Nokia's push email services barred in India

Cellcos must block new pushmail offering until security requirements are satisfied.

 RIM's clashes with Indian authorities over email services that they cannot monitor have hit the headlines, but the BlackBerry maker is not the only firm in the spotlight. Microsoft, Skype and Google have their own ongoing negotiations about how far the government should be able to monitor and intercept mobile email and messaging. Now Nokia's new push email services have been barred until they can satisfy the requirements of the security agencies.

According to the Economic Times, the Ministry of Home Affairs has ordered mobile operators to bar Nokia's new offerings for now, and "not to launch Nokia's proposed pushmail/powermail service without putting in place monitoring facilities". This directive comes despite a compromise, reached in December, under which Nokia set up a server in India to help authorities monitor email and provide real time interception.

The issue is hugely serious for Nokia. While RIM is mainly risking the loss of future business, as 3G starts to take off in India, Nokia already makes substantial business from corporate and consumer email services, and has specifically created an offering for those without PCs, as part of its LifeTools family of apps for emerging markets. At the high end, Its E Series devices are the most used business phones in India and almost half of them are activated for push email, the service now under threat. This allows users to manage multiple email accounts via clients such as Yahoo, Gmail or Sify.

Meanwhile, the March 31 deadline for RIM to present a solution for BlackBerry Enterprise Services, which would satisfy the authorities, has passed with no apparent resolution. The arguments are taking place against a change in the law, which is broadening the legal meaning of telecoms and IT services. This will make it compulsory for operators to have systems in place to support authorized intercepts - based on telephone numbers, device identity, email IDs, IP addresses or keywords - by national security agencies on a real time basis.source

Cameraphone sales to touch 1bn in 2011

Sales of cameraphones will grow to more than 1 billion handsets this year, helped by fast growth at the high end of the market, research firm Strategy Analytics said.

"The growing quality of high-tier cameraphones is making them an increasing threat to the lower end of the point-and-shoot digital camera market," said analyst Neil Mawston.

Sales of cameraphones will grow 21 percent from last year to 1.1 billion handsets, topping the 1 billion mark for the first time ever, Strategy Analytics said.

The research firm forecast for sales of cellphones with 5-megapixel or higher resolution cameras to more than double this year to 361 million phones. At the same time it sees the digital still camera market at 130 million units.

"Smartphone vendors, such as Nokia and HTC, are increasingly loading their flagship models with more megapixels to deliver improved imaging quality for premium operator services like augmented reality," Mawston said. source

Smartphone demand surging, Nokia to tumble

Growing demand for phones running on Google's Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies like HTC and Samsung Electronics who are betting on the platform. 

Android's popularity has helped the Asian manufacturers to rise fast in smartphone rankings, and HTC overtook Nokia in market capitalisation for the first time on Thursday. 

Shares in HTC were worth $33.4 billion at their Thursday close, with Nokia stock worth $33 billion. 

Nokia still has higher volumes, selling 19 phones for each HTC phone sold last year. But its average sale price was just $85 compared with HTC's $360, according to Strategy Analytics. 

Surging growth in the high end of the market, helped in part by new models of HTC, will lift global sales of cameraphones 21 percent in 2011 to 1.1 billion handsets, topping the 1 billion mark for the first time, Strategy Analytics said. 

The smartphone market will grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, research firm Gartner said on Thursday. 

Android, a distant No. 2 to Nokia's Symbian just last year, will increase its market share to 39 percent in 2011, while Symbian's share will roughly halve to 19 percent following Nokia's decision to dump the platform. 

Apple's iPhone platform will be slightly bigger than Symbian this year, while Blackberry-maker Research In Motion will control 13 percent of the market and Microsoft Windows Phone 6 percent. 

Nokia decided in February to start using Microsoft as its main smartphone platform, a move Gartner expected would boost Windows Phone market share to 11 percent next year and to 20 percent in 2015. 

"This is not about giving Nokia too much credit, this is about saying that Nokia will do everything they can to stay in this business. Anything less than this would mean the end of Nokia," analyst Carolina Milanesi said. 

NOKIA RATING CUT 

On Thursday, Moody's cut its credit rating on Nokia, citing the Finnish company's weakening market position and uncertainty over its transition to Microsoft's Windows Phone software. 

Moody's cut its rating on Nokia's senior debt to A3 from a previous A2. The agency also cut the company's short-term debt ratings to Prime-2 from Prime-1, and said the outlook on the ratings was negative. 

"The rating downgrade primarily reflects Nokia's weakened market position in its core business, mobile devices, which has reduced the company's margins and funds from operations," said Wolfgang Draak, Moody's senior vice president and lead analyst for Nokia. 

Standard & Poor's also cut its rating on Nokia late last month. 

"The growing quality of high-tier cameraphones is making them an increasing threat to the lower end of the point-and-shoot digital camera market," said Neil Mawston, analyst at Strategy Analytics. 

The research firm forecast that sales of cellphones with 5-megapixel or higher resolution cameras would more than double this year to 361 million phones. At the same time it sees the digital still camera market growing a mere 1 percent to 130 million units.source

Nokia to introduce mobile cash transfer service

Union of Bank of India and Nokia is all set to join into a collaboration to introduce mobile money transfer. They have initiated a mobile-to-mobile cash transfer service called Union Bank Money.

