by Paul Joseph
February 10, 2011
Featured
Indians have adopted some typical habits and they all relate to smartphones. Cornell University’s Professor Trevor Pinch and Nokia conducted a study, in which 5022 smartphone users were surveyed. These users are from 10 different countries across Asia, Europe, UK and USA. The motive of the study was to learn the smartphone behaviour of the typical consumers of these countries. Mobile apps have become a way of life. All major mobile operating systems have their very own app stores. Android has over 200,000 apps in the Android Market, iOS has over 300,000 apps in the App Store. Nokia’s app directory, OVI Store is growing everyday. We have also heard that Accenture and BSNL will be launching their very own mobile app stores. There are thousands of developers working at this. The reason being, we the consumer want better apps everyday to make our life a bit easier. ( Image Credit ) The study revealed that 58% Indian smartphone users think mobile application programs are for benefiting them. While at home consumers use 31% apps and at the time of travelling and at work they use 24% and 10% apps respectively. The research also shows that consumers are up to quality, not quantity. The number of mobile apps available isn’t the most important thing for them, which the quality and user-friendliness are. Amongst the surveyed users, 70% said they have around 30 apps in their smartphones, most of which are redundant. They said they are looking for a better app to show up, then they will hastily delete the extra ones. Karl Marx once said that man will one day bend down on his knees before his creation. Professor Trevor Pinch echoed this by saying; “Our relationship with them has turned from occasional use into a real dependency. It is because of this that our personal apps ‘collections’ represent our unique needs, personality and interests. We can learn much about a person’s behaviour via a mix of their choice of apps, personality variables, use variables and competence variables.” The study revealed few other details about consumers and they are quite interesting. Entertainment and social networking prevail over business as the percentages of music and social networking apps downloaded are higher than the percentage of business apps downloaded. Utilities are as important as games since both share the same percentage (21%) of downloads. Indian girls had reputation of being overly chatty, they proved it right as the percentage of women who are up for social networking (43%) is higher than that of men (38%). Not to mention that the teenagers download social networking apps most, because they have huge lists of friends, unlike adults. Country wise, the behaviors pertaining to using apps differ. For example, Indians want to get their grips on cutting edge technologies and prefer business-focused apps like email and expense managers, while 17% of them prefer downloading free apps. Brazilian users like downloading music apps while Germans prefer workable applications like flashlights, alarm clocks etc. Consumers from Singapore like playing online games and download gaming apps most and a large number of Italians rely find their mobile apps substitutes for travel guides. Apps have become so dominant in our lives that we decide whether a phone or OS is good, not by its specifications but by the inventory of apps it provides. This is the reason behind Symbian, BlackBerry and WP7 losing out to the likes of Android and iOS. The galore of apps the two have provided has changed the future of mobile communication. Based on the findings of the study, George Linardos, VP of media at Nokia said, “Apps are the way in which we bring our devices to life and empower them to be like our own personal magic wands.” And he was right in saying this. We don’t notice it, but apps shape us. REGISTER FOR WATSUMMIT – INDIA’S FLAGSHIP SUMMIT ON DIGITAL MEDIA REGISTER NOW! Related Posts Android To Become Asia’s Most Popular Mobile OS? Nokia Announcing New Partnership And Headquarters On Friday? Android, iOS Race Heats Up: Nielsen More Than 300,000 Android Phones Activated Daily, Reports Google Yahoo Axes About 600 Jobs! Nokia To Follow Suit?
