3GSM blog

Nokia N86

(Credit: Bonnie Cha/CNET Networks)

On Monday, CNET UK heard rumblings about a Nokia N86 8-megapixel camera phone but we found it odd that we hadn't seen it at Mobile World Congress. After all, we had attended Nokia's press conference, gone to a one-on-one meeting, and no one ever said a word about the N86.

Well, it seems the Nokia N86 was so special that it deserved a separate announcement aside from the Nokia E55 and Nokia E75 and was officially unveiled on the second day of GSMA 2009. The highlight feature of the N86 is its 8-megapixel camera. Nokia N series models, including the Nokia N95 and the Nokia N85, have been equipped with 5-megapixel cameras for a long while now, and with competitors (e.g., Samsung Memoir) coming out with 8-megapixel camera phones, it's nice to see an upgrade.

The N86 8MP features a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens for panoramic pictures and variable aperture to help you get better pictures in super-bright or low-light environments. There is also a dual-LED flash and the camera phone claims to have a fast mechanical shutter that should reduce motion blur.

Photos can be geotagged, thanks to the integrated GPS, and of course, you can upload them to Nokia's Ovi service or Flickr. The N86 also has video-out capabilities, so you can show off your pictures on a larger TV or computer screen. There's 8GB of onboard memory for storing photos and other media files, which can be expanded through the microSD slot (accepts up to 16GB cards).

Other highlights of the Symbian S60 phone include a 2.6-inch, scratch-resistant OLED display, stereo Bluetooth support, Wi-Fi, e-mail support, an FM transmitter, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Full specs are here. The Nokia N86 8MP is expected to ship in Q2 for around 375 Euros (around $472 U.S.).

Photos: Nokia N86 8MP at GSMA 2009

Qualcomm

(Credit: Qualcomm)

BARCELONA--It looks like mobile chipmaker Qualcomm and handset maker Nokia have finally buried the hatchet.

On Tuesday, the companies, which were once entangled in a bitter legal battle, announced at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 here that they would collaborate on developing technologies for 3G smartphones sold for the North American market.

The new devices will use Nokia's S60 software, which uses the Symbian OS, and advanced chipsets from Qualcomm that use its Mobile Station Modem technology. The first mobile devices to come out of this collaboration are expected in mid 2010, the companies said. And they will be compatible with technology being developed by the new Symbian Foundation.

Nokia's CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, touted the partnership during a keynote speech at GSMA MWC on Tuesday morning in which he talked about the need for more collaboration.

"We need to be open to change," he said. "We have to work with competitors and our partners in different ways than we have done in the past."

Indeed, the pairing is somewhat surprising considering the two companies' litigious past. For three years, the companies were in a battle over patent licenses and royalty rights. The companies ended up suing each other and finally settled their legal differences in July 2008. As part of the agreement, Nokia agreed to pay Qualcomm back-royalties, plus royalties going forward. Financial terms of the deal were never released publicly.

Nokia N86

(Credit: Bonnie Cha/CBS Interactive)

The Nokia N86 8MP made its official debut on the second day of GSMA 2009. Take a look at our hands-on photo gallery.

Photos: Nokia N86 8MP at GSMA 2009

Participants on a panel Tuesday at GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, included, from left to right: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvu, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega, Wall Street Journal columnist Walt Mossberg.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon, CNET Networks)

BARCELONA, Spain--iPhone maker Apple isn't at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 along with the rest of the mobile phone industry, but the company's growing success is definitely top of mind for key executives in the mobile market.

The iPhone and Apple's successful App Store got more than a passing mention on Tuesday during a panel moderated by The Wall Street Journal technology columnist Walt Mossberg.

The panel which included three of the most powerful CEOs in the mobile industry--Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T Mobility, the second largest mobile operator in the U.S.; Olli-Pekka Kallasvu, CEO of Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, and Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, the worldwide software leader--centered on the need for more openness to spur successful innovation in the mobile market.

But the discussion quickly devolved into the need for openness, despite the growing success of Apple, considered the most closed player in the industry.

Each executive had his own idea of what openness means and how if Apple adopted its own vision of openness it could be more successful. De la Vega and Kallasvu said fewer operating systems are needed so that developers can create applications that run on more devices.

"Customers want us to simplify," de la Vega said. "Our corporate customers, especially, want a smaller set of operating systems to manage."

De la Vega, whose company is the exclusive operator offering the iPhone in the U.S., even said that more openness could benefit Apple.

"The iPhone is a great success, but it would be even better if the applications were interoperable," he said.

