News

Manufacturer makes massive loss both last year and in Q4 2011 but CEO Stephen Elop insists the three month period “marked a significant step in Nokia’s transformation”
Nokia made a loss of £900 million last year, with losses totalling £799 million in the final quarter of 2011.
The loss last year followed a £1.7 billion profit in 2010. Nokia had made a profit of £742 million in the same quarter in 2010.
Sales fell from £35.6 billion in 2010 to £32.4 billion last year, and decreased 21 per cent year-on-year to just over £8.39 billion million in Q4. However this figure was up 11 per cent from the pervious quarter.
Within its devices and services division, sales fell to £20.1 billion last year from £24.4 billion the previous year. They also fell year-on-year in Q4, from £7.13 billion to £5 billion but that was an increase of 11 per cent from Q3.
Sales of smartphones also slumped last year to £9.07 billion from £12.47 billion in 2010, and fell 38 per cent year-on-year in Q4 to £2.3 billion. This was an increase of 17 per cent from the previous quarter.
Within this division, it made a profit of £741 million last year, down from the £2.9 billion profit made in 2010. Profits in this area were also down 81 per cent year-on-year to £170 million in the quarter.
Nokia shipped 77.3 million smartphones last year, down from the 103.6 million shipped in 2010. Smartphone shipments also fell 31 per cent to 19.6 million compared to the same three month period in 2010. Again, this was still a rise from the previous quarter, this time of 17 per cent.
Nokia also announced that it has sold well over smartphones globally since it first went on sale on November 16.
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (pictured) said: “The fourth quarter of 2011 marked a significant step in Nokia’s transformation. Most notably, in Q4 we introduced new mobile phones and smartphones, which resulted from the strategy shift in our Devices & Services business.
“In the war of ecosystems, clearly there are some strong contenders already on the field. And with Lumia, we have demonstrated that we belong on the field. Our specific intent has been to establish a beachhead in this war of ecosystems, and country by country that is what we are now accomplishing.
“And, while we progressed in the right direction in 2011, we still have a tremendous amount to accomplish in 2012, and thus, it is my assessment that we are in the heart of our transition.”

BlackBerry claims latest data from GfK shows is was the top selling manufacturer in the UK last year, averaging 27.7 per cent of all handset sales
BlackBerry was the top selling handset manufacturer in the UK last year according to the latest figures from data firm GfK, claiming the accolade for the second year running.
BlackBerry accounted for 26.3 per cent of sales in December 2011 and averaged 27.7 per cent through 2011.
By the end of last year, BlackBerry’s UK customer base grew to over eight-and-a-half million active subscribers. In October, BlackBerry claimed it remained the number one smartphone by choice in the UK, with over seven million subscribers, according to official figures for the previous month.
Additionally, the company’s global customer base grew 35 per cent year-on-year to 75 million subscribers in 2011.
BlackBerry 7, the manufacturer’s latest operating system, was launched in August and saw a number of new handsets go on sale running off the platform, including the Torch 9860 (pictured left), Torch 9810 (pictured centre),Bold 9900 (pictured right), Bold 9790, Curve 9380 and Curve 9360.

RIM has been sued in its home country following the series of outages that hit customers throughout much of the world.

The suit has been filed on behalf of a Canadian user of a Blackberry Curve 9300, who paid $25 a month for 1GB of access and lost service for a day and a half. The user wants to be compensated to the tune of $1.25 (plus interest) for his loss of access. The complaint seeks class action status so others are open to join the case if they live in Canada.

“[The] Petitioner is in good faith and has instituted this action for the sole goal of having his rights, as well as the rights of other class members, recognized and protected so that they may be compensated for the damages that they have suffered as a consequence of the Respondent’s conduct,” the court filing reads.

The suit claims that the $100 of applications RIM has made available to customers by way of an apology is not enough, and unsuitable for the plaintiff’s needs. It goes on to say that he deserves to be compensated for his time. The company has also offered a month’s free technical support.

The outages began on 10 October, with customers in Europe, the Middle East, India, and Africa eventually having three days without service, and US, Canadian, and Latin American handsets down for a little over a day. RIM blamed the problem on a faulty switch, and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis issued a video apology.

Developer Rockstar has officially announced work has begun on Grand Theft Auto V. A debut trailer is expected next week.

Speculation that development was already underway has been doing the rounds for a while, with Rockstar executives talking up the project a couple of years back.

Now, though, the game is official with insiders pointing towards a 2012 release.

While little other details have emerged, rumours suggest the game will be set in real-world Los Angeles. I guess we’ll find out when the trailer lands next week.

Earlier this year, the rumour mill kicked into full swing after actors posted about their GTA V involvement on CVs and Rockstar registered some dubious-looking URLs.

Apple’s iPhone OS has dropped in popularity by 8 per cent during 2011, while Google’s Android OS has doubled its market share to hit 47.1 per cent.

Data released by Kantar Worldpanel Comtech showed the Apple mobile OS achieving a 20.8 per cent market share for the 12 week period ending August 7 2011, down from 28 per cent the previous year. Meanwhile, Android has seen a surge in popularity, moving from 22.9 per cent market share in 2011 up to 47.1 per cent in 2011. Even RIM’s BlackBerry OS proved more popular than iOS in 2011, taking second place behind Android with 21.5 per cent of the market – a four per cent increase on 2010.

Microsoft’s WinPho 7 OS managed to grab 1.7 per cent of the market, while Nokia’s Symbian OS slid down to just 7.2 per cent – a decline of 19 per cent since 2010. Kantar Worldpanel Comtech’s global consumer insight director suggested that smartphone design around the world was becoming “too standardised,” and that the industry might be missing out on new areas for expansion.

“While smartphones are quickly becoming the norm there are still new sales opportunities for manufacturers that innovate in terms of design,” said Mr Sunnebo. “Smartphone design is in danger of becoming too standardised, with 90 per cent of smartphones now using a Candybar shape, compared with only 54 per cent in 2009, and 62 per cent including a touchscreen function. With a lack of design differentiation, big name brands have to work harder to convince consumers to choose their products over another’s.”

While we can’t help thinking the touchscreen/candybar design for smartphones is dominant simply because it is better than fiddly slide/flip keypads and the like, perhaps there is room for a bit more innovation out there.

Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S II smartphone is now available in a fetching white colourway, giving fans of the slimline handset another reason to choose it over Apple’s ubiquitous iPhone.

Echoing Apple’s tradition of offering iPhones in black and white, Samsung is perhaps lifting a cheeky finger to the Californians, who recently succeeded in stopping Samsung from selling its tablets due to their similarity to the iPad. The Galaxy S II looks a bit like an iPhone after all, but then a lot of flat, rectangular phones look an awful lot like other flat, rectangular phones.

“Since its launch in May the Galaxy S II has been a huge hit with Samsung consumers,” gushed Samsung’s managing director of mobile, Simon Stanford. “We always want to offer a range of products that suit different people and are delighted to now be able to give consumers the choice of the UK’s leading Android smartphone in black or white,” he added.

The white version of the Galaxy S II is currently available for £485 from online retailer Kingofgadgets.co.uk, while other retailers and networks are expecting to stock the new phone over the coming weeks.

The Galaxy S II has been unveiled in America this week, with many expecting it to be the first true competitor for the iPhone 4. The handset has proved to be Samsung’s fastest selling phone ever, with global sales of over 5 million since its launch in April/May this year.

The Galaxy S II boasts a huge 4.3 inch AMOLED screen, dual-core 1.2 GHz processor and capacity for 4G data connection, trumping the iPhone 4 on most spec levels except for screen resolution.

Aiming for 17m for the whole year on the back of ZTE Blade success.

Chinese handset maker ZTE has announced that it sold 35 million phones in the first half of 2011, with five million of them being smartphones – up 400% year-on-year.

The company’s move into smartphones is being spearheaded by the ZTE Blade, which has sold 2.5 million units so far, and is currently shifting 16,000 a day in China. ZTE says it hopes to sell five million Blades this year, and 12 million smartphones overall in the second half of 2011, making 17 million for the year.

In its latest financial results, ZTE hails its growth in the US, where its sales tripled in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, independent analysts have also been tracking the company’s growth, with IDC recently placing it fifth in the company’s chart of mobile phone vendors.

