Sony Ericsson & Motorola started 2008 with a selection of existing and leaked UIQ handsets which appeared to presage a revitalised UIQ interface.  Today both giants of the industry have pulled from UIQ and appear to have embraced Microsoft Mobile for their Touch strategy, not withstanding SE’s vague announcements concerning Symbian’s Series 60 V5 UI.

Downsizing their Symbian Smartphone booth from Samsung size last year to a start-up size this year, shows the dramatic drop from favour that UIQ has received from the market.  Yet is this a good idea?

SE’s Paris (P5) handset seemed to have addressed the hardware issues from the P990i/P1i and Motorola’s Z10 would be a better alternative to the Microsoft’s Mobile Standard.  Yet both companies have given up the UIQ challenge and gone for the less usable, though feature rich, Microsoft solutions.

The natural replacement for SE’s P range is consequently the just released Xperia X1.  This has serious usability limitations which will never be addressed until Mobile 7 is released late 2009 or early 2010.  Perhaps a Mobile 6.5 may help, but it seems that the consumer touch game is, for the next year, between Nokia, Apple and Google.

It was only a few years ago that i-Mate were riding high in the mobile market selling the most desirable PocketPC devices.  From the SP3 through to the K-JAM they made the market for Microsoft mobile products.  So it was no surprise when they were eventually listed on AIM.

Yet now in 2008 they are appear to be a shadow of the great marketing machine they once were.  Having lost HTC as their OEM manufacturer, their recent products have been late, expensive and lacking usability innovation such as HTC’s TouchFLO.

So no surprise then when The Register reported that CEO & founder Jim Morrison, is taking i-Mate back into private ownership.  He may have a chance of success if he could only resurrect the style of cancelled products such as the 9150 and 7150.  Here’s hoping.

After a long drought of truly business handsets from Nokia, the dam appears to be have been breached.  The E71 has almost every feature that a business smartphone could have, and the E66 is a simpler but pleasant business slide format.  There are also another two handsets leaked, the E63 a cheaper clone of the E71 (saves the Chinese from doing it I suppose) and a horizontal slider.  With the E90 still a strong and well supported business device, on the face of it there is no doubt that Nokia want to play in the white collar business world.

The trouble is that Nokia has ended their relationship with BlackBerry, and Intellisync, their wholly owned mobile business platform, is no more.  Nokia describe the demise of Intellisync as a refocusing exercise, approved at the highest level, where limited resources (presumably people) have to be deployed appropriately.  So Ovi should be seeing a boost in employee number shortly.

This is good news for Nokia’s consumer support but I wonder if this is not an extremely short sighted decision for the overall strategy of the company.

Nokia and the networks built their fledgling mega corps on the profits from corporate and government organisations.  Out of which came classic devices and especially the 6310(i) which is still sought after many years since it was discontinued.  Well it does have superb battery life, call quality, ease of use and a car kit that was fitted to many executive cars.

Through the business handset boon was born the consumer craze, with Nokia’s ultimate offering the N95 (8GB) & N96.  Not forgetting the lower end, Nokia invests a great deal of money and energy in producing handsets for every population sector imaginable.  Though handsets may overlap in features, Nokia’s research has usually discovered a consumer niche to make the variants worthwhile.

With Nokia’s Ovi, social networking, sharing, music, video & photography and every other consumer based service will be provided to smother the opposition and sweep consumers ever more into the Nokia fold.

Except businesses.

Companies and organisations have learnt through bitter mistakes that they can’t treat their mobile strategy like a kiddie in a sweet shop.  Mobility is now part of the IT strategy not an after thought.  So when considering the type of handsets to deploy amongst 10 or 10,000 staff, a great deal of thought goes into what is required from the handset.  Reliability, battery life, connectivity, applications, mobile email, support and so on.

Contracts are negotiated with operators on a 24 month basis now, so getting the mobility strategy wrong can be a painfully expensive write down.  So organisations are planning.

So which handsets are the obvious contenders in any business handset strategy.  It must include BlackBerry, Microsoft (HTC) and Nokia Symbian; Android and the iPhone being too new and/or proprietary.

From the standpoint that there is no sense in mixing up the handset range, especially when developing new applications and access models are in mind, that leaves a passionate internal debate about the big three.