Kallasvu agreed. And he used Apple and its "closed" ecosystem as an example of what could limit innovation in the mobile market in the future. He said Apple's vertically integrated model, where its hardware and software are tightly controlled by the company, further fragmented the market. And he added that what is truly needed is more openness in developing applications.

Ballmer argued that device openness was important to give customers more choices. And he pointed to the number of choices that Windows Mobile customers have when choosing a device.

"I agree that no single company can create all the hardware and software," he said. "Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice."

Even though each of these executives argued for openness and took jabs at Apple for its lack of openness, Mossberg pointed to the company's growing success in the market. The iPhone, which was launched a year and a half ago, has seen tremendous growth in terms of shipments. And so has its newly launched application store. Apple said last month that there are a total of 15,000 applications available through the App Store. And the number of downloads has hit more than 500 million in just over six months.

All the talk of Apple and its success annoyed at least one European audience member who asked Mossberg and the other panelists why they were so worried about what Apple was doing when Apple's total worldwide market share is still miniscule.

De la Vega answered with a response that seems to sum up how the industry views Apple: "Because the other 99.5 percent of the industry is trying to copy the iPhone."

Indeed, they are. Even two of the companies on the panel have copied aspects of Apple's playbook. Nokia recently introduced its first touchscreen phone to rival the iPhone, the N97, in December. And Microsoft's new Windows Mobile 6.5 allows touchscreen navigation that looks eerily similar to the iPhone's software. What's more, Microsoft and Nokia clearly think that Apple is on to something with its App Store, since each company announced its own version of an application marketplace here this week.

(Credit: Skype)

BARCELONA--Skype is racking up deals with mobile handset makers here at GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009.

On Tuesday, the company, which is owned by eBay, announced a partnership with Nokia, the largest cell phone maker in the world, to put the Skype Internet calling software onto its phones. Nokia will initially offer Skype on its high-end smartphones, the N-series. The N97, Nokia's flagship device that goes on sale in June, will be the first to have Skype embedded. The Skype feature will start shipping on the device in the third quarter of 2009.

Skype will be integrated into the N97 address book, enabling users to see when Skype contacts are online. It will also let people use Skype's instant-messaging client. Most importantly, N97 users will be able to make free and low-cost phone calls over the Internet whether they are on a 3G cellular network or a Wi-Fi network. The Skype-to-Skype voice calls are free. And the SkypeOut service, which allows calls from Skype to landlines and mobile devices, offers low rates.

Nokia's not the only handset maker to announce a deal with Skype at Mobile World Congress. On Monday, Sony Ericsson announced it would be offering a Skype "panel" on the Windows Mobile Xperia1 device.

Adding Skype to smartphones is a great benefit for consumers, especially people who travel internationally or have friends and family overseas. While pricing on domestic voice services has been dropping like a brick from a third-story window, international rates have remained high.

As a consumer who likes to travel and who happens to be traveling internationally right now for this trade show, I am annoyed and almost angered at the outrageous prices mobile operators charge when customers roam in other countries or make international calls from the U.S. They all try to sell "international" plans to help defray the cost, but the plans themselves cost consumers an extra fee every month regardless of whether they're traveling that month or not.

Skype and other VoIP services offer users a more cost-effective alternative. And Skype on a mobile phone, when accessed on a low-cost data network, could help people who travel frequently or make lots of international calls save tons of money.

Of course, the two smartphone makers Skype has announced as partners here are manufacturers that are already struggling to get their high-end devices on American mobile networks. And my guess is that adding Skype won't do much to convince these operators to offer these phones and subsidize them so that American consumers will buy them.

The reason is pretty simple. AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile USA know that a wide-scale deployment of Skype on their phones could cannibalize their international voice services and potentially hurt their domestic voice service.

So if by chance, Nokia or Sony Ericsson manages to win approval from a U.S. operator to get these phones on their networks, I wouldn't be surprised if the Skype feature is stripped from the device in the U.S. version.

That said, AT&T is allowing some voice over IP applications to appear on Apple's iPhone App Store. And Skype users are able to make free and low-cost calls through applications, such as Truphone. But for now, AT&T and Apple seem hesitant to allow Skype's powerful brand, which has more than 400 million registered users, to make it onto the iPhone.

(Credit: Crave UK)

All mobile phone-loving eyes may be on Barcelona, where Mobile World Congress is currently taking place, but we've just spotted some breaking news from Singapore. Nokia's Far East showcase is showing off none other than an 8-megapixel camera phone: the Nokia N86.

