The news that Nokia just handed over its one and a half billionth Series 40 phone was interesting - and impressive - and got me thinking and fact-checking. Just how many Symbian-powered smartphones have been sold, in total, i.e. in the last decade? Turns out it's now well over 500 million, i.e. over half a billion Symbian smartphones have already been sold and are... out there in the world somewhere. Some thoughts below.
Nokia has released its Q2 2011 results, reporting an operating loss of -€487 million, with net sales of €9.275 billion (down 7% YoY). Nokia's Devices and Services division's losses were -€247 million. Margins in devices and services were -4.5% (down 14% YoY and down 14.2% QoQ). However, non-IFRS operating profit was €391 million (down 41% YoY and down 44% QoQ), with Devices and Services non-IFRS profit at €369 million, and margins at 6.7%. Total smartphone device sales were 16.7 million, compared with 24 million units in Q2 2010 (down 34% YoY) and 25.2 million units in Q1 2011 (down 31%, QoQ).
Following on from last week's episode, which focused on Windows Phone Mango, here is the seventh episode of the 361 Degrees podcast. This week it's a nostalgia fest as we remember devices we've owned and that we think have helped shaped the industry. 361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology, created by Ben Smith of Wireless Worker and co-hosted by Ewan MacLeod of Mobile Industry Review and Rafe Blandford of All About Symbian.
Nokia announced today that it will change its service branding from Ovi to Nokia. This will see the services change from Ovi Service to Nokia Service. For example, Ovi Maps to Nokia Maps. The transition will begin in July and is expected to be completed by the end of 2012 and Nokia says that the rebrand will have no impact on planned updates and improvements to the services.
Please excuse the original story on this address, I was going by item numbers in Ovi Store URLs - it turns out that there isn't a strict one to-one correspondance between URL numbers and actual content items. The store simply now has over 100,000 allocated item IDs, many of which never materialised into content. Watch this space for some fuller Ovi Store statistics.
Following on from my initial review of Pixelpipe's Send and Share client, I met their CEO, Brett Butterfield, at Nokia World 2010 to find out what was new. Send and Share has had some significant additions that all add together to make the application even more convenient to use.
Never more than in the last year or so, smartphone enthusiasts have been decrying Symbian and advocating switching to an Android smartphone or Apple iPhone. "Enough is enough" they cry, "I'll be able to do so much more if I switch!". Errr... no. Not really. Having used many Android phones and having been using the iPhone and other iOS devices over the last two years, I've come to the conclusion that the grass really isn't greener on the other side of the fence - it's just a different colour altogether.
In All About Symbian Insight 134, we start with news of new, community created Samsung i8910 firmware, which leads to a discussion of Samsung's mobile platform choices. Rafe discusses the Ovi Files closure and talks about how the thinking behind Nokia's Ovi service strategy has evolved. David shares his PixelPipe Send and Share experiences, before bringing news of UK operator Orange's HD Voice service. Ewan talks about Swype, an alternative text input entry system, which is now available in beta. Finally, Steve gives his first opinion on the Nokia E5.
Nokia's mission for the forward-facing, messaging-centric QWERTY market (think Blackberry)? Take the best selling E71/E63/E72 concept, interpret it in 2010 design language, beef up the internals and try to sell it for as low a price as possible while making as few compromises as possible. The result of that tricky challenge is the E5, announced way back in April but, surprisingly, not available until now. Here's my full Nokia E5 review - grab a hot drink and settle down for a (hopefully) good read!
To kick-off our coverage of Nokia's new budget QWERTY slate smartphone, the Nokia E5-00, we have our usual gallery, with commentary, showing off some of the key hardware features. In summary? The E5 has rock solid build quality, good design and a decent hardware specification, but there's are some budget-linked constraints to note. All-in-all though, it is an attractive entry into the mid tier smartphone market.