From an IT perspective the last thing support staff want are support calls.  But as they will have them, IT support will want an easy platform to fix remotely.  The idea of an exec’ being without his email in the wilds of the world and being told to drop their handset in next time they are back in the office doesn’t really cut it.

So BlackBerry has the BES server for controlling handsets and is a well liked platform.  Microsoft has a sort of device management service with their snappily named System Center Mobile Device Manager, though for sure not the best in the market.  So what does Nokia offer?  A month ago Intellisync, now nothing. 

Nokia haven’t even sold on Intellisync, nor will they.  So 100’s of thousands of users and many companies have little or no support for the 100’s of millions of dollars investment in their choice of Symbian handsets.  Talk about alienating your core customer base!

Of course you can look around and see that VNC have launched a direct control product, but that is hopeless if you are deploying applications, firmware and policies.

Mobile network operators could offer the service, though it is expensive, and would you really trust your IT in a mobile operator’s hand?  An outsource too far.  Plus it would be nearly impossible to migrate to another operator eliminating any high ground negotiating position.

This leads to the inevitable conclusion that the only players in the business space are now BlackBerry and Microsoft.  What a choice!

So rather than taking the brave decision to create a business version of Ovi, Nokia has just abandoned their customers to the fates.  Now with the credit crunch hitting the consumer market Nokia can no longer rely on businesses to ease the inevitable squeeze on profits.

If Nokia is to the mobile world that Mercedes is the automotive industry, what would Mercedes customers do if Mercedes suddenly decided that they would no longer maintain their vans and lorries; they would still make them but don’t expect any support.  Would customers not find another manufacturer that could support them?  But also when it comes to buying the next car, wouldn’t Mercedes be regarded as an unreliable partner, so giving the business to BMW.  If this analogy holds, BlackBerry will be doing a lot more business over the next few years.

So where is the strategy Nokia?

Nokia had its Smartphone Show preview party on Monday at which their first S60 touch screen handset was eagerly handled by the soggy attendees.  Note for the future Nokia, if people are slightly early and it’s raining hard, either let them in or have a supply of umbrellas to handout whilst they wait.

The Nokia 5800 is not an iPhone killer, yet for just over £200 contract free it is a bargain touch smartphone.  The screen is bright and sharp, there are well thought out controls to bring down menus and see your multi tasking applications (Apple take note), and the software worked smoothly, immediately changing orientation with little delay.

Physically it is both chunkier and narrower than an iPhone 3G. Also being a middle range handset its construction is plastic but with a reasonable feel.

The feature list is extensive with 3.5G, GPS, WiFi(g), Carl Zeiss 3.2Mpx auto focus camera, dual flash, stereo speakers and standard headphone plug.

On the down side it does not have a totally flush screen being slightly raised at the edge of the screen.  The screen sensitivity is also not up to iPhone standard, but better than some WinMo devices.

At the price there is little to fault the 5800, and in many respects would be at the top of my list for a smartphone at £300 or less.

Since my first Bluetooth headset, the Ericsson HBH-10, the novelty of wearing a lump of plastic on an ear has completely disappeared, look at any taxi rank. 

Style however has always been a problematic issue, again look at any taxi rank and see the evidence!  Things are changing though.  Serious efforts have recently been made in design which is where Bluetrek’s new Metal earpiece comes from.

The retail packaging tries to make the point, being in a brushed aluminium effect box giving the effect of a quality product within.

Apple bangs on about third party applications ruining the iPhone experience if left running in the background.  Absolute piffle as BJ might say.

Two super apps one recently updated, the other new to the App Store illustrate why multi tasking is needed, not just for Apple’s own applications.

The first is Fring.  If you are heavy Skype user, and many small businesses are, Fring is a godsend if your fixed line is your Skypein number.  In essence your calls follow you wherever you are, never missing the important job that pays your next month’s rent.  International colleagues also appreciate the zero cost of contact instead of the fortune the networks would like to charge.  Fring on the iPhone is the solution.  Or would be, if it weren’t for the little fact that it has to run in the foreground.

Want to read an email, and talk on Fring, forget it.  Want to find the web site as you discuss business with a colleague in the US, not a chance.  The Fring user interface is great, sheer iPhone simplicity except Apple refuse to allow the app to run in the background.

