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Nokia Head of Mobile resigns

Matt Thomas — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 08:05:23 +0000

For the second time this week, telecommunications giants Nokia have hit the news headlines following an announcement that another high-ranking executive has tendered their resignation. The news comes just days after chief executive Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo resigned from his position, which he has held since 2006, to be replaced by Stephen Elop from Microsoft.

The head of Nokia’s mobile division, Anssi Vanjjoki will be leaving his role just months after being appointed to it. Vanjoki issued a statement commenting: “I felt the time has come to seek new opportunities in my life. At the same time, I am 100% committed to doing my best for Nokia until my very last working day.”

The announcement follows a blog post with the executive wrote following his appointment in July, which stated his commitment to supporting Nokia to improve in the smartphone market: “It’s my aim to ensure Nokia stays as the market and intellectual leader in creating the digital world. I’m under no illusions; it’s no small task. I am committed, perhaps even obsessed, with getting Nokia back to being number one in high-end devices. Achieving this will require performance and efforts over and above the norm. This is a role I’ve personally been preparing for over the last 20 years.”

Vanjoki will serve a notice period of six months, meaning he will have been in the role for less than a year before leaving to a new position elsewhere.

The announcement follows the appointment of Mr. Elop, as the first non-Finn to take up an executive position within Nokia. The shake-up within the company is thought to follow difficulties that Nokia have been having in penetrating and succeeding within the smartphone market, with stiff competition from the Apple iPhone and Google’s Android operating system. Both of these firms are enjoying a gradual increase in market share as Nokia struggled to maintain their lead in the industry.

It is thought that the changes will lead to further management positions being vacated and replaced over the next few weeks, as the company seeks to find the best possible team to lead them in to a new era of development and improvement.

Google to move in to music market by end of 2010

Matt Thomas — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:55:13 +0000

Search engine giants Google have announced that they are planning to launch a new service for music fans by the end of December. The new service, to be launched in time for Christmas this year, is set to become a rival to Apple’s iTunes music download product. According to a report by Reuters news agency, Google have been in discussion with key record labels about the launch of the new service, in order to offer an innovative music download product.

According to the report, the vice president of engineering for Google (Andy Rubin) has been having conversations with a number of players across the music industry. Rubin has previously been instrumental in launching Google’s Android mobile operating system. The new service for Google fans will feature a music download store to rival iTunes, and a digital music storage system (‘locker’), which stores people’s music choices online in order for it to be accessed by any internet-enabled gadget.

In May, Google commented about their impending service, at a California developers’ event. They have stated that the new service will be closely linked to their Android operating system, and is likely to be released to coincide with the launch of the next software release for Android (2.2). the new plans will add extra pressure to the ongoing rivalry between Apple and Google, who are now competing in a number of different service sectors including advertising, mobile and desktop operating systems.

A record industry executive has commented: “Finally, here’s an entity with the reach, resources and wherewithal to take on iTunes as a formidable competitor by tying it into search and Android mobile platform. What you’ll have is a very powerful player in the market that’s good for the music business.”

Android voice action feature launched

Andy Russell — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 09:02:27 +0000

Google’s Android phones now have a new voice action facility, which the search engine giants anticipate will boost sales and increase the popularity of their product. The voice action feature enables people to perform a series of tasks on smartphones without having to press any keys to initiate the commands.

Over the second quarter of this year, Google’s Android operating system was the fastest selling smartphone system in the United States. Currently, Google are activating over two hundred thousand Android devices daily. The new voice action service will no doubt maintain Google’s lead in the industry.

Product Manager for Google, Hugo Barra stated: “Before it was easy to search the web using voice but people do a lot more than just search the web. Now you can voice up text messages, e-mail a reminder to yourself, set your alarm clock, get directions, find music, open a map and call places. It really is about interacting with the device in the simplest of ways using the voice.”

“This represents the most significant progress Google has made in speech recognition ever since we launched voice search about two years ago. One in four searches done on Android is done using voice search.”

A spokesperson from the news blog Search Engine Land commented: “These improvements underline how seriously Google is taking its mobile strategy’. One of the amazing stories in all of this is that Android does feel like it has come out of nowhere. Since the beginning of this year there has been an explosion of Android-operated devices. People really thought it was going to be all about the iPhone but now it really does seem to be this two-player match.”

Mass increase in demand for Google Android platform

Andre — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 09:00:55 +0000

Google’s Android mobile operating system has become increasingly popular, as smartphone sales rocket and people download the software. Statistics developed by Canalys, a research company, show that since 2009, the Android software has increased sales by 886%.

