Developers, here’s your chance to EARN a million rupees. Nokia’s 2010 Calling All Innovators contest has a special prize for developers who submit locally relevant applications (in Urdu or English) and content for use on Nokia devices by consumers living in Pakistan. Pakistan is one of the 11 countries where Nokia is offering the award for local content/apps.
The best entry by a developer based in Pakistan will receive a special prize of 1,000,000/- PKR in cash.
Additionally, two runners-up will get 500,000/- PKR in cash and 300,000/- PKR in cash respectively.
This is an additional incentive – you could still be a global winner in one of the four categories!
Click below to read more about what you need to do for a chance to win the special prize in Pakistan.
Nokia shared that since the launch of the new version of Ovi Maps with free walk and drive navigation, on 21 January 2010, there have been over 1.2 million downloads with over 20% coming from China. By leveraging its investment in NAVTEQ, Nokia has been able to remove the costs associated with navigation for drivers and pedestrians and is quickly activating a massive user base to which it can offer new location features, content and services. The top five most popular Nokia devices installing the download where: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia N97 , Nokia 5230 and E72. From next month all new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones will include the new version of Ovi Maps, pre-loaded with local country map data, with high-end walk and drive navigation and access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides at no extra cost.
Nokia has made a huge move in the mobile mapping and navigation area: it now offers free global navigation (for drivers and pedestrians) on Nokia smartphones. These free-of-charge navigation services are intended to boost Nokia’s service offerings and sell more phones. This is the same direction which Google was moving in with its free navigation software. The free turn-by-turn directions by Nokia mean that navigation device makers such as TomTom and Gramin will be impacted.
Music play a vital role in chillaxing human brain both in leisure or work and in youth its much more than that. Nokia’s recent study reveals that youth, the predominant majority of Pakistan’s total population, have expressed a high preference for music. According to it out of every 10 youth 8 prefers to have a Nokia music device. It also claims to take over the Sony Ericsson’s music device business share with its XpressMusic series.
Nokia has a loyal following in some of the largest mobile phone populations. With the recent pressure from competitors, Nokia has adopted a strategy of providing phones with improved connectivity and seamless applications for web, email, music, photos and maps which help with the daily lives of their users. Here’s a piece we received from Nokia about how its contributing to the big shift in how people connect with each others via phones.
Windows Mobile’s share of the global smart-phone operating-system market fell to 7.9% in the third quarter from 11.1% a year earlier, research firm Gartner estimates. Also losing ground was Nokia’s Symbian. In contrast, both Apple and BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion boosted their shares, while Android grabbed 3.5% from zero a year earlier. That will likely increase given the popularity of Motorola’s new Droid phone.
Here’s an interesting illustration of how Apple and Google are competing.
Published by Babar Bhatti on December 5, 2009
under BlackBerry, Nokia
Nokia has stated that Symbian would remain the key software platform on its smart phones, as the world’s largest handset maker forecast a 10% rise in global handset volumes next year following a period of sharp contraction. Nokia is trying a number of different things, including emphasis on social media and music services. Nokia has also stepped up advertising which talks about its email solutions (E72 for example) and how its better than BlackBerry because it works directly with Microsoft Exchange without the need of a middleware.
The next in series of smartphones, Nokia E72 is in the market now. This is a device tailor-made for business and personal messaging and follows the traditions of E71 which has become quite popular because of its nifty features. To coincide with the arrival of the Nokia E72, Nokia has also released research revealing that more people rely on email than on traditional phone calls or text messaging when sending and responding to critical information. Nokia responsiveness research can be seen here.
Rihanna, international superstar, will showcase new material from her highly-anticipated forthcoming album Rated R exclusively to a Nokia audience via a globally streamed live performance on November 16th 2009. The album’s ‘Social Media Launch’ event in partnership with Nokia will preview tracks from Rated R – set for a November 23rd release worldwide – performed live from a secret London location.
Nokia has published information about the new Ovi ecosystem which includes handsets, software, developer tools along with mobile operators, 3rd party developers and users. An important element is the Ovi Store as a content intake and point of sales. On the developer tools side, the Ovi ecosystem comprises of Ovi APIs, consisting of Ovi Maps Player API and Ovi Navigation Player API as well as the Ovi SDK Beta and Ovi apps. See details below.
Technology Preview:
Ovi APIs (application programming interface) makes Ovi apps contextual and more relevant for consumers. Ovi APIs opens access to the industry leading context assets from Nokia, starting with Ovi Maps.
Out of curiosity I wanted to see if data usage on phones is going up or not. It is often assumed that smartphone users (Nokia, Blackberry and iPhone, for instance) consume lot more data than others. I use an iPhone for email, reading blogs (via rss reader) and for browsing the web when away from a PC. My data consumption averages about 200-250 MB per month. What about you?
The shift in power for handsets has been going on for about 2 years now and trends have strated emerging, supported by data. Here’s an interesting piece, via GigaOM
If you want to know why Nokia is in trouble, you need to look no further than its market share declines during the second quarter of 2009 in the company’s home market of Western Europe. This region accounts for a majority of its high-end phone sales. During the quarter, Nokia handset sales were down 19 percent (year-over-year), according to market research firm IDC, to about 15.3 million units. Overall handset sales for the quarter were down 6 percent and will be down a total of 10 percent for 2009, IDC says.
This data exposes Nokia’s Achilles heel. The reason why Nokia is suffering is because it doesn’t have a hit device to address the fast-growing smartphone market. Smartphone sales were up 25 percent to 8.8 million units compared to a year ago, IDC says. That’s about 1.75 million smartphones for the quarter. Guess who’s winning sales in the smartphone category? Apple, which sold about 1.4 million iPhones, and RIM, which sold 1.2 million BlackBerrys during the quarter.
Updated: I asked IDC to share shed some more light on the sales of the smartphone sector for the second quarter of 2009 and they emailed with this nugget of information:
Nokia 57.5%
Apple 15.5%
Research in Motion 13.2%
HTC 8.1%
Samsung 3.0%
What we’re seeing is a complete upheaval in the handset market. We’re seeing two traditional powerhouses — Nokia and Sony Ericsson — be upended by North American and Asian competitors, some of them newcomers to the market. These two companies will continue to lose market share for a couple of reasons: Carriers like Vodafone are launching their own smartphone devices and most importantly, Google’s Android-based devices made by companies such as Motorola and HTC are about to hit the market in large numbers in 2010.
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