Nokia Partners With Microsoft, Embraces Windows Phone 7

by Stan Schroeder

A couple of days ago, an unusually honest internal memo from Nokia CEO Stephen Elop revealed that the company is at a crossroads, and that a new smartphone strategy is necessary.
Today, Nokia and Microsoft have officially entered a strategic alliance that makes Windows Phone 7 Nokia’s primary smartphone platform, but also extends into many other Microsoft services such as Bing, Xbox Live and Office.
Furthermore, the two companies will combine many complementary services; for example, Nokia’s application and content store will be integrated into Microsoft Marketplace, while Nokia Maps will be – as Nokia’s press release puts it – at the heart of Bing and AdCenter.
Nokia will also undergo significant changes in operational structure and leadership. As of April 1, Nokia will have two main business units: Smart Devices, led by Jo Harlow, and Mobile Phones, led by Mary McDowell.
Of course, with such significant changes in Nokia’s strategy, one has to wonder what will happen to its other smartphone platforms. Symbian, says Nokia, will become a “franchise platform, leveraging previous investments to harvest additional value,” and MeeGo will be an “open-source, mobile operating system project.”
While Nokia claims it expects to sell approximately 150 million more Symbian devices in the future, it’s obvious that from now on few people will buy Symbian devices because they run Symbian software. It will more likely power Nokia’s mid-range smartphones and feature phones with Nokia’s flagship phones running Windows Phone 7.
Microsoft and Nokia’s leaders are, of course, enthusiastic about the partnership. “We will create opportunities beyond anything that currently exists,” said Nokia CEO Stephen Elop.
What do you think? Was the partnership with Microsoft the right move for Nokia, and vice versa? Please, give us your opinions in the comments.

Video will dominate mobile data traffic by 2015, forecast says

By Amy Gahran, CNN

(CNN) -- According to a new Cisco forecast, in just four years two-thirds of the world's mobile data traffic will be video.


How will wireless carriers keep up with this demand? The major providers are pinning their hopes on 4G wireless networks, which they say will be able to handle greater data loads.Will consumers end up paying much more for mobile video? Probably.


Smartphones, laptops, and tablets are expected to drive nearly 90% of mobile traffic by 2015. In particular, "mobile-connected tablets will generate more traffic in 2015 than the entire global mobile network in 2010."


Another factor that will contribute to this growth, which Cisco overlooked: More and more feature phones (non-smartphones) will be operating on faster wireless networks. The new LTE network from MetroPCS is already handling traffic from some feature phones, such as the Samsung Craft.

As I wrote earlier, feature phones are getting more sophisticated -- streaming video will be available on many models before long. This is important since feature phones are generally far more affordable (up front and in monthly bills) than smartphones or tablets.


What's driving this growth? Faster mobile access. According to Cisco, the average mobile network connection speed doubled from 2009 to 2010 -- and a tenfold increase is expected by 2015.


Cisco also predicts that within four years there will be a mobile device connected to a wireless network -- not counting Wi-Fi connections -- for nearly every person on the planet."Today, the average mobile connection generates 65 megabytes of traffic per month -- which is equivalent to about 15 MP3 music files," the forecast says. "By 2015, the average mobile connection is anticipated to generate more than 17 times that amount, to a total 1,118 megabytes of traffic per month -- equal to about 260 MP3 music files."


Doug Webster, Cisco's senior director of worldwide service-provider marketing, told Fierce Wireless, "The lines between fixed and mobile will converge, and the trends we're seeing on the fixed will be seen on mobile."


In the U.S., however, there will probably be one key difference between fixed and mobile internet access: consumer protections and costs.The FCC's new "net neutrality" rules, passed in December, exempt wireless carriers from most requirements. This leaves the door open for U.S. wireless carriers to charge customers extra for access to certain kinds of content and services, such as YouTube, which are available for free over fixed connections.


Furthermore, as VentureBeat explains, the new rules mean that "wireless companies are free to stop some smartphone users from taking advantage of their data plans by throttling download and upload speeds."This could be a key concern for consumers as wireless network congestion mounts in the coming years.


Already, two U.S. carriers (Metro PCS and Verizon) are suing the FCC over the requirements the new rules impose on them. This week, the FCC filed motions to dismiss these lawsuits.

Digital Trends observes, "Humorously, it was Verizon and Google's net neutrality proposal that appears to have formed the basis for the recently passed FCC regulation."According to Cisco, in 2010, total mobile data traffic, including video, grew by 159% -- more than three times faster than internet traffic traveling over wired ("fixed") communications. Earlier, Cisco predicted that growth would be 149%, so this trend is moving faster than expected.

