Nokia Public Transport for Symbian shows you the way, can't guarantee a seat

Nokia's free turn-by turn navigation is great when you're lost, but what if you need to negotiate an unfamiliar train or bus system? Perhaps Espoo's new Public Transport app with its journey planning information for nearly 80 cities and urban areas (including London, Helsinki, Austin and Toronto) will see you right. What's more, you can even save your favorite destinations to the app's home screen to save a bit more tapping and typing. The app's only available for those freshly updated Symbian Belle phones right now, but it's free, and there's a Lumia-friendly version in the works. Sound like this might take the headache out of your daily commute?

gadgets Comment Nokia Cuts 4000 Jobs; Last European Phone Assembly Work Goes To Asia

It’s a sign of the times, though not a particularly surprising one: Nokia has finally eliminated its European phone assembly infrastructure and will be moving those 4000 jobs to Asia, according to a Reuters report. The factories are not being shuttered altogether, and localizing and finishing work will still be done there, but the primary assembly work is being relocated.
The news and layoffs were expected, as the company has slashed many more thousands of jobs over the last year, but this particular cut is symbolic: the intensely European company has been battered into submission, and will join the others in the now-standard configuration of “design here, build there.”
The job losses are 2300 in Hungary, 1000 in Finland, and 700 in Mexico. They don’t represent all of Nokia’s employees in those countries, just those involved with basic assembly. Nokia did not say where or to what contractor the jobs would be sent, but considering their need to cut costs, the majors in China, Taiwan, Thailand, and others in the area are the natural choice.
Naturally, the countries losing the jobs expressed disappointment, but Nokia’s got to do what Nokia’s got to do, and these job losses have been telegraphed for some time. It’s likely that they were announced today only after extensive negotiations with unions and local contractors.
Whether this approach will prove effective at lowering costs without damaging the company or brand is yet to be seen; it may be that saving money on manufacturing might not be enough to counter the enormous drop in sales Nokia has seen over the last two years.

Nokia Lumia 710:Review

It's a modest device and easy-to-use. And one of the stronger points of the Lumia 710 is the Windows Phone 7 software. Compared with Android, Windows Phone 7 is generally a much more visually appealing and intuitive operating system.