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by Paul Joseph
February 8, 2011
Featured
Eldar Murtazin, a reputed tech blogger from Russia informed that Nokia and Microsoft will probably go for an alliance. According to Murtazin, Nokia and Microsoft executives secretly met and discussed the merits of the possible alliance. The expanded cooperation won’t be a better platform for the products of either of these companies. Rather all smartphones tagged with the brand name Nokia will run on Windows Phone 7 MOS. Nokia is also expected to unveil a shift in its long term strategy at the company’s annual Capital Markets Day this Friday. Murtazin carries a reputation of leaking information about smartphones which eventually prove to be more than just a rumour. This somehow increases the authenticity of his announcement. But even then, it’s too much and is being considered nothing more than a rumour till now. Murtazin wrote in a blogpost (translated with Google Translate): In the last month behind closed doors is a discussion of expanded cooperation Nokia and Microsoft (two-way discussion, initiated by the new leadership of Nokia). Not simply the exchange of technology, but creating an entire line of Windows Phone devices that may go under the name Nokia, through the sales channels for the company, and will also have the characteristic features of its products. This is a desperate measure of the two companies. ( Image Credit ) This rumour gained traction after Adnaan Ahmad, an analyst in Berenberg Bank came up with his own opinion that Nokia should unite with Microsoft’s mobile platform. He published an open letter in the Financial Times addressing Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft and Stephen Elop, the CEO of Nokia and a former executive from Redmond. Adnaan advised Elop to dispose off the high-end solution MEEGO and to focus on “high-end portfolio around WP7”. Adnaan suggested to Elop: Announce an EXCLUSIVE deal with your ex-colleague, Steve: you get access to their WP7
intellectual property (IPR) scot-free and access to the US market where your share has dived to the
low single-digit level, and in so doing cut your bloated handset business R&D budget by at least €1bn ($1.4 billion), or 30%, which should add 300 bps to your operating margin. Get rid of your own proprietary high-end solution (MEEGO) — it’s the biggest joke in the tech industry right now and will put you even further behind Apple and Google. Focus your high-end portfolio around WP7, and over time you can take the cost down (that’s Steve’s job and cost base) to get this into the mid-range market. Push your Symbian solutions into the low-to-mid-range smartphone market as quickly as possible to defend market share versus Android’s upcoming lowered cost ecosystem. To Ballmer he said: two million units shipped in the last quarter is not really much to write home about, given $500m in marketing programmes (ouch), but with Nokia on-side, you get access to a potential 20-25 percent global share over time–and exclusivity. You need to tie yourself to a high-volume player to be relevant. Adnaan is opinionated and Murtazin is informative, but together they make this partnership seem inevitable. We have a habit of considering anything hard-to-believe as rumour. Once we get out of it, along with considering the realities of Nokia smartphone, especially its Symbian OS, we see the feasible probabilities that the two companies might be in talking terms regarding this issue. Canalys a research and analytics firm indicated that in the last quarter of 2010, the sale of Android smart phones reached 32.9 million surpassing that of Symbian, which sold 31 million smartphones globally during that time. Android with its wide range of devices and galore of apps has been threatening Symbian for some time now. Android is updating its OS at much faster rate than any of its competitors. The final release was in December 2010, that of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, but we are also hearing that Android 2.4 might come as soon as April 2011 and would support the Dual Core apps which run on Android 3.0 Honeycomb, which is meant for tablets. Symbian cannot compete with Android nor with the iOS. Neither is the OS user-friendly, nor does it give users an extensive array of apps to make the experience better. Nokia needs a different operating system if it wants to turn its fate around. Nokia is building its new age OS, MeeGo, but Adnaan calls it the “biggest joke in the tech industry”. I can’t disagree with this. Be it MeeGo or WP7, Nokia needs more than just an OS to take on the Android force. Nokia has incredibly strong brand recognition around the world for its low-priced handsets are a formidable force in many developing economies where Android or iOS is yet to make their mark. But, same is not the case for the US market which is the biggest consumer of smartphones. Partnering with Microsoft might help Nokia find some foothold in the American soil. But, the only way Nokia can turn its fate is by partnering with Android to build its high-end and mid-range smartphones while keeping Symbian to be used for building the low-end phones. But, that is far from happening. What might still happen is, Nokia and Microsoft partnering to build smartphones running on WP7, which will surely be breaking news once officially announced, but not necessarily good for the two involved. Also, there are many ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ which need to be resolved first. We shouldn’t be forgetting that the entire thing is still a speculation. Another news has hit this morning which confirms the news further. The Register is reporting that Nokia might shift its base to the Silicon Valley to create virtual headquarters in the US. There is also news of an internal memo titled “Standing on a burning platform” penned by the new CEO himself. The memo describes the present situation of Nokia which is being battered at all ends. iOS is a strong seller in the high-end market. Android is ruling the mid-range market while the Chinese competitors keep the low-end moving. Nokia’s strategy now is to “build, catalyse or join” — build Symbian and MeeGo, catalyse WP7 and join Android. Amongst the three only the second seem feasible as the memo states that neither Symbian nor MeeGo are competitive enough for the present market, and Nokia had previously also stated that they do not want to go with Android. Friday will see a lot of change, something which will surely rewrite the future of the smartphone market. Do you think Nokia and Microsoft will announce a partnership? Let us know! REGISTER FOR WATSUMMIT – INDIA’S FLAGSHIP SUMMIT ON DIGITAL MEDIA REGISTER NOW! Related Posts Android To Become Asia’s Most Popular Mobile OS? Yahoo Axes About 600 Jobs! Nokia To Follow Suit? Nokia Looking For A ‘Smart’ Revival Product Review: Trill – Free Twitter Client For Nokia Is Open Source Now Getting More Unopen?
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