Ricky just pinged me to let me know that N-Gage 2.0 is out, if you have a Nokia N95, N95 8GB, N82 or N81 then start your browsers and download. ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:N-Gage Game ShopThere has been a lot of talk about N-Gage recentlyTell Nokia what you have to say about the N-GageNokia promotes end [...]

IntoMobile Earlier this year we learned that Warner decided to revoke their collection from Nokia’s Music Store due to the fact that users of MOSH, Nokia’s weird attempt at centralized mobile P2P, were exchanging copywritten [sic] content. Now Amazon publishes a press release today ( Gizmodo ) that states Warner is going to be selling their music without DRM to Amazon customers. Am I the only one watching this from my little piracy heaven known as Northern Europe and laughing myself asleep after one too many glasses of Glögi? ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Nokia's MOSH scares Warner Music, refuses to cooperate with the Nokia Music StoreNokia works with Microsoft to increase usage of wireless media - licenses PlayReady DRMVideo: Nokia Music Store Demo (Verdict: iTunes what?)Alltel launches Jump MusicAudio Interview: Nokia’s David Williams Unveils Key Components Of Music Services In The Pipeline

N-Gage, Nokia’s software platform for delivering video games to Nseries users, is poised to launch next week , but only for owners of the N81. Ricky Cadden shot me a very angry instant message with the news. This is quite devastating and a marketing stunt that most certainly pisses more people off than makes happy. Personally I’m not too trigger happy about the platform, a delay doesn’t affect me, but I know a lot of you N95, N82 and N95 8GB users must be foaming from the mouth. ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Tell Nokia what you have to say about the N-GageThere has been a lot of talk about N-Gage recentlyAll N-Gage games now EUR 9.99N-Gage Game ShopThe Ring Nokia One Week Experiment

Nokia made waves with their recent announcement that they wanted to acquire navigational-map maker Navteq for the right-old sum of $8.1 billion . Of course, the deal was subject to shareholder approval, and it looks like Navteq investors have just greenlighted the deal. With federal regulators already on-board with the buy-out deal, the shareholders’ thumbs-up was the last obstacle to Nokia’s acquisition of Navteq. An “overwhelming majority” approved the deal today at a special shareholder meeting. This acquisition is a large part of Nokia’s new push to offer services for the mobile market, and could anchor Nokia’s effort to demand revenue kickbacks for services from wireless carriers - much like Apple already demands for iPhone-related revenue. Navteq and Nokia together - they’ll likely define the future of positional mapping services for the mobile market for the next few years. And, with services like “ Comes with Music ” and Ovi already offered out-of-the-box, Nokia’s stance as a service-provider will probably the business model that major manufacturers will be looking to mimic. That is, as long as these services gain enough momentum to become a true competitor to incumbents like Google and iTunes. [Via: Yahoo ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Finland's Nokia will buy US-based Navteq for $8.1 billionBrief: Garmin decides not to buy Tele Atlas, renews contract with NokiaNokia inks video content deal with CNN, SonyPrivate Investment Firms Buy-Out Alltel for $27.5 BillionAlltel gets FCC approval for private acquisition deal worth $24.7 Billion

Apple sparked something of an industry-upheaval with their iPhone business model. Never before had a manufacturer demanded revenue kickbacks from carriers in exchange for handset exclusivity. And, with every single iPhone carrier doling out the big bucks back to Cupertino based on all iPhone revenue, the planet’s largest mobile phone manufacturer wants to follow suit.  “Interviewed by the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung , chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo confirmed the company had an eye on network operators’ charges for new data-based services,” according to Monsters and Critics. But, Nokia isn’t looking for kickbacks based on handsets - they’ll be seeking revenue kickbacks for “new services.” Services like the new “ Comes with Music ” and “ Ovi ” music services are just the kind of money-makers that Nokia wants to use on a revenue-sharing model. Of course, that’s assuming that the services are popular enough to convince wireless operators that revenue sharing is in their best interest - maybe services like those based on Nokia’s recent acquisition of Navteq can be used to leverage revenue kickbacks. [Via: MocoNews ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:AT&T probably kicking Apple back some serious change as part of iPhone revenue sharing dealUnlocked iPhones under fire in Singapore - Apple threatens legal action against unlocked iPhone retailersEuropean carriers commit to revenue sharing plan for Apple iPhone - T-Mobile, Orange, O2China Mobile negotiating with Apple to carry iPhoneApple iPhone Rebate / [...]

Nokia has scored another partner to support its OVI offering - Telecom Italia. Under the agreement, Nokia will customize its handsets — most notably Nokia N81, N95 8GB and we guess N82 in the near future — to provide easy access to TIM services. In addition, the Finish giant also said that the collaboration will include areas such as “technology and billing co-operation.” Somehow, we see the latter being used for seamless music buying process for the TIM subscribers… Full release follows after the jump. PRESS RELEASE - Nokia today announced a collaboration with Telecom Italia to accelerate the adoption of new Internet services on mobile. Ovi, the gateway to Nokia’s Internet services, will be enabled on Nokia handsets offered by TIM. The agreement will make it easy for people to find and enjoy best-in-class Internet services, from TIM, Nokia or from other Internet service providers. As part of the collaboration, Nokia will customize the new Nokia handsets to provide easy access to TIM services. Similarly, TIM customers can access all Nokia services through the customized Multimedia Menu embedded into their Nokia device. The collaboration also includes areas such as technology and billing co-operation. The Nokia N95 8GB and the Nokia N81 will be the first devices offered that will have customized menus to provide easy access to both services. Nokia and TIM have also agreed on a sustainable business model for both parties in a mutually beneficial approach. “We want to provide TIM mobile customers with the best mobile experience and by working with Nokia, we ensure that our customers have access to the best in internet services. Nokia and other Internet services will be able to take advantage of TIM’s high quality mobile broadband network,” said Riccardo Jelmini, Telecom Italia Executive Vice President VAS - Domestic Mobile Services. “We’re extremely excited about this collaboration as I believe it can pave the way for a new way of working throughout our industry,” said Jyrki Salminen, Senior Vice President, Nokia Multimedia. “Ease of use has always been at heart of Nokia devices and this collaboration is an important step in creating the same for Internet services. Nokia devices and services are based on open standards making it easy for us to work with forward thinking operators such as TIM to provide consumers with a choice about which internet services they want to access from their mobile device.” ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Telecom Italia to drive advanced mobile market growth with S60Nokia launches Ovi brand, consolidates all Nokia services - watch out iTunesOvi: Making devices that let you create content is not enoughWhy Ovi will not be dead by Christmas3 Italia launches LG U960 DVB-H/HSDPA X-Series phone

M as I like the Multimedia group inside Nokia, are the coolest bunch of cats inside the entire company. They really get the internet and it shows in how they market their Nseries products versus other groups such as MP (Mobile Phones) and ES (Enterprise Solutions). This interview is a few days old, and I debated posting it, but then it dawned on me that just because a lot of the information in here is common knowledge to people in my click, it might be completely new to you. Eldar from Mobile Review sits down with Mads Winblad , we don’t know his title, and asks him to talk about competitors such as Google and Apple, what is the point of all these recent acquisitions and if the strategy to offer services directly to consumers yet share money with operators is a wise one. Interesting read, it sums up Nokia’s strategy for 2008 and beyond quite nicely. ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Gizmodo interviews Bill Plummer, Nokia North America VP of Sales and Channel Management for MultimediaSymbian Freak is going to interview Kazuto Aoki from Nokia, wants to know what questions he should askPhone or a Multimedia ComputerNokia: The new game planNokia's Pekka Pohjakallio speaks about the iPhone, N series and WiFi

