adoption of its Windows Phone handsets is on the rise — albeit slowly. That said, 2.5 percent is a piddling portion of the U.K. market. Less than that, considering that Nokia is believed to have sold only 900,000 Windows Phones during the fourth quarter of 2011.

And then there’s that 10 percent drop in Symbian market share, which certainly isn’t providing any help for Nokia’s brand awareness or finances.

So, in the end, it’s great that Nokia appears to be making some headway with its Windows Phone strategy, but it needs to make a hell of a lot more, and soon, if Symbian usage is dropping off so precipitously.

If it were easy to put a decent zoom lens in a camera phone, Nokia might never have come up with its biggest breakthrough in imaging in years.

The technology in the 808 PureView phone introduced on Monday was the result of Nokia engineers struggling over the fact that optically zoomed lenses just don’t work well in tiny spaces like phones.

“We had been working for a long time [on] optical zooms and had learned the hard way how difficult it is to achieve good performance in smartphones,” Nokia head of imaging technologies Juha Alakarhu said in an interview last week. “Their structure is very complex and hard to manufacture.”

Plus, Alakarhu says, when zoomed in, such lenses let very little light in, meaning they don’t do well at night and suffer from a lack of sharpness.

Quite late one night, Alakarhu, Eero Salmelin and other colleagues were struck by another method. If a big enough sensor could be fitted into the phone, the camera could just zoom digitally and throw away the unneeded pixels.

“We were aware that it is possible to do zooming by very high resolution image sensor, but the idea of putting such a large and high resolution image sensor into a smartphone felt completely crazy,” Alakarhu said. “That was five years ago, and I guess it still feels like that.”

That said, Nokia has done it with the 808 PureView — or Hyperion, as it was code-named during development.

As Alakarhu and colleagues showed AllThingsD the camera technology last week, they were practically bursting at the seams. After all, they had been working on the technology in secret for the last five years.

Part of the challenge now will be explaining to the consumer why anyone needs that many megapixels.

One of the key advantages is it lets you zoom in three or four times in either photos or video and still have a sharp image. The picture of the camera, here, for example, is taken from the same wide shot of the camera and its sensors. In videos, the technology allows one to zoom in close while still maintaining an HD resolution.

Another plus is that the camera uses so-called “oversampling” to shrink the image while still making use of the information in the large number of pixels. Nokia said it can create a better five-megapixel image by using the data in the seven extra pixels to inform which single pixel it uses.

To illustrate the imaging quality, Nokia’s development team has quietly been traveling the globe and taking pictures at the full resolution of the camera. From the shots, the team has created massive prints rivaling those from professional cameras.

Alakarhu was in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show in January and wanted to get a few shots. But he was in a city filled with reporters and competitors.

To provide some cover, Alakarhu wrapped the phone in a thick rubber case to mask its design. Meanwhile, he tried to keep the phone literally close to his vest, lest anyone look too closely at the screen and notice things like a 41-megapixel resolution.

“I guess I felt a little bit like James Bond with a very special new gadget in a secret mission,” Alakarhu said. “It was fun, of course, even though I had to be very careful.”

One of the areas where Nokia is bound to be criticized — especially in North America — is the fact that it is bringing the camera technology first to its bound-for-extinction Symbian platform rather than to Windows Phone, which is its future. Nokia doesn’t even sell Symbian phones in the United States any more.

Developing the 808 for Symbian was necessary for a few reasons. First, as mentioned, Nokia has been working on this technology for five years and only gotten to know Windows Phone over the past year. Also, because it controls Symbian, it can craft the camera app and operating system fully to its liking.

That said, Nokia is promising the technology will eventually make its way to Windows Phone as well. It is not, however, giving a time frame.

In an interview, Nokia smartphone unit head Jo Harlow declined to say if the PureView technology would show up in Windows Phones this year, but said she is not worried about any technical hurdles involved in making the move.

“I’m not at all concerned about work that needs to be done to bring it to Windows Phone,” Harlow said.

For his part, Windows Phone head Terry Myerson said he is looking forward to the day when his wife stops carrying a high-end digital camera and uses a PureView-equipped Windows Phone instead.

