Today Nokia announced the Lumia 620, a range of colorful handsets running Windows Phone 8 that should have an unsubsidized cost of around $249. The phones will be released in the first quarter of 2013, initially in Asian and African markets and later in Europe and South America.
Apple’s iOS 6 Maps app has received so many complaints and been the butt of so many jokes that you’d think Nokia could capitalize on Cupertino’s fail by releasing a stunning maps app to dominate the iOS space. No such luck. Nokia’s Here Maps is a mess.
Last week, Nokia announced last week that it was bringing a mapping solution to iOS and now that app is available in the iOS App Store.
Nokia HERE is a free, universal app that's powered by Nokia's NAVTEQ mapping data. It includes a garden variety of views like map view, live traffic view, public transport line view and satellite view. It also supports offline maps, so you can still travel when you lose your data connection. For those who prefer to walk, it even has voice-guided walk navigation.
Nokia and Oracle are expected to announce a deal tomorrow that will give Oracle customers access to Nokia's growing stable of data and location services.
The deal, which is due to be announced at OracleWorld conference in San Francisco, is expected to expand the reach of the Finnish handset maker's Navteq mapping services, The Wall Street Journal reported. Financial details of the arrangement were not revealed.
You can call it the "Nokia comeback story," take two.
That will likely be the theme again as Nokia and Microsoft host an event in New York on Wednesday to unveil the latest Lumia smartphones, now running on Windows Phone 8. Leaks of the purported phones have already appeared, and CNET will be there to cover the official announcement.
The beleaguered phone maker Nokia reported today a $1 billion operating loss on $9.23 billion in net sales in the second quarter.
Analysts expected a loss of 340 million euros ($420 million) on revenue of 7.53 billion euros ($9.27 billion). Nokia reported net sales of 7.5 billion euros ($9.23 billion), up from 7.4 billion euros ($9.11 billion) in the first quarter.
Nokia is still trying to turn things around after a slew of losses, and has made some tough decisions about how to move forward by announcing it will reduce staff by up to 10,000 people before the end of 2013. That's all part of a plan to close factories in Finland, Germany and Canada. as well as refocusing its marketing efforts, streamlining support staff and reducing "non-core" assets.
Nokia has lost an appeal against Ipcom with the patent holder pushing for an injunction.
Nokia had lost a case brought by Ipcom over the infringement of 3G patents in the UK High Court last year. Nokia went to the London Court of Appeal, which also sided with Ipcom, which said it will ask for damages and a sales injunction against Nokia.
SIM card maker Giesecke & Devrient is showing off Apple's new nano-SIM design, which has been modified to resolve Nokia's objections to it, at the CTIA tradeshow in New Orleans, La.
Handset makers have been lobbying for their preferred fourth form factor (4FF) SIM card standards as a vote by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute nears. The ETSI was scheduled to decide on the standard in March, but it postponed the vote because of continued disagreement between Apple and Nokia.
Nokia has responded to a recent ZDNet Mobile News article that pointed out the partnership with Microsoft, the owner of Skype, is causing trouble with the carriers affecting sales of the Lumia phones. In that article Nokia watcher Tomi Ahonen used comments by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to gather he was claiming sales were lost due to the Skype deal.