The first of Nokia's new generation of smartphones isn't flashy and certainly isn't an iPhone killer. But it's a nice device, and at $40 (or cheaper) with a two-year contract, a bargain.
Nokia and Microsoft, erstwhile big players in the U.S. mobile market, have joined forces to get back in the game.
A little more than a year ago, Microsoft launched a new mobile operating system called Windows Phone 7 to replace its aging Windows Mobile software. Then last February, the world's largest phone manufacturer announced that it would abandon Symbian, its longtime smartphone-operating system, and adopt Windows Phone 7 in its place.
Windows Phone 7 devices have drawn little interest from consumers to date, but Microsoft hopes Nokia can help change that. The first Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices started hitting store shelves around the globe last fall and hit American shores earlier this month when T-Mobile began selling the Lumia 710.
I got an early glimpse at the Lumia 710 in October and wasn't impressed. But after getting to play with it over the past several weeks, I've warmed up to it. It's an easy-to-use, quick and light smartphone.
The first thing you'll notice about the Lumia 710 is that, in an age of jumbo-sized screens and elegant designs, it's a modest device. It's about the same size and shape as Apple's 2-year-old iPhone 3GS, with a similarly curved back and a plastic case.
I'm a big fan of phones of this size. They're easy to fit in a pocket or hold in your hand. While the Lumia 710's plastic case feels a bit cheap, it makes the device lighter.
At first glance, the Lumia's 710 technical specs don't match up well with the latest and greatest phones from Apple or Google's Android partners. It only has a single-core processor, only 512 megabytes of memory, just 8 gigabytes of storage and no memory card slot that would allow users to supplement its storage. By comparison, the latest Android smartphones have dual and even quad-core processors and the iPhone 4S has as much as 64-gigabytes of storage.
But this nominal difference means much less in practice. The Lumia 710 is fast and responsive. In my informal tests, it seemed to launch and switch between apps more quickly than many of the dual-core Android devices I've used. It also has stamina — I typically could use it a full day without it needing an extra charge.
The storage capacity limits the amount of music, movies, documents and apps you can keep on the device. But this limitation is mitigated by the additional 25 gigabytes of storage Microsoft offers Windows Phone 7 users on its servers in the cloud. Users can automatically store Office documents on the so-called SkyDrive and have their pictures and videos automatically uploaded to it.
One of the stronger points of the Lumia 710 is the Windows Phone 7 software. Compared with Android, Windows Phone 7 is generally a much more visually appealing and intuitive operating system. While I hesitate to recommend Android devices to those new to smartphones because of the operating system's complexity, I don't have the same reservations about Windows Phone 7. One exceptional feature of the software is its built-in Bing search application, which allows users to scan bar codes, identify music, find local events and search the Web and local business at the same time.
Unfortunately, other than Windows Phone 7, there's nothing terribly exciting about the Lumia 710. It doesn't have a front-facing camera or a speech-recognition system as sophisticated as the iPhone's Siri. It does have a rear-facing camera, but it's slow, does a poor job in low light and has a 5-megapixel resolution that is pedestrian and grainy by today's standards.
While I generally liked the Lumia's 710 physical design, I didn't like its buttons. I often had to press its power button several times to wake it up. Conversely, its camera button seemed overly sensitive; I frequently found myself in the camera app without wanting to be there.
But the biggest shortcoming of the Lumia 710 is, ironically enough, the same thing that is best about it — Windows Phone 7. While the software is easier and more fun to use than Android, it's lacking in apps and some capabilities.
Microsoft says there are now 50,000 apps available for Windows Phone 7, and you can find many of the most popular mobile programs for it. But you'll find 10 times as many apps for the iPhone and eight times as many for Android devices. Among the applications you can't get for Windows Phone 7 are Pandora, Instagram, the game "Infinity Blade" and, amazingly enough, Skype, which is also owned by Microsoft.
Beyond the app gap, Windows Phone 7 also comes up short on Web browsing. A growing number of websites now use HTML5, the latest version of the code used to design Web pages and applications. Unfortunately, Windows Phone 7's Internet Explorer browser does a poor job of supporting HTML5 compared to the browsers in the iPhone and Android devices.
As a result, some buttons and pages won't work right, some videos won't play and some mobile-oriented sites won't load at all. The problems don't affect all sites but are frustrating when you encounter them.
Despite such issues, the Lumia 710 is well worth considering. It's not a standout device, but it's not a bad one — and its price is just right

Nokia's next challenge: Weathering Symbian's quick demise

Nokia’s fourth quarter was a mixed bag as it sold 1 million Lumia devices—below consensus estimates and above worst-case scenarios—but a bigger challenge looms. Can the company significantly boost Lumia sales given that sales of Symbian devices are falling off a cliff?
Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, put the Lumia vs. Symbian race in context. He touted Lumia sales and noted that Nokia’s plan was to gain traction country by country. Elop noted in Nokia’s earnings release:

In the war of ecosystems, clearly there are some strong contenders already on the field. And with Lumia, we have demonstrated that we belong on the field. Our specific intent has been to establish a beachhead in this war of ecosystems, and country by country that is what we are now accomplishing. To date we have sold well over 1 million Lumia devices. From this beachhead of more than 1 million Lumia devices, you will see us push forward with the sales, marketing and successive product introductions necessary to be successful. We also plan to bring the Lumia series to additional markets including China and Latin America in the first half of 2012.

The catch?

Changing market conditions are putting increased pressure on Symbian. In certain markets, there has been an acceleration of the anticipated trend towards lower-priced smartphones with specifications that are different from Symbian’s traditional strengths. As a result of the changing market conditions, combined with our increased focus on Lumia, we now believe that we will sell fewer Symbian devices than we previously anticipated.

In other words, Lumia has to offset falling Symbian sales just for Nokia to tread water. No pressure there Mr. Elop right?
That Symbian pressure is partially why Nokia’s outlook isn’t so great. Nokia projected first quarter sales that were below the usual seasonal trends and break even for the devices unit. In other words, Nokia really has no visibility into its business.
Barclays Capital analysts said in a research note:

Nokia has sold more than 1.0 million Lumia devices. We consider this a solid metric compared to consensus of 1.3mn and worst case fears of only 500,000. Nokia’s global Lumia rollout continues in 1H12, but under more duress as Symbian demand is declining more rapidly than expected.

If Lumia and Windows Phone devices can’t offset Symbian Nokia will have more pain ahead. There’s already a lot of sales headed in the wrong direction. Here’s the earnings report for Nokia. The table is in Euro.

Nokia's continued feature phone focus may be one of their smartest moves

I generally focus on the smartphone market here on ZDNet because that is what I use and what most readers seem to be interested in. However, the feature phone market is still relevant with staggering global figures that show over 70% of phones sold in 2011 were actually feature phones. Many, including myself, seemed to shrug off the Nokia World Asha Series 40 handset announcements, but according to this Forbes article feature phones are now more profitable than smartphones so it looks like Nokia’s strategy of staying in the feature phone business may turn out to be a very smart move.
Many manufacturers that made feature phones in the past, including Motorola, Sony, HTC, and LG, have focused their efforts on the smartphone market. While Nokia is focusing on the smartphone market with Windows Phone, they are also very actively targeting the “next billion” with excellent devices like the Asha lineup that includes the Asha 303 and Asha 201. Nokia actually passed the 1.5 billion level this month and looks to rule this market in the future.
There is a report from Visiongain that discusses the low cost mobile phone market in detail.

Nokia Belle update to start rolling out from next week

Nokia has confirmed through a post on its Twitter account that the Belle update will start rolling out to older devices starting next week.

Although Nokia had previously promised the update to arrive in February, it seems they're going to be nice and release it a week in advance.
The devices that will be updated to Belle include Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia E6, Nokia X7, Nokia C6-01, Nokia C7, Nokia 500 and Nokia Oro. Nokia has also confirmed that the Nokia N8, C7 and C6-01 have now started shipping with the Belle update pre-installed and we're sure other handsets will join them soon.

India’s Most Trusted Brands of 2011 – Nokia Tops the List

Nokia has been voted the most trusted brand in India according to a recent survey conducted by research firm Trust Research Advisory (TRA). The “Brand Trust Report, India Study 2011″ was launched in Mumbai on Tuesday by our beloved Dr A P J Abdul Kalam Sir, Former President of India. The survey covered 16,000 brands, based on 61 questions to 2310 respondents in nine major cities.
While the number two and three spots were taken by Tata and Sony, respectively, while LG and Samsung were positioned at number four and five.
Survey also included personalities as brands where Master blaster Tendulkar took 59th position overtaking the Father of  The Nation  – Mahatma Gandhi at 232nd position while actor Aamir Khan was at 242nd rank.
Surprisingly, Bollywood”s legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan’s name does not figure in the top 300 list.
How did this survey work?

TRA’s CEO N Chandramouli said, “As trust is a very subjective term, we developed a trust matrix which included 61 components defining trust which include empathy, non-threatening ambience, perceived competence, corporate altruism, commanding respect, shared interest, displaying sincerity, enthusiasm, outward appearance and accepting responsibility.”
And, infact every house in India has atleast 1 phone made by Nokia, and those are the feature phones, mid ranged phone and smartphones. Looking forward to see a comeback from Nokia with regards to the high end smartphones segment. The N9 may be the answer..?

Top 10 List of Most Trusted Brands in India

1. Nokia
2. Tata
3. LG
4. Samsung
5. Sony
6. Maruti
7. Bajaj
8. LIC
9. Airtel
10. Reliance