Here’s a picture of part of the 808 team, also taken with the 808.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120227/the-inside-story-of-nokias-41-megapixel-camera-phone-five-years-in-the-making/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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• Interview: Clearwire CEO Sees 4G Opportunities Where Rival LightSquared Stumbled
• RIM Exec: Developers Like Us Just Fine, Thanks
• Intel Announces More Phone Customers, Plans for Speedier Chips
• Mum on Own Phone Plans, Facebook Aims to Make Mobile Web App-Friendly
• Sony Insists It’s Not Just Playing Around When It Comes to Phones
• The Inside Story of Nokia’s 41-Megapixel Camera Phone: Five Years in the Making
• With Lumia 610, Nokia Aims To Take Windows Phone To a New Low (Price)
• 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/20120213/ipo-mafias-bodm-and-brands-born-from-the-u-s-election-three-mobile-trends-starting-to-unfold/ http://allthingsd.com/20120213/ipo-mafias-bodm-and-brands-born-from-the-u-s-election-three-mobile-trends-starting-to-unfold/#comments Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:20:05 +0000 Dinesh Moorjani http://allthingsd.com/?p=174117 With more than one month of 2012 down and still two weeks to go until the largest mobile and gaming industry trade shows — Mobile World Congress and Game Developers Conference — here are three trends that are starting to unfold and should define the year of mobile technology.

1. The rise of BODM (build once, deploy many) platforms

   Mobile platform fragmentation is growing — the broad range of platforms currently encompasses iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Bada, Symbian, Kindle and Nook, just to name a few. The result has been a wave of “build once, deploy many” platforms to create and distribute mobile applications, which will continue to grow in popularity as developers and content creators simply forgo the onerous task of building something unique for each mobile platform.

   According to a 2011 Nielsen Smartphone analytics report, Android users spend nearly an hour a day interacting with apps and the Web on their phones, with apps (67 percent) accounting for nearly twice the amount of time as the Web (33 percent). Bearing this consumption profile in mind, the economics of mobile content doesn’t encourage investment in new mobile development platforms as long as monetization doesn’t scale with these costs. In other words, developers won’t want to spend more on developing their app while the revenue they bring in is modestly incremental or flat.

   Among the most well-known platforms are PhoneGap, Spaceport.io (a.k.a. Siblingz, Inc.) for games and Appcelerator, the latter of which has already had more than 30,000 apps built using its platform. The approach of some of these services is that they enable developers to unlock the value of mobile web development with native app wrappers. However, a more challenging platform fragmentation problem has been largely ignored: unlocking app development for non-technical consumers and independent content creators through a compelling graphical user interface (GUI).

   Presently, non-technical content creators are disenfranchised from mobile app development unless they invest, usually unprofitably, in mobile web and app development services, or they learn to code outright.

   One company, kleverbeast, is tackling this challenge. Having already signed up prominent beta enterprise customers and non-technical content creators, kleverbeast is empowering digital app publishing across iOS, Android, and other emerging platforms with a compelling native user experience for their app owners’ audiences. The unique technology and market strategy has helped kleverbeast address mobile platform fragmentation, not just for developers, but also for the benefit of the average consumer.

   This new breed of BODM companies will proliferate in 2012, and I expect more than a million apps and game titles will choose this path.

2. Angel funding valve tightens and IPO mafias move into the picture

   Angel investing has risen in popularity over the past two years, but the long tail of unproven individual angels will wane as two events unfold: (1) Many angel-funded start-ups will go belly-up, unable to secure Series A financing or a bridge loan, and (2) institutional investors will adroitly strong-arm early, passive investors.

   Angel dollars widen the capital base available to entrepreneurs in early tech start-ups opening the door to tech innovation. However, many of these new angel investors don’t realize that frequently they will be squeezed down on their ownership percentage in subsequent rounds of financing and face less favorable terms. Many fresh angels have assumed greater risk than is commensurate with their early ownership and expected more upside than they end up getting. Subsequently, some angels won’t have the capital to diversify their portfolios or participate in follow-up rounds of financing.

   Investing can be risky for many fresh angels hungry to keep up with the Joneses and raise their social capital. As these lessons are learned, angel investing will swing back to some rational levels.

   The flipside of this may be the next IPO mafias. Expect a new crop of angel investors to emerge from some of those who benefited from Groupon, Zynga and the much-anticipated Facebook IPO. These IPO angels will take over early-stage deals and fund employees from these successful brands that decide to go it on their own. Ex-Googlers fund ex-Googlers all the time, and the mafias of tech titans will continue to proliferate.

3. One great new mobile social media company will be born out of the U.S. election cycle of 2012

   In 2008, President Barack Obama was widely praised for his mobile marketing prowess, which many political strategists evangelized as contributing to his victory in the election and igniting the youth base to get out and vote.

   Campaign managers utilized a combination of social and mobile media vehicles, with several businesses benefiting as a result: from ad networks like Quattro Wireless (acquired by Apple in 2010), to start-up companies like CommerceTel, which powered the President’s interactive voice applications.