Like to listen to music from LastFM ‘cause it suits your mood as you work?  LastFM has just been updated and is now nicer and simpler than ever. 

Yet again it has to run in the foreground!  Why!  My Nokia’s E71 lets me have LastFM blasting in my ears, Fring listening for Skype calls, and I can be writing uber emails using RoadSync.  This is not even S60 V5.  With Nokia’s 5800, and follow up handsets in the very near future, Apple are going to have the best & worst handset on the market.

Hard news for businesses using Nokia’s Intellisync and security products!

Announced yesterday, 29^th of October, Nokia have pretty much bailed out of the enterprise space, deciding to concentrate its efforts on Ovi.  See release.

The signs were there, sort of, with the ditching of BlackBerry Connect from the E series and the recent support for Microsoft ActiveSync.  Yet with a cavalier disrespect for their existing customers, why should any large business decide to buy Nokia.  The E series range of handsets is, sorry was, part of an integrated portfolio of products directly competing with the likes of BlackBerry and Microsoft.  So can businesses now trust that Nokia will keep innovating their E series handsets?  Quite frankly they can’t. 

With Intellisync dropped from the portfolio, Symbian device management is now left to companies such as mine.  Yet in fact what may happen is that business buyers will look again at Microsoft/HTC and BlackBerry as the handset supplier of choice (Apple as lovely as it is has limited support for security conscious businesses and associated applications).  Just as well we support those as well.

So though this is a great opportunity for most MDM companies, this perverse short sighted decision could badly damage Nokia’s reputation in business, and mobile distribution alike.  Ouch.

Whilst clearly hitting a sensitive spot with my previous article concerning Greenhill & Co investment of $22.9m in Iridium, it should also be noted that GHL Acquisition Corp (GHQ), an affiliate of Greenhill & Co, is the company acquiring Iridium.

Having raised $400m from an IPO earlier this year, GHL are providing $100m of cash to Iridium and $360m in the shares of GHL Acquisition Corp.  Greenhill’s $22.9m does give them two seats on the board, certainly an influential position to be in.

According to Iridium, having learnt from past mistakes, and with a strong operational record for the last few years, new requirements for machine to machine communications will ensure they maintain growth.

There is some logic in this as there is little desire on the part of the wireless operators to extend their infrastructure into remote areas where three is little chance to get a return on capital investment.  Yet it is precisely these remote areas that suffer from extreme weather and geological activity, and need to be monitored.

Iridium should also have a brighter future with the burgeoning growth in off shore wind farms, wave power and other alternative energy schemes,  that require remote diagnostics independent of any fixed connection.

Iridium have a tough challenge ahead of them to deploy a new constellation of satellites, I hope they succeed.

For a measly $22.9 million, Greenhill, a private investment firm, has bought Iridium.

Probably the only commercial mobile carrier that can reach every part of the planet, Iridium’s LEO satellite cluster has increased its user base from 55,000 subscribers in 2000 to around 300,000 now.    Considering the $5billion it cost Motorola and $25million when it was taken over after its bankruptcy, Iridium has been both a costly exercise in hubris, and a chance to create a global communication network, in the same way that GPS technology has unified positioning.

The agreement will allegedly enable Iridium to “develop its next generation satellite constellation, Iridium Next.”  The cost of development is one thing, deployment, as Motorola painfully found out, is a multi billion gamble prone to commercial challenges which can not be forecast.

It may be just me, but the launch by T-Mobile of the G1, the first consumer Android handset, was surprisingly downbeat.

Perhaps this was down to the number of blog posts who predicted the form factor, look and abilities of this launch device.  Spoilt the surprise birthday I guess.  Or could it be that this, like the Apple iPhone, is still very much work in progress, and may have been launched purely to be seen to have met an internal deadline.

Well hardware spec wise there is little to shout about, being similar in many ways to the latest HTC devices, especially the Touch Pro and Xperia X1.  The software spec is another matter. 

The touch UI seems on the surface to be more flexible than Apple’s, yet deficient in all the hardware drivers that many professionals, and music lovers, want.