IntoMobile When CEO Olli Pekka Kallasvuo decided to call Nokia an internet company people around the world thought he was stark mad. With 1 in 3 mobile phones consistently being purchased quarter after quarter by consumers around the world, healthy margins even on low end devices and over 4 billion Euros in the bank, why would a company on top of its game decide to do a back flip? The press release detailing the companies reorganization plans in 2008 published in June and then the Ovi launch in August made things clear as crystal, services.The title of internet company didn’t settle with me the first time I heard it and it has yet to even click today; the appropriate designation of what Nokia would like to be in the future is a hardware+services company. Currently, as a hardware company, Nokia can sell you a device and they make money off that purchase only once. This is working very well, but the goal of every corporation is to maximize profits and this is where services come into play. If Nokia created a service that can make 1 euro a month off only 1 percent of the users to purchase their devices than that would equal a little under 42 million Euros a year according to 2006 sales reports (PDF link). Pennies for a multibillion dollar corporation, but that is where the business model of services comes in to play. That 500 Euro device in your pocket keeps on making Nokia money, even after they sold it to you. In the mobile telecommunications space hardware designers break out a bottle of champagne if they can shave a few cents off the bill of materials for that single purchase you as a consumer make once every 2 years. What happens when a company removes itself from that close minded way of creating revenue and essentially turns that little thing in your pocket into a continues profit creator? That is what Google is doing with Android, but more on that later. We are just at the early stages of Ovi and it is already going through a rough patch. N-Gage was delayed by a month due to extended testing and Warner Music Group decided to remove their catalog from the Nokia Music Store due to the fact that MOSH users, a Nokia operated service, pirate music. Change takes time and the most important change no one is talking about is the transformation Nokia employees have to make within the company. One such employee, Stephen Johnston, recently documented in a blog post how that metamorphosis is happening from within corporate walls. He solidifies the fact that Nokia is not trying to dominate your mobile internet experiance, but instead be the creator of the best mobile internet experiance available. The Valley, and anyone following the “Web 2.0″ space in general, cringes when they hear a Nokia employee on stage proclaiming that the Finnish company will be bringing the Web 2.0 experiance to mobile, but how are those people so quick to judge when they don’t even know what that means? It took a while for me to understand, but the release of an application made me to get it. Share Online 3.0 is currently in Beta, it is essentially Flickr in your pocket with tight integration to your device thanks to the open API’s; it gives you a better experiance than even the mobile Flickr website. In the future when that application is shipping on every single Nokia equipped with a camera how powerful will that business relationship with Yahoo be? If a user has never even heard of Flickr or Zoomr or whatever, what happens when an option in that application is “Create a Nokia Photos Account?” Achieving this balance of bringing the services a user is already using, but at the same time giving them an option to sign up to a new Nokia developed service will be the challenge for Ovi. Americans sit in an ivory tower as the country with the highest PC penetration, but for a lot of people experiencing the internet for the first time will happen via a mobile phone and many people today enjoy a majority of their digital lifestyle on their mobile. They’re going to want to sign up for the services that give them the best mobile experiance. Ovi will hopefully be that. I choose to highlight Stephen’s post because he is one of the people at Nokia I know that get it. The virality of his words will undoubtedly be spread due to his popular internal blog, but it is important to highlight that before Nokia can become the leading mobile services company in the world, first their employees need to understand why mobile services are important. Google gets search and they get services, tomorrows release of Android should give us a hint as to how well they get the operating system side of things. They decided to skip hardware all together and are hoping enough people build devices with their OS and their applications that just happen to tie into their online services. Let Motorola fight Samsung in devices, Google still gets paid. It is a risky move, but if successful could be one of the most brilliant business decisions of this very early mobile Web 2.0 era. Apple gets hardware and they get services, but they are closed and don’t want to play nice. February will see the release of their iPhone SDK, but more importantly we will find out how developers are going to be allowed to offer their applications to consumers, many are predicting it will be through Apple which would be very foolish. Microsoft is starting to get it and if anyone can claw away at the success of Nokia it is definitely them, but they’ve just failed to focus on mobile. I’m positive this will change sooner rather than later. Nokia has been in the mobile game longer than anyone. Their employees have every reason in the world to be complacent and ignorant of the world around them. The stock is at a six year high. Records in terms of revenue and profit are being set year after year. Why should they have to worry about this whole Web 2.0 thing happening? Stephen tells the world and his fellow employees why they should care, because frankly these next few years will be responsible for not only the next chapter of Nokia’s story, but for how current companies working in the mobile space will be writing theirs. ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Dusan: Happy Easter everyone!Nokia: We over invested in the U.S. marketDear Nokia: Flash 9 for Linux is final, ask Adobe to port it for the N800Nokia owns the fourth Die Hard filmNokia buys Boston based mobile advertising company Enpocket

Straight from Kari Tuutti: “N-gage is coming in December. Software testing is taking a bit more time than what we had expected, we are talking about a couple of weeks.” That is why the Go Play page was down last night. Shame, we were all waiting for the N82. Maybe the new release date will be at Nokia World on the 4th of December. [Source: Reuters ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Next-gen gaming platform set for launch in September 2007Rogers to launch Apple iPhone on December 7th?Apple iPhone gets a Release Date - June 15?Official Nokia next generation N-Gage 2007 launch videoAT&T: Apple iPhone On Target For Launch - Wants To Push 1 MILLION Units On Launch

Nokia has a service called MOSH that is essentially a P2P service in your pocket. People can upload applications, pictures, videos and even music to share with everyone. This scares the pants off Warner Music because piracy is what prevents these guys from sleeping at night. They are not going to cooperate with Nokia’s Music Store. I can only imagine what Nokia’s Multimedia division is saying (read: screaming) to the MOSH people. My best guess of what is really happening is that Warner just wants more money than Nokia’s initial offer would have given them. We will all be reading a press release within six months that states Warner Music is proud to join Nokia’s Music Store. This of course depends on how much Nokia wants their music store to succeed and how serious they are about the claim that they want to offer all the music that is out there. [Via: PaidContent.org ] ---Related Articles at IntoMobile:Nokia will offer Warner Bros' content3 UK refuses to sell Nokia N81 due to built in music storeAudio Interview: Nokia’s David Williams Unveils Key Components Of Music Services In The PipelineNokia launches mobile social network - MOSH by Nokia!Brief: It's official: Nokia Music Store UK Launch on Thursday 7 AM GMT