Nate Lanxon and Andrew Lim, our men on the show floor in Spain, will be seeking out a hands-on opportunity with the N86 quicker than you can say "Sony Ericsson Idou." In the meantime, we'll share some leaked specs with you. It's a slider phone with a 2.6-inch OLED screen, 8GB of onboard memory, micro-USB and microSD, and integration with Nokia's new Ovi app store.

It includes a 3.5mm headphone jack--hurray!--but the camera is the feature we're most interested in. A Carl Zeiss lens with autofocus and shutter capable of snapping at 1/1,000 sec is supported in low light by a dual-LED flash. Crave isn't sold on the idea of pictures captured on an image sensor the size of a backstage buffet during New York fashion week, but what do we know--the kids are bound to love it.

(Via Crave UK)

Updated at 6:09 a.m. (PST) with more details and photos.

Nokia rolled out two new E-series phones at its press conference on the first day of the GSMA World Congress here in Barcelona. Both offer full messaging and smartphone features, but they take a different approach to design. Full specs are below, but be sure to check out our Nokia GSMA photo gallery as well.

The Nokia E55 has a candy-bar design and comes in white or black. Nokia says it will be the world's thinnest smartphone, but we know the E55 has lots of competition in that race. In any case, Nokia kept the size down by skipping a full QWERTY keyboard in favor of what it calls a "hybrid keyboard." Basically, that's a just like a SureType keybaord on a BlackBerry device, where two letters share the same button. The 2.4-inch display supports 16 million colors and it works in both landscape and portrait modes. And thanks to a massive battery, Nokia promises that the E55 will deliver a month of standby battery life.

The E75 has a full keybaord.

(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)

Features include Bluetooth, voice commands, text and multimedia messaging, assisted-GPS, instant messaging, organizer features, IMAP4 and POP3 e-mail, USB support, 100MB of internal memory, a 3.5mm headset jack, PC syncing, instant messaging, a 3.2-megapixel camera with video recording, a voice recorder, a text-to-speech message reader, and a music player. The quad-band GSM world phone will come in two versions for 3G (HSDPA) support, one of which is compatible with North American networks. It will be available this summer for $339 (265 euros).

The E75 has a horizontal slider design that hides a full QWERTY keyboard. It also has a standard numeric keypad, but it still manages to be relatively compact for a smartphone; it measures 4.4 inches by 1.9 inches by 0.56 inches when closed and weighs 4.9 ounces. Other exterior features include a 2.4-inch, 16 million-color display, a memory card slot, and a 3.5mm headset jack. The E75 comes in three colors: silver black, copper yellow, and red.

The E55 has a hybrid keyboard.

(Credit: Kent German/CNET Networks)

Inside you'll find a stereo Bluetooth, 50MB of shared memory, USB mass storage, full e-mail and messaging, a 3.2-megapixel camera, assisted-GPS with Nokia Maps, a digital-music player, organizer applications, a text-to-speech message reader, a voice recorder, speaker-independent voice dialing, a Symbian Series 60 (third edition) OS, and a speakerphone. And like the E55, the E75 is a quad-band GSM world phone with one version that supports North American 3G (HSDPA) networks. Nokia is accepting orders starting Monday on its Web site. The price is $352 (275 euros).

Photos: Nokia E55 and E75

Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services and software for Nokia, talks about the new Ovi application store at a press conference in Barcelona.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon CNET News/CBS Interactive)

BARCELONA--Nokia is taking on smartphone rival Apple with its own version of an application store.

On Monday, the world's largest cell phone maker, which has been losing market share at the high end to devices like Apple's iPhone, announced here at the GSMA Mobile World Congress 2009 that it will follow Apple and a few other handset makers in launching a virtual storefront where developers can upload applications and consumers can easily download them.

The news of Nokia's Ovi Store is hardly a shock. Several news agencies had reported that the company was expected to announce the store here at MWC.

Nokia said at the press conference that the store will be open for business starting in May. Nokia's flagship smartphone, the N97, will be the first Nokia device to have the application store software pre-integrated. The N97, which was announced in December, goes on sale in June.

The company added that other Nokia phone users, including those using S40 and S60 phones, will be able to download the application storefront starting in May.

Developers, who will get a 70 percent cut of revenue from the store, will be able to start loading applications to the Ovi.com Web site starting in March. Several content owners have already started working on applications for the store, including AccuWeather, Facebook, Rough Guides, Lonely Planet, Electronic Arts, Fox Mobile, and MySpace.

Nokia says it will eventually make the application store available to all of its Nokia phones, and it will begin rolling it out globally in the fall.

