How Nokia and Microsoft will carve up mobile services

Nokia smartphones will be running Windows Phone, but the company is hoping to hang on to some of its service-provider identity even as Microsoft grabs the choicest morsels.

Nokia tried hard to redefine itself as a provider of services, which is what everyone wants to be these days - hardware margins are tight and most software platforms are being given away for free. Over the years, Nokia has launched a plethora of services, including PIM synchronisation, cloud storage, and its very own instant messaging service – all of which eventually got lumped together under the Ovi brand but never really gelled as a coherent offering.

Recently, the Finns started killing off some of the more esoteric offerings, such as the cloud storage service, and they farmed others out to better-equipped companies, which included dumping Ovi e-mail and messaging with Yahoo. Ovi will no-doubt continue to provide services for non-smart phones, and the 150 million Symbian handsets Nokia expects to ship during the transition, but much of the service offering will now be handed over to Redmond.

Nokia gets to keep mobile mapping, while Microsoft gets handset advertising, an area in which Nokia has never showed much interest. Nokia also gets free rein to take Google and Apple to the cleaners over mobile patents, while Microsoft gets to poke Intel in the eye one last time.

These days, it's almost possible to feel sorry for Intel, which must really hate the mobile industry. First, the company pissed money into WiMAX, which got killed off by the network operators in collusion with Qualcomm. Then Microsoft announces that desktop Windows will be ported to the ARM architecture used by every other chip manufacturer, and now, Intel's attempt to undermine Microsoft with its own mobile platform is in tatters with MeeGo redefined as a "project" by Nokia and kicked into the "longer term".

Not that Nokia has much to celebrate, with Microsoft taking some of the best services for itself as well as collecting OS royalties. Contact and calender synchronisation will inevitably end up with Redmond, on smartphones at least, as will e-mail. The Ovi store gets integrated into the Windows Marketplace. We're not sure that that means. Perhaps developers will be able to submit applications to either company, but more likely, Microsoft's store will take advantage of the operator billing that Nokia has been able to put into place.

Ovi Music could survive. Microsoft has no problem with alternative content providers as long as they integrate with the appropriate Windows Phone 7 hubs, but we've yet to hear any details on that.

Ovi Maps will be the location technology of choice, on Nokia's handsets at least. It's not clear what happens to other Windows Phone 7 manufacturers which is where things get interesting. Bing Maps is currently well integrated into the Windows Phone 7 experience, automatically linking to contact addresses and calender appointments. Bing Maps can also be utilised by third-party developers through a Silverlight control, and we have to assume the same functionality will be available on Nokia handsets using Ovi Maps instead. With a consistent interface, and Microsoft getting the advertising revenue, one has to wonder why Nokia would be so keen on providing maps anyway, other than to justify the $8bn or so the Finns spent on Navteq in 2007.

Nokia has never shown much interest in mobile advertising, which is surprising when Google spent $750 on AdMob, and Apple shelled out $275 on Quattro for its iAd platform. Even Opera managed to find $8m to buy up Ad Marvel. Nokia owns Novarra, which already optimises – and inserts advertising into – mobile browsing sessions for Vodafone UK and Yahoo, but Nokia seems happy to hand over the whole smartphone advertising business to Microsoft's adCenter.

In return Nokia gets "significant" and "substantial" amounts of marketing dollars, and a doorway into America. Like all European stars Nokia has always been desperate to make it big in America, sometimes embarrassingly so, and this deal will likely put it there, but America changes people, and the Nokia that succeeds there will not be the Nokia we remember.

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/14/nokia_microsoft/

Google Unveils Chrome 9 And Credits Reddit For Their Help Fixing It

Google has made a big deal recently about not making a big deal about the version numbers of Chrome. “It’s just a number” is the basic take these days. In fact, they can barely be even bothered to announce them at all sometimes. But today, they did actually take some time to acknowledge the latest version — and a funny partner who made it all possible.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 9, meaning the stable version of the browser has been updated to that iteration. They don’t make any mention of the number in the blog post about the update, but trust me, it’s version 9. Instead, Google focuses on the three new major features available to all in this build: WebGL, Chrome Instant, and the Chrome Web Store.