Bluetooth profiles -only headset, no A2DP, no Bluetooth Keyboard support, no sync support.  Push corporate email – someone else can develop that.  Document editor, seems you can only read.  Synchronise with your desktop – what’s that?  This is obviously a very rushed product.

Sure, great play was made of Android’s disputed openness, third party developers and an application eco system.  Yet despite of all the apps that could have presented, there was only a how green is your life, and something else less memorable.

Then when the founders of Google mentioned how one of them wrote an app to measure the time between throwing and catching their handset, it all seems to come together.  This is a handset for programmers and techies, not for real people whose lives involve doing fun stuff like eating, raising kids, and generally enjoying themselves.

There are of course some cool ideas, especially access to Google’s street view.  Also it is at least multi tasking (one over Apple there!).

For the rest of us, it’s just another SIM locked, expensive gadget that will work fantastically well if your into Google applications, email and search, but not at all well if you actually just want a work a day handset that doesn’t need a degree in tinkering.

Thanks, but I’ll stick with the iPhone.

Tinker away after the 22^nd of October state side ($179 + $25/$35 per month), UK in November and the rest of Europe in 2009.

Whilst Symbian is the most popular smartphone operating system by sheer number of devices, it is arguably the one least used by business.  That’s not to say many SME and large companies don’t have the N and E series handsets, just that few use them for anything other than voice with a bit of music and photography thrown in.

But the mobile email environment is changing rapidly.  Data is being bundled by the networks, Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync push email removes third party server support, and the user has a plethora of choice of handsets from Apple’s iPhone, through HTC’s Touch favourite of the month, and now all those Nokia’s N95’s can securely receive company email. 

In the credit crunch, a saving of a tenner a month per user is significant, especially for hundreds or thousands of devices.  Though will Nokia’s elimination of BlackBerry Connect help it?  Perhaps not.  Existing BlackBerry users may not want to change (if they have a choice) especially with more attractive BlackBerry devices, the Bold & Storm, hitting the market. 

Nokia’s desire to compete in the area of business applications is hindered by not only a lack of development of its own software;  application developers concentrate on software platforms they know will be used in companies, and their from BlackBerry and Microsoft.

With many organisations looking at VoIP as a part replacement for fixed and some mobile calls, it would appear natural for Apple to have supported SIP out of the box.  That they didn’t opened up a market for innovative developers to do the job.

One such,  Sipgate, has developed a SIP client for jailbroken iPhones, well the first iPhone anyway.  Of course using VoIP over WiFi leads to call substitution reducing the revenues of the mobile operator.  This potential has narked T-Mobile who has been able to persuade a German court to ban the use Sipgate on the iPhone in Germany. 

Along side AT&T abhorrence of tethering applications, Apple’s push into the business market is being hindered by their partner carriers.

With companies impacted by the credit crunch, unrestricted handsets such as Nokia’s E71, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 and HTC’s Touch Pro, make better business sense than the iPhone.

Source:  Cellular News

Apple’s embarrassed release of 2.1, Steve Job’s 30 seconds of spiel about bug fixes not withstanding, seems to have cured many of the big irritations of the original device.  Even GPS seems to be working ok now.

Contact searching is much smoother, the network signal seems accurate(ish), backing up is definitely faster (seconds instead of 10 minutes plus), and applications are installed faster.  This is all great news.

Unfortunately this has rendered the iPhone only up to the level it should have been originally.  It’s not as if Apple simultaneously develop 10’s of handsets models (unlike Samsung & Nokia), so should have isolated most of the bugs before launch. 

Yet even now, the iPhone seriously lacks many features that other smartphone users take for granted.  Not least cut and paste!

With the kids having just bought their going back to school pens and laptops, it’s now time for the Christmas tinsel to hit the high street. 

This week seems to have been made for the Christmas cheer.  First the ever yo-yoing saga of Sony Ericsson’s Xperia X1 has now gone back up to a launch on the 30^th of September. 

Second off the BlackBerry Storm (Thunder to most people) has been appraised courtesy of YouTube and TheBoyGenius.  

Thirdly there was the announcement, at last, of the iPhone 2.1 software. 

Fourthly it seems that the Nokia Touch will launch in early October.

Fifth, Modaco leaked some images of the iPhone challenger from HTC, the Touch HD.