The smartphone trade has become more and more lucrative, growing by over sixty percent within one year. Apple has enjoyed the second highest percentage of sales growth within the smartphone industry.

The Canalys research demonstrated that Android’s sales increase was primarily due to the huge growth in smartphone sales, fuelled by the range of superb options out there for consumers. A spokesperson stated: “We’re really seeing major vendors getting behind the platform. In particular, large manufacturers such as HTC, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, all use the platform and have helped drive shipments. In turn, shipments mean increased sales and market share. Typically over a year, the two pretty much balance out.”

Symbian, the platform used by most Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, has proved to be the most popular platform. Symbian’s switch to open source code has enables consumers to modify it for their own needs, enhancing its popularity. Even though Symbian has the biggest market share when it comes to smart phone operating systems, Apple’s iPhone and Android enjoy more publicity and brand recognition.

Nokia has launched ‘Meego’, in an attempt to rival Apple and Android for market share. A spokesperson for Nokia has stated: “Nokia had lost mindshare and needs to fight back. There is no denying, that as a challenger now, we have a fight on our hands.”

The iPhone has consistently enjoyed a strong market share, even when faced with setbacks surrounding the launch of the iPhone 4, which attracted a great deal of negative publicity.

iPhone out sold by Android

Matt Thomas — Tue, 11 May 2010 13:53:57 +0000

A surprising new report from analysts NDP has revealed that smartphones using Google’s Android as their operating system are now outselling Apple’s ever popular iPhone.

The report revealed that Android powered devices were accounting for 28% of the market, a shocking 7% higher than the iPhone’s still respectable 21%.

Both however, are lagging behind Research In Motion (RIM) who continue to lead the market with a 36% share for their Blackberry operating system.

The rapid growth of Android has been largely attributed to the aggressive marketing of US company Verizon Wireless who are one the biggest mobile network operators in the United States.

Their ‘buy one get one’ deals have been exceedingly popular over recent months and if this current growth rare is anything to go by Android may well overtake Blackberry as the market leaders by the end of the year.

Although Google’s phone is doing extremely well as it rapidly gains a high market share the company has backtracked a little over its seemingly aggressive approach.

A fortnight ago Google announced that Verizon would not be joining its web based Nexus One store and hat Vodafone would now only be allowed to sell the phone in their retail stores.

After this, Spring, another popular mobile network in the US announced that they were no longer going to join the online handset stores in offering their service with the new Google phone.

Without Sprint and Verizon it does not look as though Google’s dream of a super-phone is about to come true anytime soon.

Google will continue to sell their original GSM mobile phone from their online store but this may be the last we see of the Android phone.

Google’s Android to receive official Twitter app

James Oliver — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 12:27:29 +0000

Twitter have confirmed that they will finally be releasing the first official Twitter application for a mobile operating system, the beneficiary of this will be Google’s Android.

Co-founder of the Twitter site, Evan Williams, said that they decided to make their own official Twitter application because new users are constantly having trouble finding the right software to access the site on their mobile phones.

The company did not reveal whether the Twitter team would be building the client in-house or whether they would be looking to acquire the technology from a third party that has already built an un-official application that can support Twitter such as Twidroid or Swith.

Twitter have already purchased third party app Tweetie for the iPhone suggesting that they may be releasing an official Twitter app for the Apple operating system soon enough.

In the same announcement Twitter revealed that they would soon be releasing their own official link-shortener to rival companies such as TinyUrl and Bit.ly.

Most Twitter clients already have a built in link-shortener that auto-condenses the URL address in order to help keep the Tweets within the 140 character limit so this does make sense.

As Twitter expands on its 105 million registered users a day it would seem that they are making moves to support the growing popularity of the social networking site.

Big Win for Android in the Smartphone War

James Oliver — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 11:04:15 +0000

Today Google scored a big win in the ongoing Smartphone war. The Open Handset Alliance, the consortium of companies led by Google that developed the mobile phone operating system, Android, announced that they were adding fourteen new members to their number.

The list of the new 14 reads like a ‘who’s who’ of mobile and technology players. The biggest names involved are Telco Vodafone and Sony Ericsson, though all 14 are major players – the number includes Toshiba Corp and Garmin international.

This is very bad news for Nokia and Microsoft, who make rival operating systems, Symbian and Windows Mobile Software, since it all but guarantees more Android phones. In fact, Ericsson has already announced that it plans to release an Android based device in 2009. It aslo amounts to a rejection of their software by the 14 big industry players.

It’s not hard to see why these companies are clamouring to join Google’s collective. The first Android phone, the G1, is selling very well and is expected to reach the 500’000 phones sold mark this year, despite only being on the market since Autumn. Another plus is that phones made with the Android operating system are also much cheaper, which can help to maximise a company’s profit.

G1 is cheaper to make than the iPhone

Matt Thomas — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:00:26 +0000

It would appear that the T-Mobile G1 has suffered a slight PR hit. Despite retailing at twice the price of the basic model iPhone, ($399 as opposed to $199) DowJones, CNN, and iSuppli have uncovered the shocking fact that the G1 is actually 10 per cent cheaper to make.

This all begs the question, why do T-Mobile feel they can charge so much for the phone? Many have pointed to the three megapixel camera that the G1 boasts as well as the keypad, though iphone users can easily counter that by pointing out the huge dearth of internal memory in the G1 has compared to the iPhone (1GB removable as opposed to 16GB internal).

Some of it is likely to be novelty factor. Remember, the GI has been on the market for not even two months. The Android operating system will also have something to do with it, apple didn’t have to write a new system from scratch for the iPhone and maybe some of those costs are being passed on to T-Mobile by Google. Either way, like all electronics, I’d expect the price of the G1 to eventually fall bringing it more in line with the iPhone.

Google fixes Android security flaw

Matt Thomas — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 12:04:33 +0000

Remember a week or so ago I wrote about a flaw in Google’s Android operating system that could compromise the security of users. Well, in the interest of fairness to Google, I should report that the flaw has been fixed with an update available to all users imminently.

The issue has been a test of how quickly and efficiency the company can react to things like this and they appear to have passed. Though the way that the issue came to light in the first place will leave a sour taste with Google, after a private security firm, Independent Security Evaluators, not only discovered the glitch, but gave the information to the press.

This has led Google to call for “Responsible disclosure.” What it means by that is, if a private user or company should discover a security glitch with Android, they should give Google a reasonable amount of time to fix the problem before they go public.

Google says that this is so unscrupulous users have less time to exploit a glitch once they are made aware of it. You would however, be forgiven for thinking that it’s actually an attempt to reduce the amount of embarrassment and PR damage that Google, who are constantly competing with the likes of the Iphone and the BlackBerry, suffer.

Security issues with Android

Matt Thomas — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:00:04 +0000

It’s not even been a week since the release of the T-Mobile G1 Android phone, but Security professionals are already calling its security into question. Reportedly, there is a serious issue with the Android operating system that could leave it open to ‘drive by’ attacks from hackers.

Security experts at ISE, a Baltimore based security company posted a warning about the flaw which, they claim, could lead to G1 mobile phones being compromised if they accessed a malicious site. “These phones may pose a security risk to their users until an update becomes available,” said the posting.

Once a phone is infected, hackers have access to everything, including cookies, which means passwords, bank account information, addresses and all kinds of other personal information.

ISE say that they have reliable exploit code for the Android system but will keep this firmly under wraps and wait for the issue to be resolved, maintaining that there is no exploit available to the general populace, at least not one they know of.

Thankfully, ISE are currently working with the Android team at Google to resolve the issue. However, personnel at Google are said to be unhappy with the company for going public before a fix was available, after they had specifically asked them not to.

First day on the market for the G1 Android Phone

Matt Thomas — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 11:08:24 +0000

In the early hours of this morning (our time) a little piece of tech history was made when the T-Mobile G1 went on sale in a San Francisco T-Mobile store. The G1 is the first mobile phone to use the Android platform devised by Google and its partners to revolutionise mobile phone handsets and what they can do.

The launch attracted the proverbial queue of people outside the store, about 150 all told. This group of dedicated gadget fans was headed by Christopher Laddish, a student who had started queuing at eight o’clock that morning (the phones eventually went on sale at 6 in the evening) stating, “I was sold on it without even having to pick it up.” He received a T-Mobile tee-shirt for his efforts.

Predictably the Android phone is inviting comparisons with Apple’s iphone, which is thought to be propping up Apple’s share price at the moment. This strong competition will come at precisely the wrong time for the computer giant, who will be hoping that the initial interest in the G1 is merely a flash in the pan.

The G1 is currently retailing at $180 dollars with a service agreement and $400 dollars without.