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!