Nokia's announcement follows the big success of Apple's App Store, which provides applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Other smartphone makers have also jumped on the bandwagon with their own application stores. Google launched one for its Android phones and Research In Motion plans to have one up and running for its BlackBerry devices. Microsoft, maker of the Windows Mobile operating system, is also expected to announce its application "bazaar" at Mobile World Congress this week, too.

But Niklas Savander, executive vice president of services and software for Nokia, said at a press conference here Monday that the Ovi application store is different from the others.

"This is not just a place to find applications," he said. "It's a smart store. That is not just for smartphones. It actually suggests things you might like and adds social location dynamics to show you relevant applications. And it shows you what your friends have bought. And it changes the inventory based on where you are."

For one, the store is not limited to providing applications for smartphones. Eventually, all Nokia devices will be able to access some applications from the store.

"It's not only about smartphones anymore," he said. "We must address the range of devices we have in the market from the high end to the low end. This is not necessarily about getting the 2 percent of mobile users who are already using applications to switch. But it's about addressing the 98 percent that will soon start using applications."

More importantly, Savander said Nokia plans to provide a more relevant and contextualized experience through its store than its competitors have done. For example, Nokia will use GPS technology built into phones to provide location relevant content.

The store will also track applications that users are downloading and it will be intelligent enough to suggest other applications that might be of interest. And finally, it will also provide relevant applications based on what friends have downloaded.

BARCELONA--If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Apple's biggest competitors are laying on the love a little thick.

It seems like handset makers aren't just trying to match Apple in terms of developing cool new touch screen devices, but now they're all clamoring to develop their own version of an application storefront, where users can easily discover and download applications for their smartphones and developers can easily create and monetize those apps.

Rumors have been flying around that Nokia, the largest handset maker in the world, will unveil its plans for its own application store at its press conference here at the GSMA Mobile World Congress on Monday morning.

But Nokia isn't the only company getting into the app store game. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Microsoft is also readying its own application "bazaar," which some people expect will be announced here this week. U.S. software firm Amdocs, which provides software and services for wireless operators, is also planning to announce a "white label" application store at MWC that will allow carriers to offer an application store with their own brand.

The application marketplace frenzy follows the big success of Apple's App Store, which provides applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The storefront, which works in conjunction with Apple's iTunes music and multimedia online store, launched last summer.

The mobile marketplace has been wildly successful with thousands of developers creating new applications and adding them to the site everyday. Apple said last month that there are a total of 15,000 applications available through the App Store. And downloads from users has hit more than 500 million in just more than six months.

Soon after Apple announced the App Store, other smartphone companies started jumping on the bandwagon. In October, when T-Mobile introduced the G1, Google announced that it was also creating an online application store for all its Android phones. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, followed suit with its own application store announcement.

The worldwide recession has hurt the sale of new cell phones. In fact, IDC recently reported that that for the fourth quarter of 2008 sales were down some 12.6 percent. But smartphone sales were up about 22.5 percent in the fourth quarter. What makes these phones appealing are all the cool applications that can run on them. And as smartphones grow more popular, experts believe that applications that run on those phones will also be in high demand.

So it makes sense that companies looking to sell these sophisticated devices would want to give their customers cool applications to use on them. But replicating Apple's success will be tough.

Apple already had a very successful distribution mechanism through the iTunes music store when it first launched the App Store. But in addition to its distribution, Apple seems to have gotten right two other key pieces of the puzzle. First, the company has nailed the hardware design of the device. And consumers love it. Second, the iPhone's software, which is by no means perfect, works pretty well and provides a lot of advanced functionality. And because it's based on Apple's computer operating system software, it's also somewhat familiar to developers, which makes creating iPhone applications a little easier, as well.

So far, none of Apple's competitors can match the company in all three areas. For example, Nokia has developed solid hardware. There's no question the company can build a phone. But building a phone with slick software that can do a whole bunch of other things other than make phone calls has been trickier for the company. What's more, the company lacks a strong distribution channel for its applications and services. For over a year, it's been building the Ovi platform. And it's launched its music store. But the company still lags far behind Apple in either of those areas.

Microsoft has the software expertise and knows how to distribute it. The company has been successful distributing games and other content through its with Xbox Live service. But Microsoft lacks its own built and designed handset. Instead, it has licensed its software to several other hardware makers, none of which has come up with a truly compelling device to take on the iPhone.

There is no question that the battle for the smartphone market is far from over. In fact, it's only just the beginning. But my prediction is that it will take more than copy-cat application stores to match the excitement of the iPhone.