Face Off: Verizon and AT&T spar on iPhone

By Jason D. O'Grady

Competition is a beautiful thing and something Apple customers aren’t used to — especially if you own an iPhone. But that all changed today when Verizon began selling a CDMA iPhone. Unfortunately, pre-orders started at 3am for existing customers only, everyone will have to wait until February 10.
The early reviews are already in from wags that got access to the Verizon iPhone 4 about a week ago, including WSJ’s Walt Mossberg, Engadget’s Josh Topolsky and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber (what, no Andy Ihnatko?)
The reviews are pretty unanimous: it’s the same iPhone 4 but with CDMA, better reception and a neato personal hotspot feature. The downside is the the viPhone has slower data and you can’t use the Internet (on 3G) while on a phone call.
I can’t comment on the Verizon iPhone personally yet because I haven’t used one. Since I’m not a current Verizon Wireless customer I had to harrass a family member (with a VZW account) into pre-ordering a viPhone for me. Although some customers are already receiving shipping notifications, mine’s not shipping until February 9.
However, I have used a metric butt load of other Verizon smartphones (including every manner of Droid) and Big Red simply gets better reception than the Death Star where I spend most of my time (southern New Jersey and Philadelphia). Obviously, YMMV.
I can’t wait to get mine and will report back when I do.
(… just what are we calling it anyway? viPhone? VeriPhone?)
Will VZW customers adopt the Holy Phone én masse?
Art: OSM
Update: BGR reports that VZW will begin to throttle data-throughput and compress videos and pictures to customers that consume an “extraordinary amount of data.” Quick, somebody Photoshop the VZW logo onto the Death Star!

Verizon to add a few items to iPhone: Rhapsody, Navigator

By Larry Dignan

The reviews over call quality and data speeds are in for Verizon’s iPhone and generally they are good. Calls work. Data speeds are slower than AT&T.
That’s the upshot of a bevy of reviews about the Verizon iPhone. Frankly it’s amazing to me how many words were squeezed out of the Verizon iPhone review—it’s the same iPhone 4 reviewed a year ago. Talk about stretching the word counts. But I digress.
A few reviews noted that the Verizon iPhone isn’t loaded with the carrier’s services. That’s true—at least for today. Next week you’re getting Verizon Navigator and Verizon Rhapsody. Can the Bing icon be that far behind? I started the order process (didn’t follow through), but here’s what I found.

Your new smartphone is already a dinosaur

By David Goldman,

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- If you bought a smartphone within the past year, you might already have noticed that your once-cool superdevice is feeling outdated.

There's a reason for that: "Android's law."

Smartphones are continually outdueling one another in terms of performance, and they're coming to market at a breakneck speed.

For instance, if you picked up the Motorola (MMI) Droid when it went on sale in November 2009, you had the best Android device on the market. But then the twice-as-fast Nexus One went on sale in January 2010. Then the HTC Droid Incredible hit the market in April. Then in June, the Evo 4G put the Droid Incredible to shame. The Samsung Galaxy S came out later that month. Then the Nexus S ... You get the point.

The average time smartphones spend on the market is now just six to nine months, according to HTC. But it wasn't always this way: Average shelf time was about three years prior to 2007, HTC estimates.

"Now consumers want more power and faster phones," said Keith Novak, spokesman for HTC. "With increased competition, there's a more pressing reason for shorter lifecycles."

Before Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) debuted the iPhone, the hottest selling handset on the market was the Motorola RAZR, which held that position for five years. Five years! Could you imagine anyone buying an original iPhone today -- a phone that debuted less than four years ago? That hunk of junk didn't even have 3G. Or apps.

The pace of smartphone innovation has ramped up to ludicrous speed and mobile competition has gone cutthroat thanks to two key factors: The rise of Google's Android operating system and the predominance of Qualcomm processors.

The way it was: Just a few years ago, mobile phone makers had to design their devices through and through: The hardware, operating system, chipset and design were all made by LG, HTC, Samsung, Motorola, and their rivals.

All that time and effort meant phones took a long time to get to market, and they needed to stay there for years to make back all the investment that went into designing the device.

The way it is now: But then along came Android, an open source, free-to-license OS. The availability of Android means device manufacturers can just load the ready-made software onto their phones instead of paying a team of engineers to develop a proprietary OS. And they can customize it as much as they like.

"The beauty of Android is that it's completely open," said Marcelo Claure, founder and CEO of Brightstar Corp, a global service provider in the wireless industry. "All the equipment manufacturer has to do is slap a skin on top of it and market the phone."

It's not just the software that's prepackaged: Smartphone chipsets are coming ready-made as well.

Seeing the opportunity created by Android, Qualcomm (QCOM, Fortune 500) quickly jumped on board and began to make smartphone chips that are specifically optimized for Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) OS and apps. Instead of designing their own chips, manufacturers like LG, Motorola and HTC now simply use Qualcomm's.

"What we deliver to the manufacturer allows them to spend their resources in a different way, instead of reinventing the plumbing of each phone," said Jason Bremner, product manager of Qualcomm's CDMA Technologies.

The Qualcomm/Android ("Quadroid") standard that has developed over the past couple of years has freed up smartphone manufacturers to focus most of their attention on marketing and making their devices thinner, sleeker and higher-functioning than competitors'.

As a result, smartphone manufacturing cycles have doubled in speed in the past two years to just over four months, according to industry consultancy PRTM.

That means device makers can churn out smartphones at an incredibly rapid pace, taking the handsets from concept to store shelves in a relative blink of an eye.

Android's law: We're calling this new trend "Android's law." It's similar to Moore's law, the 1965 paper by Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) co-founder Gordon Moore, which observed a trend that has held true for more than five decades: Microchip manufacturers can double the number of components on a piece of silicon every two years.

Though we're not making any technical predictions, the introduction of the Quadroid standard has turned the wireless market on its head -- and this new trend is likely to continue for years to come.

Android's law has allowed new, previously unknown competitors like ZTE to double its market share and become the fourth-largest mobile phone vendor in the world. It has led to the quadrupling of phone processor speeds over the past year. And it's helped Google's mobile operating system go from zero to 300,000 activations a day on more than 100 phones in just 26 months.

"We're seeing hundreds of new models -- it's crazy," said Will Stofega, analyst at IDC. "Since Android is free, these manufacturers are willing to take some chances. The need to come up with something that's going to stick and be a major player is intense."

Analysts agree that the market cycle at some point will stop shortening because customers can't absorb new products so fast.

But one lasting change is clear: It's not going back to the way it was.

"This will keep going until phones become just thin slabs with a touch screen," said Soumen Ganguly, principal at Altman Vilandrie. "It will be just like the development of the PC industry -- everyone will keep trying to outdo one another to stay alive."

Top 25 Android apps: The best of the best

By Jason Hiner

The Android Market may not have as many apps as the iPhone App Store yet, but there are still enough to be overwhelmed, and it’s growing at a breakneck pace. To help you sort through them all, here’s my list of the best apps I’ve found on Android. Again, remember that this is a snapshot in time. The Android platform is developing so quickly right now that I guarantee my home screen look different a month from now.
The best way to view my list of the top Android apps is in the screenshot gallery. However, you can also view my top 25 in the list below.

The screenshots

The list

1. Google Voice
Google Voice is a service that is so useful I consider it one of the top benefits of Android itself, especially since Apple rejected the Google Voice app for the iPhone. It gives you a phone number that can ring to multiple places or devices and it allows you to access all of your voicemail and text messages over the Web. The Android app integrates even deeper. It can make outgoing calls look like they’re coming from your Google Voice number so that you can keep your real mobile number private.
2. Advanced Task Killer
One of the realities of having a multitasking mobile OS in Android is that you have to manage your apps so that they don’t hurt performance or battery life. Advanced Task Killer (or ATK) is my favorite. It even comes with a widget that you can tap once to kill all open apps.
3. Dropbox
Dropbox is a great cloud service that automatically syncs a folder of files between multiple computers (Windows, Mac, or Linux). This app extends Dropbox to Android and interacts with other apps (such as Documents To Go) to open the files.
4. Evernote
Once you get used to typing on a virtual keyboard (and it honestly took me over a year to do it), then these devices are great for note-taking, and Evernote is a great note-taking app. It is similar to Dropbox in that it saves data locally but syncs it across all your machines and devices.
5. DroidAnalytics
For some reason Google doesn’t have an official app (for either Android or iPhone) for Google Analytics. The best one I’ve found on Android is DroidAnalytics. Another good one is mAnalytics.
6. Documents To Go
The free version of Documents To Go offers a great little reader for Word and Excel files. You can upgrade to the full version (for $15) if you want to edit files and add PowerPoint files to the mix. If you do want editing capability, I’d also recommend taking a look at QuickOffice.
7. Amazon Kindle
I never warmed up to the Amazon Kindle e-reader, but I’m a big fan of the Kindle mobile app. Since it was released I’ve read a lot more books simply because my smartphone is always with me and I can pull it and read a few pages anytime I’ve got a couple minutes free.
8. Places Directory
This is an awesome app for finding shops and services near your current location. From restaurants to movie theaters to medical facilities to taxis, this app is very accurate and takes advantage of the business information from Google Local. This app is better than the info you get from a GPS unit (or app) and better than any of the similar apps available on the iPhone.
9. Tripit
I dig Tripit. It is by far the best app I’ve found for keeping track of all my travel itineraries. It runs on some great backend systems. You simply forward your confirmation emails for your flights, hotels, rental cars, and more to Tripit and it automatically organizes them into trips with all your details and confirmation numbers.
10. Seesmic
Twitter is an amazing instant-intelligence engine and it was made for mobile browsing. Although there’s an official Twitter app for Android now, Seesmic is still the best Android Twitter client.
11. FCC Speedtest
I’m obsessed with running speed tests to check my bandwidth in various places, both to see 3G fluctuations and to check the quality of Wi-Fi. There are a number of really good speedtest apps, but my new favorite is the FCC Test app.
12. Astro File Manager
Another one of the great things about Android (if you’re a geek or a tinkerer) is that you have lower-level access to the system itself. Astro is an app that lets you navigate the Android file system.
13. Got To Do
There are plenty of to-do apps to choose from on Android but I prefer Got To Do because of the solid interface and the fact that it can sync with the online service Toodledo.
14. Gist
Many of us have contact lists scattered across various computers, devices, and online services. Gist is a Web service that can bring them together and even pull in stuff from the Web to help you stay up to date with your most important contacts. There’s an Android app as well as an iPhone app.
15. TED Mobile
TED is a fascinating event that features a meeting of the minds of some of society’s most influential thinkers. You’ll definitely disagree with some of them, because there’s a large diversity of opinions, but many talks are worth listening to. What I love is that they’ve taken the videos from their conference and made them freely available on the Web. This app provides a great way to access the videos. I hope more conferences follow TED’s lead on this.
16. Pandora
Pandora is a streaming “radio station” for the Internet age. You simply search by an artist or song and it will create a running playlist based on that one piece of information. It intersperses an occasional ad between songs but the ads tend to be fairly localized and occasionally even useful.
17. Shazam
If you want to impress your friends with a mobile app, show them Shazam. Ever hear a song being played at a store or on the radio and ask yourself, “Oh, what song is that?” That’s where Shazam comes in. Just hit the button and let it listen for 15 seconds, query its database, and then return the name of artist and the song. It has about an 80% success rate.
18. Dial Zero
Are you one of those people who dials a customer service line and just keeps pressing zero until you get to talk to a real person? Then Dial Zero is your new friend. This app provides a directory of a ton of U.S. businesses and gives you numbers to help you get closer to a real person and instructions for which prompts to hit to speak to a human being as quickly as possible.
19. Google Goggles
This is a fun app that is a little but ahead of its time. It does visual searches. You can take pictures of things and then the app tries to tell you what they are. It’s limited in its scope but it is pretty cool, and it’s definitely a peek into the future. One of the coolest features is the ability to take pictures of text in a foreign language and let that app translate for you. In a foreign country, this can help you read street signs and avoid going into the wrong bathroom. :-)
20. Google Sky Map
Ever look up at the night sky and try to tell your kids the name of that constellation you’re pointing at, or try to remember which planet that is in the southern sky? Google SkyMap lets you point your smartphone at it and get the information. This is part of a new breed of apps called “Augmented Reality” apps that layer digital information on top of real world experiences.
21. Tricorder
A lot of geeks I know like to say that our smartphones are becoming more and more like the Tricorders on Star Trek. Well, here’s a fun app that turns your Android device into a virtual Tricorder. It even offers some useful environmental information, including GPS data, wireless data, and ambient sound measurements.
22. FxCamera
Honestly, the camera software on Android is an area where major improvements are needed, but this app is a great example of what’s possible. It has solid camera controls, full customization options, and offers some great effects for photos.
23. Photoshop Mobile
Photoshop is, of course, the best known photo editor in the world and its mobile app doesn’t do anything to hurt that reputation. But while the desktop version is know for having a zillion features, the mobile app is distinguished by its simplicity. It’s the best Android (and iPhone) photo editing app for simple crops, brightness adjustments, and sharpens, for example.
24. Bump
Bump is a fun (and useful) idea for sharing info between two phones using the accelerometer, and it works across Android and iPhone. You can use it to share contact info (yours and others), photos, and apps. You both simply open the Bump app, choose what you to share, and then hold the phones in your hands and bump your hands together.
25. Barcode Scanner
This app turns the Android camera into a barcode scanner. You simply scan a product’s UPC code and let the app go to work to find it in Google Product Search or a search on the open Web. You’ll be amazed at how fast it works. This is great for when you’re shopping retail and you want to check the price of a product online before buying to make sure you’re paying a fair price.