   Adding weight to this trend are emerging consumer behaviors over social networks and the power of indirect, viral outreach. A study conducted by SocialVibe revealed that “94 percent of social media users of voting age engaged by a political message watched the entire message, and 39 percent of those people shared it with an average of 130 friends.” Powerful, period.

   The power of social technology to empower and persuade won’t be ignored by today’s candidates, and we’ll likely see the emergence of at least one great company out of the 2012 election.

If the rest of this year is anything like the last one, we’re in for a wild ride of fragmentation, consolidation and innovation.

Dinesh Moorjani is the founder and CEO of Hatch Labs, a mobile start-up incubator creating new platforms and applications to improve mobility for the wireless generation.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120213/ipo-mafias-bodm-and-brands-born-from-the-u-s-election-three-mobile-trends-starting-to-unfold/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20120202/what-nokia-chairman-worry/ http://allthingsd.com/20120202/what-nokia-chairman-worry/#comments Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:09:38 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=170939 Nokia’s going through a challenging transition, but according to Jorma Ollila, it’s laid the foundation it needs to regain smartphone leadership.

Someday.

Though its Symbian platform is burning down to ashes and it has lost its title as the world’s largest smartphone maker, Nokia is going to be just fine, says outgoing chairman Ollila. In fact, with the help of Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 operating system, the company will remain among the top three players in the smartphone market, despite its plunging market share.

“Nokia will make it into the three,” Ollila told Finnish broadcaster YLE. “It’s completely obvious and the first signs are already there. None of the operating systems have taken off quickly. It will take time, as we have seen and as was expected.”

Well, not completely obvious — particularly after the horrendous 73 percent decline in fourth-quarter earnings the company recently reported. But Ollila says such financial tumult is to be expected from a big transition like this and the earnings slip doesn’t belie its potential for success.

“When looking at the bigger picture, it shows that three operating systems will dominate in the near future and each of them will have one strong manufacturer, with Nokia having a very good chance to be one of the three,” he said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120202/what-nokia-chairman-worry/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20120126/nokia-sells-1-million-windows-phones-but-symbian-dropping-faster-than-expected/ http://allthingsd.com/20120126/nokia-sells-1-million-windows-phones-but-symbian-dropping-faster-than-expected/#comments Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:41:55 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=167788 The key financial question for Nokia is whether it can ramp up its Windows Phone business faster than its existing Symbian sales tail off.

The company’s results on Thursday showed that Nokia had better hurry.

Although it managed to ship one million of its Windows Phones last year, the company notes that its Symbian business is declining faster than it had predicted.

“Specifically, changing market conditions are putting increased pressure on Symbian,” CEO Stephen Elop noted in comments accompanying Nokia’s earnings release. “In certain markets, there has been an acceleration of the anticipated trend towards lower-priced smartphones with specifications that are different from Symbian’s traditional strengths.”

In other words, expect low-cost Android to be a strong competitor across the globe. Elop had held out hope that cheap Android phones would prove to be underpowered and less popular.

“Just because there is a version of an operating system at a price point doesn’t mean that it is a great experience,” he said in an interview last year.

But that experience appears to be plenty good enough for a bunch of the customers that Nokia had hoped would continue to buy Symbian devices.

When it announced its plans to move to Windows Phone a year ago, Nokia had said it expected nonetheless to sell a further 150 million devices.

“As a result of the changing market conditions, combined with our increased focus on Lumia, we now believe that we will sell fewer Symbian devices than we previously anticipated,” Elop said.

The company didn’t provide a new estimate, but did say that it took a charge last quarter for excess inventory and purchase commitments that it had made. It also declined to make an overall financial forecast for 2012, in part because of the uncertainty over future Symbian sales.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120126/nokia-sells-1-million-windows-phones-but-symbian-dropping-faster-than-expected/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111230/nokias-dying-symbian-os-still-rules-the-smartphone-world/ http://allthingsd.com/20111230/nokias-dying-symbian-os-still-rules-the-smartphone-world/#comments Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:45:59 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=158402 How ironic is this? Symbian, the mobile operating system that Nokia is slowly abandoning as it refocuses its smartphone strategy around Microsoft Windows Phone, is the leading mobile OS worldwide.

December StatCounter metrics, compiled by Pingdom, show Symbian with a 33.59 percent share of the global mobile OS market. That’s more than Apple’s iOS, which claimed a 22.56 percent share that same month. And it’s more than Android, as well: Google’s juggernaut mobile OS accounted for just 21.74 percent in December.

Remarkable. More so when you note that Symbian’s market share actually grew about 3 percent over the course of the year, rising from 30.25 percent at its beginning to 33.59 percent at its end.

Of course, Symbian has long been among the world’s most popular mobile operating systems. It still dominates the Mideast and most of the developing world, thanks to the affinity of those regions for Nokia’s cheap mobile phones. And evidently it will continue to do so for a while. According to these metrics, there’s certainly quite a bit of life left in it still.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111230/nokias-dying-symbian-os-still-rules-the-smartphone-world/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111212/microsoft-releases-more-mobile-apps-for-other-peoples-devices/ http://allthingsd.com/20111212/microsoft-releases-more-mobile-apps-for-other-peoples-devices/#comments Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:01:58 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=153018 Microsoft on Monday released an iPad version of OneNote as well as versions of its Lync corporate communications program for iOS, Android and Symbian.

It’s part of the difficult balancing act facing Microsoft in mobile. While Redmond does its most extensive work for its own Windows Phone operating system (and did so for Windows Mobile before that), the company knows it can’t afford to ignore the more dominant operating systems.

Microsoft has a number of iOS apps, including PhotoSynth and Bing, among other titles. It recently added an Xbox Live app, though its features are considerably more narrow than the Xbox Live capabilities available on Windows Phone.

Android apps from Microsoft have been less common, though it does have a handful, including Halo Waypoint and a Chinese version of Bing.

In addition to bringing OneNote to the iPad, Microsoft is also updating the iPhone version and now plans to charge users once they have more than 500 notes on their mobile device.

The real question is when will Microsoft bite the bullet and deliver a full-fledged version of Office for a rival’s mobile platform. OneNote aside, Microsoft has continued to keep Office for itself rather than do a version of iOS or Android. The company has pledged to do a version for Symbian, as part of its broader tie-up with Nokia.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111212/microsoft-releases-more-mobile-apps-for-other-peoples-devices/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111208/why-microsoft-might-yet-need-to-buy-nokia/ http://allthingsd.com/20111208/why-microsoft-might-yet-need-to-buy-nokia/#comments Thu, 08 Dec 2011 23:45:56 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=151594 Conventional wisdom says Microsoft got everything it wanted from Nokia when it struck its deal in January to make Windows Phone the Finnish company’s smartphone operating system of choice.

Even if it is forking over a few billion dollars in marketing aid, technical help and other incentives, that’s still a fraction of what an outright purchase would have cost. For that price, Microsoft managed to get one of the biggest names in cellphones to commit to a Microsoft-centric future.

And yet, there’s a case to be made that Microsoft might still need to bite the bullet and buy Nokia.

Here are a few reasons why a full-on acquisition might be necessary.

Windows Phone is still growing very slowly
It’s getting nice reviews and customer satisfaction numbers, but Windows Phone is falling further behind Android and iOS in market share every day. Even CEO Steve Ballmer admits sales aren’t where they need to be.

The benefits of the Nokia deal depend on Nokia remaining healthy through the transition
The company has already issued one earnings warning this year and it’s not clear that sales will stay strong enough through the transition to keep Nokia the healthy partner that Microsoft needs.

Aside from Nokia, Microsoft is still getting sloppy seconds
Samsung and HTC — two of the biggest names in smartphones — are doing Windows Phones, but the vast majority of those companies’ resources are devoted toward Android devices.

Microsoft would be able to offer truly integrated phones
Perhaps that happy medium between Apple and Android isn’t so happy after all. If it isn’t going to get the diversity of devices that Google has, Microsoft could decide it needs to handle everything itself.

All that being said, there are still plenty of downsides that make a deal very much a long shot.

A deal would be expensive, even by Microsoft standards
Nokia would make Microsoft’s biggest previous acquisitions — Skype and Aquantive — seem small by comparison. Nokia is measured in the tens of billions of dollars.

Nokia has a huge low-end phone business
A good chunk of the company’s revenue comes from feature phones and other devices that are lower in cost than even the least expensive Windows Phones. (Microsoft could always sell off that part of the business)

The challenges of integration
Nokia and Microsoft are miles apart — and not just geographically. While Nokia’s CEO is an ex-Microsoftie, the two companies are still very different beings. Nokia is a hardware manufacturer at heart.

[ATM photo via Shutterstock]

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111208/why-microsoft-might-yet-need-to-buy-nokia/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111101/having-shifted-to-windows-phone-nokia-wants-developers-to-do-the-same/ http://allthingsd.com/20111101/having-shifted-to-windows-phone-nokia-wants-developers-to-do-the-same/#comments Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:00:43 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=138583 With Nokia getting its first Windows Phone devices out the door, it is now shifting some of its attention back to wooing the developers it will need to make the move pay off.

To help make that case, the company has hired Richard Kerris, a veteran developer relations executive who has led efforts at Apple and, most recently, for HP’s WebOS. The company is also aiming to get Nokia devices into the hands of as many developers as possible, announcing last week that it will give out 25,000 devices in the coming months.

The biggest challenge, for both Nokia and Microsoft, is convincing developers that they need to bother developing for more than just Android and iOS.

“They are looking at two rather successful platforms in terms of the numbers and so forth,” Kerris said. “The challenge will be to show them … the opportunity.”

Nokia faces a particular challenge in North America, where it has been all but absent for many years and where the company’s Windows Phone products are still not yet available.

In an interview, Kerris and his boss, Marco Argenti, talked with AllThingsD about the challenges and opportunities facing the Finnish phone giant.

One of the ideas that the pair are kicking around are ways to offer developers help in building their business — not just their code.

“A lot of one- or two-man shops, they may know how to write an app but they may not know how to get their businesses off the ground,” Kerris said.

Kerris said it is all part of convincing developers that Nokia has something unique to offer them.

“It’s not just about great technology,” he said. “That’s one piece of it. If you don’t have all of the other pieces figured out you are not giving them the full opportunity.”

Kerris said that Nokia wants the big developers, for sure, but also has its sights set on emerging application creators.

“You want to definitely have them but the real opportunity is going to come from the next generation of developers,” he said.

While much of the outside attention is on Windows Phone, Argenti and Kerris stressed that the company also has a case to be made for developers to create new apps for Nokia’s existing platforms.

“There’s actually still quite a bit of an opportunity for developing on the non-Windows Nokia architectures,” Argenti said.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111101/having-shifted-to-windows-phone-nokia-wants-developers-to-do-the-same/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111026/nokia-counts-on-services-design-to-make-its-first-windows-phones-stand-out/ http://allthingsd.com/20111026/nokia-counts-on-services-design-to-make-its-first-windows-phones-stand-out/#comments Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:06:19 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=136811 While the hardware that Nokia introduced in London on Wednesday was pretty much as expected, the company threw in a few services that could help distinguish it from its Windows Phone rivals.

The high-end Lumia 800 will be familiar to anyone who has seen the Meego-based Nokia N9; its entry-level Lumia 710 is designed to have a “no-nonsense” look and feel. The more surprising introductions at Nokia World came on the services side, where the company announced its Nokia Drive turn-by-turn directions service, and Mix Radio, a free, global, music streaming service.

On the hardware front, both Nokia phones feature a 1.4GHz processor, but are priced quite differently and aimed at different parts of the market. The Lumia 800 is priced at 420 Euros (before any taxes or subsidies) and includes an 8 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera. The Lumia 710 is priced at 270 Euros and lacks the sleek look and high-end camera.

“Eight months ago, we shared our new strategy and today we are demonstrating clear progress of this strategy in action,” Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said in a statement.

The company made a huge bet earlier this year when it announced it would make Microsoft’s Windows Phone the centerpiece of its smartphone strategy. It has been working to develop those phones while muddling through further market-share losses as it makes the transition. Nokia has also posted losses and earnings warnings, and has laid off staff.

With these first Windows Phones, Nokia is hoping to start a new dialogue and to see its fortunes improve. In shipping its first phones, the company did reach the goal that Stephen Elop had set out in announcing the shift.

Nokia is being selective about where it launches the products, promising both phones to only five markets before the end of the year: Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan. The high-end model will also ship in six European countries next month: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The company plans to have the products in other markets, including the U.S., early next year, with mainland China targeted for sometime in the first half of the year.

The first group of products are somewhat limited in the types of networks they support, but Nokia said it planned to introduce LTE phones as well as those that work on CDMA — the type of network used by Verizon and Sprint.

Along with the new phones and services, Nokia announced a line of headphones jointly developed with Monster, as well as a deal to work with New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority to develop an NFC-based smartphone ticketing solution. The effort will be piloted on regional commuter trains before the end of the year, Nokia said. Finally, the company noted that its maps, in addition to being adopted by Microsoft, will also power Yahoo Maps, beginning with the U.S. and Canada.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111026/nokia-counts-on-services-design-to-make-its-first-windows-phones-stand-out/feed/ 0