Nokia and Microsoft announce Windows Phone partnership!

The news everyone has been waiting for has finally come out today: Nokia, the biggest handset maker in the world, both for “dumbphones” and “smartphones” announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft using its Windows Phone platform.

Based on Nokia and Microsoft’s latest deal, Windows phone will be the primary operating system for Nokia’s smartphones. This news shook up the mobile world, especially Intel that has just been thrown under the bus. The Nokia/ Intel strategic partnership a while back to create the MeeGo platform for smartphones was Intel’s effort to partner with the handset maker, but with Nokia dating Microsoft right now, it seems that Intel was just stood up!

Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer announced the news on Nokia’s blog in a post. Below is the detail from the blog:

»  Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.

»  Nokia will help drive and define the future of Windows Phone. Nokia will contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.

»  Nokia and Microsoft will closely collaborate on development, joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.

»  Bing will power Nokia’s search services across Nokia devices and services, giving customers access to Bing’s next generation search capabilities. Microsoft adCenter will provide search advertising services on Nokia’s line of devices and services.

»  Nokia Maps will be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience.

»  Nokia’s extensive operator billing agreements will make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low.

»  Microsoft development tools will be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach.

»  Microsoft will continue to invest in the development of Windows Phone and cloud services so customers can do more with their phone, across their work and personal lives.

»  Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.

Here is the video where Stephen Elop announces Microsoft partnership. Nokia & Microsoft partnership

Elop and Ballmer didn’t give any more details of the partnership so we don’t know what’s going to happen to Microsoft’s other partnerships for devices, such as HTC, Dell, and Samsung; or what’s going to happen to Symbian and MeeGo. We don’t know the answers to our questions yet, but we know one thing for a fact. As all the eyes are on the Nokia right now, if the company doesn’t get it right, this could send the company into freefall. We believe for Nokia, this is going to be tough; so let’s await the future and see!

It was an exciting time at the 14th Global Mobile Awards where INQ, a fairly new entrant in the Mobile Device industry has triumphed over some of its much larger competitors such a  LG, Nokia, RIM.

Their first ever handset, INQ 1 has won this years award for the ‘Best Mobile Handset or Device’.  Their strategy was simple:  revolutionize the industry by putting all your web and mobile contacts in one place at a cheap price.  Ok so that is definitely an oversimplification but that is exactly what they did.

Impressive Features:

• simple user interface
• Self-explanatory icons and easy option menus
• Integration with popular Web services such as Facebook.
• Facebook intergratin allows for automatic integrattion of  contact details with phone contacts
• Friends profile pictures show up when you call or they call you (fun feature)
• Access to Windows Live messenger for IM use
• Access to Skype to make VoIP calls
• Shows who is online and then allows contact with them via the three Web-based services.
• ability to add widgets to the start page allowing for customization

The most impressive of the features is obviously the integration with social media. There is a lot to be said about this award and its winner.  It shows the direction and trend of the mobile industry and the incorporation with social mediums such as Facebook.

I can go on about move of the facinating features but you can also see a video demo of the features and functionality of the INQ 1 below.

At the 14th  Global Mobile Awards in Barcelona, ‘Best Mobile and Device’ award winner:

With all the hype and popularity around mobile (native) apps across smartphones and their respective app stores it’s important to remember that the web browser capabilities on most of these smartphones is quite robust and a lot of the mobile native apps out there can be achieved as a mobile web app as well.

For example let’s take a look at the Webkit browser which is being used on the iPhone, Android, and S60-based phones. It allows for mobile web apps to take advantage of the following capabilities:

• Advanced Javascript and AJAX
• Complex animations and graphics support (CSS3 + Canvas)
• Embed and use a local database
• Multi-touch navigation
• Linking to phone and mapping capabilities
• and more

What does this mean? With these browser capabilities the user experience seen in most native apps can be equally brought forth as a web apps – of course 3D immersive games are not included. Also, as browsers evolve and adopt other W3C standards such as the GeoLocation API, the gap becomes narrower between their native relatives. Furthermore, as smartphones get shipped with these robust mobile web browsers, the web applications can support a wide variety of devices. This is currently not the case with native applications when dealing with cross-devices

Of course, there is an obvious benefit to mobile native apps over mobile web apps – App Stores. App stores can help companies and brands easily distribute (and monetize) their application(s). Looking to how the (desktop) web exploded and is currently being monetized – I am sure similar paths will be taken.

A great example is the latest version of GMail for mobile web browsers. Google introduced a new version of GMail for mobile web browsers at the GSMA Mobile World Congress. It exposes a lot of the rich capabilities on smartphone (iPhone and Android only for now) web browsers and allows for GMail to be used offline much like a native app. Below is a demo of it (priovided by iPhone Buzz).

Is it just me, or are all new mobile phones being released these days all look + feel exactly like the Apple iPhone? By coincidence they all seem to have very similar feature-sets as well and they all claim that they have just come up with an innovative new product. Are they really to blame? Apple may have just created the perfect mobile phone. For example, take a look at the new Palm Pre and the LG Arena KM900 that are releasing soon.

As if making their phones look and feel like the iPhone wasn’t enough, they’re also knocking off Apple’s monetizing approach with their App Store. Here’s a a list of all the App Stores announced post-iPhone:

1. Google Android’s Market store
2. BlackBerry’s App Center
3. Microsoft Windows Mobile’s SkyMarket store
4. Nokia’s Ovi store
5. Palm App Catalog

Apple’s competitors really need to work at innovating and not just ripping off their product and strategy. At least if you do so, please do not pretend that you’ve come up with something revolutionary.