Without doubt the market captured by the iPhone has some serious new hardware to extract Santa’s money.  Yet with a recession already upon us will he keep his wallet closed and the industry stockings filled with apples rather than Christmas dough?

Nokia is rumoured to be launching the 5800 Tube in October with their new touch UI based on Symbian Series 60.  From the little seen via YouTube and Mobile World Congress earlier this year, Nokia’s new UI is unlikely to grab the same attention that the iPhone 3G did.  This is inspite of the obvious flaws and restrictions imposed by Apple on third party applications, hardware flaws and interoperability issues.

According to Saturday’s FT, Android which may be launched before Christmas has yet to engender any great emotion in the market.  Whilst it is an allegedly open system there are still parts of the OS that are closely guarded from independent developers.  This has led to a wait and see attitude amongst many of them.

Demonstration units built by HTC have an air of a cheap Microsoft Mobile handset from a couple of years ago.  An issue not helped by Google’s low key low energy marketing effort.  This is now becoming an issue for Google as Nokia will now give away the well proven Symbian platform; one that Samsung, Motorola, LG and others have already invested a great deal of time and money on.

With Nokia in the doldrums, LiMo hiding, and Android seemingly going low key, big bad Microsoft may be the unlikely challenger to an increasingly iPhone centric world.

You could have had a tough time in the 90’s if you were an independent software developer for Nokia or Ericsson smart phones.  Little was known about creating applications for GEOS and EPOC (latterly Symbian) and then to make any decent sales the company had to be in the application book that came with the handset.  Nokia tried to expand this with their various partner programmes but the resulting directories unfortunately had little impact despite their best efforts.

Handango stepped into the breach with a market place for small software vendors that at least tries to give vendors an easy to use shop front.  Unfortunately users have to consciously make the effort to search for an application, or rely on word of mouth, leaving many innovative developers without a market. 

Then along came the iPhone App store.  With many millions of applications sold over the last two months, Apple has single handed redefined how a mobile interface can engage users to buy applications.  A swipe and a touch Is all that is needed to find the latest next best thing. 

Application snacking is the new game in town.  Consumers no longer have to consciously use their PC’s or dig deep into their smart phone menus.  Stumbling over software written by new developers has established a new democracy in the market where innovation is lauded.

Apple unquestionably wipes away Nokia’s and Microsoft’s on device efforts, and now they and Google are running scared.

Caught off guard by Apple’s app store success, Google and Microsoft have to think fast about their response. 

Android Market, an “open content distribution system” is Google’s answer.  From the screenshots it appears to be an almost direct copy of Apple’s App Store; though by calling it a market Android are claiming their service to be more open, which could mean either a wider range of content or buggier and inappropriate.  Eventual users will have to wait and see.

Microsoft has been far slower off the mark having recently advertised for a Skymarket product manager, Microsoft’s Store/Market competitor.  Perhaps they should change the name to App Mall.  Whatever their intention Microsoft have at least got a mass of programs that theoretically could be added into their shop.  Though if Windows Mobile 7 is anything like the upgrade from XP to Vista there could be a lot of broken apps being downloaded in the first few months.

Then what of Nokia?  They will be working on their own variant, which will no doubt be part of Ovi.  I assume that when an S60 Touch handset is launched that will be the time Nokia announces their new shop front.  Though Nokia may delay any launch until after they have absorbed Symbian.

The group that has been left in the lurch are the operators.  Having dismissed and belittled software developers for years, they are now seeing a large potential revenue source disappearing into other peoples pockets.  What a shame!

According to The Register and several other news boards, Sony Ericsson has delayed the launch of the Xperia X1 until December or possibly January. 

Since its launch the Xperia was supposed to launch in September then it was delayed until 2009, back to September/October now it’s out to January 2009.  Perhaps it can do a few loops around 2010 as well.

This is the same problem as the P990i which by the time it got out of kindergarten was already into middle age.  Yet HTC and Samsung have launched their respective Omnia i900 (on Orange) and Touch Pro, both with comparable or better spec, and more pointedly both using Windows Mobile 6.1. 

Those that have seen the Xperia are very impressed, but by the time they can buy it the 8Mpx Symbian monsters will have hit the market making the Xperia very much last years technology.

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –