Not long after Nokia announced Q2 2004 earnings, BusinessWeek reported on Interbrand’s annual ranking of the “100 Top Global Brands”.
Both are worth reading. Remember as you read the latter, however, that brands often vary significantly in their following from one region to another, and regional trends in brand value are probably more useful predictions of future success than one averaged out number in isolation might be.
Case in point: Nokia’s brand value in Asia is #2 right behind Sony. Everyone agrees that China’s and the rest of Asia’s accelerating markets are the place to watch for sales, and brands are of central importance in driving these sales. If you had a choice to be the #8 brand worldwide but #2 in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines, or vice versa, what would you pick?
Want another indicator of this trend? Look at the top two handsets in CNETAsia’s Singapore based “Top 10 phones of July”. Yep, Nokia 6230 and Nokia 7610, with the 7200 and N-Gage QD also in the Top 10.
I guess #8 worldwide isn’t too bad, anyway: It leaves seven steps up available for improvement, right? And if the trends in Asia continue, Nokia’s got a pretty good chance of taking some of those steps.
As Yahoo/Reuters reported last month, AT&T Wireless began selling UMTS 3G/broadband wireless coverage in four US markets on July 20th.
Interested in learning more about AT&T’s plans for UMTS? Be sure to attend their free Wireless Mobility at Broadband Speed webcast on August 10th. The agenda promises to provide the latest information on their UMTS service:
- Broadband average data speeds of 220-320 Kbps with bursts up to 384 Kbps
- Wide area wireless coverage in the greater metro areas of Seattle, Detroit, Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area
- Support for bandwidth-intensive applications, including email with large attachments, Web-based and “chatty” client/server applications, corporate networks/Intranets and the Internet
- Sophisticated security features to help protect your data systems and files
- Comparison to GPRS, EDGE and Wi-Fi wireless data networks
- Latest UMTS devices and capabilities
Nokia reported its Q2 2004 earnings and financials last month. Highlights included:
- Operating profit of 907 million euros
- The global mobile device market continued to grow during Q2 2004 reaching 148 million units (preliminary Nokia estimates)
- Nokia mobile device sales of 45.4 million units during Q2 2004
- Nokia estimated its market share for Q2 2004 at 31%
You can read the rest of the details yourself by clicking here.
File this under the “well, duh!” category too, but megapixel cellcams are increasingly encroaching on digital camera turf.
I and many others have been saying this was going to happen for a long time now. This trend is just too obvious to be missed, right? I mean I always have my 7610 with me, and many, if not most, of the digipics I take are “photos of opportunity” for which a dedicated camera not with me is worthless. With the rapid advances in cellcam tech and new announcements on a daily basis (example: Samsung’s new Korean handset which supports 3MPix with an optical zoom), no one could possibly miss the glow in the dark, bigger than life writing on the wall that dedicated digicams will be increasingly driven upstream by cellcams, could they?
Well, apparently some people still aren’t getting it:
“We don’t believe there is a direct impact on our digital camera business from the sale of a mobile phones with high resolution cameras,” said Ken Sugiyama, operations manager at Fuji Photo Film’s public relations division.
Fuji, please talk to Sony.
A “duh!” article? Maybe, but there are some interesting stats buried in “Gadget-hungry Asia to lead demand for smartphones” including:
According to Strategy Analytics, Asia Pacific will buy a third of all smartphones in 2004, outstripping North America’s 27 percent share of sales and Western Europe’s 28 percent. By 2008, Asia’s share of smartphone sales is expected to rise to 36 percent, far exceeding the 23 percent expected for North America and 24 percent in Western Europe.
and
So far, smartphones have been a niche market. A total of 11.2 million phones shipped worldwide in 2003, just 2.1 percent of total handphone sales. But the figure is seen growing to 109.9 million units by 2008, about 14 percent of the total, data from Strategy showed.
Repeat after me: PDAs are dead, long live the smartphone!
The number of Series 60 based mobiles continues to increase as last month the Sendo X smartphone began shipping in Europe.
For a snapshot of other Series 60 based devices, click here.
Nokia and STMicroelectronics introduced a new camera module standard for mobile devices earlier this month. Access the specs and other details from the Standard Mobile Imaging Architecture site.
Why does this matter? Think even cheaper, higher quality cellcams and you’ll be on the right track.
Sun released the J2ME Wireless Toolkit (WTK) 2.2 Beta last month. The WTK 2.2 Beta supports developing J2ME apps targeted at:
- CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0
- JTWI 1.0
- WMA 2.0 and MMA 1.1
- Mobile 3D Graphics API
- FileConnection and PIM APIs (aka the PDA Optional Packages)
- Java APIs for Bluetooth (simulated BT environment)
- J2ME Web Services
Jonathan Knudsen wrote a nice overview of the new WTK features. Click here to access it.
Note: If you’d like to use a development tool supporting a “live” Bluetooth radio environment, check out Nokia’s Series 60 MIDP SDK 2.1 Beta for Symbian OS as mentioned in my JavaOne 2004 Bluetooth BOF report.
Catching up on URLs I’ve filed for “review when I get the chance” tonight. If you’re a working wireless developer, this one is worth the price of admission alone: Russ and company provide URLs for UAProfs for a variety of makes and models.
If you read my “Everything about my Nokia 7610” blog post with interest, you might also want to check out MobileBurn’s detailed seven page 7610 review and accompanying images starting on page eight.
Ediitor Michael Oryl writes:
The 7610 is my new favorite phone. If you were to ask me, if I could be using any phone on the market right now, cost not being an issue, what would it be: it would be the 7610.
Right on, Michael, me too! (Bias well noted.)
BillDay.com 