This process will allow any mobile users on any network to shop, pay utility bills, top-up prepaid cards using only a mobile phone. Union Bank of India and Nokia are hopeful that this process will be helpful to government in their obligation towards financial inclusion in rural areas.
Having targeted the financial inclusion, more than 2lakh Nokia retail outlets would become business correspondents. This will provide the facility to open no-frill accounts, deposit and withdraw cash up to 50,000 and conduct transactions of the same value every day. Apart from this, Union bank plans to add disbursement of micro-loans, ticketing facilities and other government services in the near future.

Nokia will be imparting a six ? week training to each business correspondent at Nokia's retail outlets in order to handle the process swiftly.

Nokia is all set to install the application on all its mobile phones. Existing mobile phone users have to register for the service at a Nokia retail outlet. Though the timeline and charges are yet to be decided registration is free for first six months. Customers in Noida, Faridabad and Delhi can start using its service. And by the end of this year this service will reach to rest of India. source

Nokia join hands with Reliance to provide Ovi Store content

Mobile handset manufacturer Nokia today entered into a partnership with telecom service providerReliance Communications to provide the exclusive excess to Nokia's Ovi Store. 

Reliance Communications consumers can now exclusively access the plethora of 'paid-for' content available on the Ovi Store, through integrated operator billing, for a three month period, the company said in a statement. 

The amount will be either included in their monthly mobile phone bills or deducted from the pre-paid balance, as per their data plans. 

The Ovi Store supports the widest range of content and file types including applications, games, videos, podcasts, productivity tools, web and location-based services and much more.source

How Nokia and Microsoft will take up Innovative Mobile Services

Nokia smartphones will be running Windows Phone, but the company is hoping to hang on to some of its service-provider identity even as Microsoft grabs the choicest morsels.

Nokia tried hard to redefine itself as a provider of services, which is what everyone wants to be these days - hardware margins are tight and most software platforms are being given away for free. Over the years, Nokia has launched a plethora of services, including PIM synchronisation, cloud storage, and its very own instant messaging service – all of which eventually got lumped together under the Ovi brand but never really gelled as a coherent offering.

Recently, the Finns started killing off some of the more esoteric offerings, such as the cloud storage service, and they farmed others out to better-equipped companies, which included dumping Ovi e-mail and messaging with Yahoo. Ovi will no-doubt continue to provide services for non-smart phones, and the 150 million Symbian handsets Nokia expects to ship during the transition, but much of the service offering will now be handed over to Redmond.

Nokia gets to keep mobile mapping, while Microsoft gets handset advertising, an area in which Nokia has never showed much interest. Nokia also gets free rein to take Google and Apple to the cleaners over mobile patents, while Microsoft gets to poke Intel in the eye one last time.

These days, it's almost possible to feel sorry for Intel, which must really hate the mobile industry. First, the company pissed money into WiMAX, which got killed off by the network operators in collusion with Qualcomm. Then Microsoft announces that desktop Windows will be ported to the ARM architecture used by every other chip manufacturer, and now, Intel's attempt to undermine Microsoft with its own mobile platform is in tatters with MeeGo redefined as a "project" by Nokia and kicked into the "longer term".

Not that Nokia has much to celebrate, with Microsoft taking some of the best services for itself as well as collecting OS royalties. Contact and calender synchronisation will inevitably end up with Redmond, on smartphones at least, as will e-mail. The Ovi store gets integrated into the Windows Marketplace. We're not sure that that means. Perhaps developers will be able to submit applications to either company, but more likely, Microsoft's store will take advantage of the operator billing that Nokia has been able to put into place.

Ovi Music could survive. Microsoft has no problem with alternative content providers as long as they integrate with the appropriate Windows Phone 7 hubs, but we've yet to hear any details on that.

Ovi Maps will be the location technology of choice, on Nokia's handsets at least. It's not clear what happens to other Windows Phone 7 manufacturers which is where things get interesting. Bing Maps is currently well integrated into the Windows Phone 7 experience, automatically linking to contact addresses and calender appointments. Bing Maps can also be utilised by third-party developers through a Silverlight control, and we have to assume the same functionality will be available on Nokia handsets using Ovi Maps instead. With a consistent interface, and Microsoft getting the advertising revenue, one has to wonder why Nokia would be so keen on providing maps anyway, other than to justify the $8bn or so the Finns spent on Navteq in 2007.

Nokia has never shown much interest in mobile advertising, which is surprising when Google spent $750 on AdMob, and Apple shelled out $275 on Quattro for its iAd platform. Even Opera managed to find $8m to buy up Ad Marvel. Nokia owns Novarra, which already optimises – and inserts advertising into – mobile browsing sessions for Vodafone UK and Yahoo, but Nokia seems happy to hand over the whole smartphone advertising business to Microsoft's adCenter.

In return Nokia gets "significant" and "substantial" amounts of marketing dollars, and a doorway into America. Like all European stars Nokia has always been desperate to make it big in America, sometimes embarrassingly so, and this deal will likely put it there, but America changes people, and the Nokia that succeeds there will not be the Nokia we remember. source