“We are pleased with the success of the Blade worldwide and of our other handsets in other major markets,” says EVP He Shiyou. “We aim to launch over 30 smart terminals during the remainder of 2011, including mid to high-end smartphones such as the ZTE Skate, a smartphone harnessing Windows Phone 7 and TD-LTE dual-module and dual-waiting models.”

comScore stats show Google’s OS continuing to expand, mainly at BlackBerry’s expense.

By the end of June 2011, Android had a 40.1% share of US smartphones in use, according to comScore’s latest mobiLens data.

That’s up from a 34.7% share in March 2011. comScore has iPhone in second place with a 26.6% market share in June, up from 25.5% in March.

It’s not so good news for BlackBerry, which fell from 27.1% to 23.4% in the same time period, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile/Phone operating systems also fell from 7.5% to 5.8% during Q2, with Symbian dipping from 2.3% to 2%.

According to comScore, 78.5 million people in the US owned smartphones during Q2, up 8% from Q1. Meanwhile, it has also published stats for overall mobile subscribers by handset maker, with Samsung top with a 25.3% share, followed by LG (21.3%), Motorola (14.5%), Apple (8.9%) and RIM (7.9%).

Apple has announced that it has had 15 billion downloads of iOS apps since launching its app store. The milestone comes just one month after it announced 14 billion downloads at its Worldwide Developers’ Conference in June.

Apple also notes in its release that there are now more than 200 million iOS users in 90 countries worldwide, if you combined users of the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch products. That works out to around 75 apps per device.

Some figures came out in May that estimated the number of apps Apple has had in the app store at half a million (taking into account all apps that have been approved, even if they are no longer live). Now we have a more concrete number from Apple itself on how many apps are available today: 425,000. Of that, an astonishing 100,000 have been either optimized or created specifically for the iPad tablet, putting it well ahead of any competition from Android-based tablet makers, RIM or indeed HP.

Today’s release did not give details on how free apps compared to paid in terms of those 15 billion downloads. Apple says it has paid developers more than $2.5 billion in commission to date. That means that apps in total have grossed more than $8.3 billion in revenues.

Research in Motion just announced that Scoreloop will become part of the Blackberry Developer Team to bring in their experience in creating social gaming networks. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by the companies. Scoreloop, which was founded in 2008, is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and also has offices in the U.S. and Asia.

Scoreloop—which currently works across multiple platforms, from BlackBerry to iOS and Android—provides an SDK for games developers to add more social elements into their content—for example, creating community interaction. It also offers them ways of incorporating in-app purchases and virtual currency, among other revenue-generating services.

But it is not entirely clear yet how extensively Scoreloop will continue to support other platforms besides those that RIM uses for its own devices: these include BlackBerry, QNX on the PlayBook and Android—in the form of Android apps that will be usable on PlayBook tablets.

“We’ll continue our cross-platform approach,” writes Marc Gumpinger, Scoreloop’s CEO, on a message on its own site. “But you’ll see that our BlackBerry solution will be unparalleled.” Fittingly, the note from Gumpinger is placed on a PlayBook screen.

Nokia has announced it will end the Ovi brand. Instead, the company will be rebranding all services under Ovi to… Nokia. Indeed, Ovi Services have become Nokia Services which sounds logic.

Nokia introduced the Ovi brand four years ago to have a second brand for its services. These days, the content services under Ovi are an important part of the Nokia ecosystem and will undergo some change as they are integrated into the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem. Within Windows Phone 7, it only makes sense to promote the brand Nokia instead of Ovi.

EA has just announced the upcoming acquisition of Firemint Pty Ltd, the developers of successful games like Flight Control and Real Racing for the iPhone and iPad.

EA will acquire Firemint for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition will be final in about four weeks from now. The acquisition follows on that of Mobile Post Production Inc., an expert in mobile porting operations. Firemint still has a deal with competitor Namco for the distribution of Flight Control on non-iOS platforms.

Gree, a leading social mobile gaming platform in Japan, has announced the acquisition of OpenFeint. Gree has over 25 million users and a market cap of $3 billion.

OpenFeint is ‘slightly’ bigger with 75 million gamers spread over Android and iOS and so, gives a major boost to Gree. Gree acquired OpenFeint for $104 million by purchasing all outstanding stock and provided the network with aditional working capital.

The two networks will not merge like what happened with ngmoco’s acquisition. The two will however exploit synergies and create tailored products for specific markets. The existing team including CEO Jason Citron will stay in place. Through the additional working capital, the OpenFeint team should even double in size before the year is over.

About the acquisition, Gree will acquire OpenFeint through a triangular merger. A new subsidiary was established in the US under Gree International for the 100% acquisition of OpenFeint. Gree contributed to Gree International funds for the acquisition and subscribed for additional shares in Gree International, and the new subsidiary merged into OpenFeint. Gree International will pay cash consideration to OpenFeint shareholders and warrant/option holders in connection with the merger. The execution of the merger agreement and completion of the merger occurred on April 21st, 2011.

British engineers are planning to put a mobile phone in space.

The team at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford want to see if the sophisticated capabilities in today’s phones will function in the most challenging environment known.

The phone will run on Google’s Android operating system but the exact model has not yet been disclosed.

It will be used to control a 30cm-long satellite and take pictures of the Earth in the mission later this year.

Although mobile phones have been flown on high altitude balloons before, this would likely be the first time such a device has gone into orbit several hundred kilometres above the planet.

“Modern smartphones are pretty amazing,” said SSTL project manager Shaun Kenyon.

“They come now with processors that can go up to 1GHz, and they have loads of flash memory. First of all, we want to see if the phone works up there, and if it does, we want to see if the phone can control a satellite.”

High Street product
The venture is part of the company’s quest to find more inexpensive, off-the-shelf electronics that can be used to lower the cost of its spacecraft designs.

The mission is known as STRaND-1 (Surrey Training Research and Nanosatellite Demonstration).

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We’re trying to use as much of the capability of the phone as possible”

Doug Liddle
Head of science, SSTL.
It involves both the company and researchers from the local university’s Surrey Space Centre (SSC).

Much of the development work has been done in team-members’ spare time.

The mobile model being used will be a standard, sub-£300 ($450), smartphone available in High Street stores.

“We’re not taking it apart; we’re not gutting it; we’re not taking out the printed circuit boards and re-soldering them into our satellite – we’re flying it as is,” Mr Kenyon explained.

“And, in fact, we’re going to have another camera on the satellite so we can take a picture of the phone because we want to operate the screen and have some good images of that as well.”

Eye on Earth
Critical to the whole endeavour is the phone’s operating system.

Android is open source software which means SSTL’s engineers can modify it to adapt the phone’s functions.

Google sent Nexus S smartphones to an altitude of 18km (60,000ft) on balloons last year
The great swings in temperature and the harsh radiation found in space require the phone be placed inside the satellite casing to give it some protection.

A hole will have to be cut in the side of the casing therefore to allow the phone’s camera lens to see out.

The phone itself will not “call home”; messages and pictures will come back via the satellite’s radio link.

For the first part of the mission, the mobile will act as the back-up to the main computer on the spacecraft.

After a period of time, however, the phone will be put in charge.

“We’re trying to use as much of the capability of the phone as possible,” said Doug Liddle, head of science at SSTL.

“Ideally, the phone can take control and do the thinking.”

Busy months
To precisely point and manoeuvre, the satellite will be incorporating advanced guidance, navigation and control systems including miniature reaction wheels, and a GPS receiver, as well as innovative pulse plasma thrusters to propel it through space.

The latest smartphones pack enormous capability into a very small space
The intention is that the phone be given the chance to oversee all these subsystems.

“The open source nature of the software is very exciting because you can see how further down the line, once we’ve got the phone working in orbit, we could get people to develop apps for it,” Mr Liddle added.

Chris Bridges from the Surrey Space Centre commented: “If a smartphone can be proved to work in space, it opens up lots of new technologies to a multitude of people and companies for space who usually can’t afford it. It’s a real game-changer for the industry.”

SSTL has earned a worldwide reputation for its small satellites. The company has managed to reduce the cost of its systems by incorporating components that were originally developed for consumer products such as laptops.

The coming months will see the company launch Earth observation spacecraft for Nigerian, Russian and Canadian customers.

It is also about to start building the spacecraft that will form the initial constellation of Galileo, Europe’s multi-billion-euro answer to America’s GPS network.

Google’s most recent numbers show Android 2.2 is dominating the Android Market. 51.8% of the Android Market users use devices with this Android version. Android 2.1 is second most popular with 35.2% of users on it.

Android 2.3 is used by 0.4% of consumers, but that number should grow fast. In total, 87.04% of Android Market users is on Android 2.X meaning developers have to worry less about older versions when only distributing over Android Market.

Another comScore release, another set of statistics suggesting Android is making serious ground in the US.

Following on from last month’s report, which claimed Android had doubled its US share throughout the course of 2010, the latest numbers suggest the pace of its gains shows no sign of stalling.

Indeed, though Android remains in third place according to comScore’s numbers for August, at the current rate, it will be challenging iPhone for second spot as soon as November.

RIM, predictably, remains the main player with 37.6 percent of the smartphone market – although its share continues to fall, down more than 4 points from May.

In contrast, iPhone is managing to hold its share, its August figure of 24.2 percent down slightly from May’s 24.4 percent share, but up from July’s total of 23.8 percent.

Nevertheless, by seemingly failing to capitalise on BlackBerry’s shrinking share, iPhone is a party to a tightening of the market at the top, with Android moving in on both platforms on 19.6 percent in August – up 6.6 percent from May and 12.5 percent since January.

“55.7 million people in the US owned smartphones during the three months ending in August, up 14 percent from the May period,” added comScore.

“Despite losing share to Google Android, most smartphone platforms continue to gain subscribers as the smartphone market overall continues to grow.”

When it comes to OEMs, Samsung is strengthening its position at the top, its share up 1.2 percent since May to 23.6 percent in August.

Motorola, which lead the US market thanks to its Android assault until April, continues to fall away, comScore pegging its August share at 18.8 percent – down 2.4 points in three months.

LG sandwiches the two, seemingly managing to hold off Samsung’s surge with its share of 21.2 percent identical to July’s figure and just 0.3 percent down on May’s share.

Disney has just bought its second gaming studio in just under a month. This time, the entertainment company snaps up Playdom, a studio specialized in social and mobile gaming for a massive $763.2 million.

Of that $763.2 million, $200 million is based on performance of the studio that created games for Facebook, MySpace and iOS. Facebook remains their main market with about 42 million players a month. With that amount of players, Playdom is the third biggest social gaming company. EA bought the second biggest 8 months ago for ‘only’ $300 million.

Back in 2004, EA had bought 20% of Ubisoft as shareholder John de Mol needed to raise capital to start a new TV channel in Holland. Now, six years later, EA has decided to sell them on.

Back in 2004, EA was interested in acquiring Ubisoft. Most of Ubisoft’s shareholders remained loyal to the company and decided not to sell their shares to EA. John de Mol was the big exception as he needed the money.

As EA didn’t manage to acquire more of Ubisoft, the company has decided to sell their ownership in Ubisoft to free up capital. EA expects to raise €91 million with the transaction. It is expected that EA bought the shares for about the same amount of money.

For the first time, the sales of Android powered devices overtook the iPhone sales in North America during the first quarter of 2010. Apple sunk only to the third position on the sales charts.

The most popular smartphone in the US remains the BlackBerry which took 36% market share. 28% went to Android and Apple took 21%. Android and BlackBerry where mainly pushed due to the sales of the BlackBerry Curve and Motorola Droid/Droid Eris.

Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has said that the massive success of Apple’s iPad has no significant impact on Nintendo’s DS sales in North America.

“We have not seen any impact on our DS business. In the first three months (2010) we’ve set two new sales records for the Nintendo DS,” he told CNBC.

“We think that through April that we’ll have the best four month time period to kick off a new calendar year that we’ve ever had with the device. So certainly we’re seeing momentum, they’re seeing momentum. I think two products can succeed at the same time.”

Nintendo will be showing off the new 3DS at the E3 next month.

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