Many users will already be familiar with all of those as they’ve been on the beta builds of Chrome for a while, and the dev builds longer before that. But still, each is worth noting as all three are now a pretty integral part of the Chrome experience. WebGL brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics support. Chrome Instant brings Google Instant support to the Omnibox. And the Chrome Web Store is part of Google plans to push web apps farther.

But the more humorous part of the release comes from the Google Chrome Releases blog post. This post details the bug fixes that have come in Chrome 9. And in it, Google gives a special shout-out to the Reddit community for pointing out one critical bug. As Google notes:

Special thanks to the Reddit community, for playing so much of the game “Z-Type” that they uncovered a Chromium audio bug — see below!

Below, they detail the bug:

[69195] Critical Race condition in audio handling. Credit to the gamers of Reddit!

So there you go, while it wasn’t an “elite” bug or even a “l33t” one, it’s fun to see Google given credit to another service for pointing out their flaws.

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http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/03/google-chrome-9/

Media-Tech Meet-Ups in Vegas

Media and technology companies cozied up to each other at the Consumer Electronics Show this week, touting their collaborations on stage and flaunting their friendships at private parties all along the Las Vegas Strip.

Talks progressed on a number of potential deals. News Corp 's 20th Century Fox continued talks with hardware makers, including Samsung Electronics Co., to license a slate of Fox TV shows to tablet computers and the application stores on Internet-connected TVs, said people familiar with the situation.

The deals would allow consumers to either download or stream some Fox shows, which include the "Family Guy" and "The Cleveland Show." Samsung declined to comment.

But media and technology executives who met behind closed doors this week encountered a range of issues that are still keeping both camps apart. They suggest that even as media companies experiment with more distribution models, they are going to continue to be cautious about striking deals with technology companies as they sort out the impact of rapid technology changes on their businesses.

In the red-hot tablet world, media companies say that talks with technology companies have grown more complicated because of the range of partners involved in launching new products, including telecom providers, hardware makers and software makers like Google Inc.

In some instances, media companies say it is difficult to work out each company's agenda and who is ultimately responsible for making sure the content gets to consumers.

Both sides also still disagree on whether certain technologies, such as televisions that display content from the Web, are ready for prime time. One media executive whose company has been talking to hardware makers about providing content for their Internet-connected television services says the company hasn't struck a deal with players like Samsung and Vizio Inc. because it believes their software isn't sufficiently sophisticated.

Kevin Lee, vice president of Smart TV partnerships at Samsung, said in a briefing with reporters that content partners are eager to partner with Samsung. "There is no big issue."

Vizio CEO William Wang declined to comment in an interview Friday.

Most of all, media companies say they still want more money.

"The media is worried about business models," said Marni Walden, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. The company was at the conference seeking video and other content to distribute on tablets and phones.

Ms. Walden said Verizon is seeking deals for tablets, such as the Motorola Xoom, that in some cases resemble the four-year $720 million deal it recently struck for exclusive rights to NFL video content on smartphones.

TiVo CEO Tom Rogers said in an interview Friday that media companies, upbeat about the fact that the ad market is strong, aren't embracing new ad opportunities created by devices that port the Internet to television. "Media companies are not really getting ahead of it," he said.

But the partnerships between content and tech companies have come a long way as the lines between the industries have blurred. Years ago, the big media CEOs who occasionally walked the floor of CES were misfits. This week, they were part of the action.

In a Thursday morning keynote, Time Warner Inc. CEO Jeffrey Bewkes appeared on stage with Verizon Communications Inc. CEO Ivan Seidenberg, sketching out a vision of "TV Everywhere" in which video content would be freed from the TV and distributed to smartphones, tablet computers and other mobile devices over speedy and protected wireless iInternet connections.

Behind the scenes, potential partners had a lot to work through. Jonathan Miller, News Corp.'s chief digital officer, said one challenge is deciding which of the numerous device makers—and which of the different aggregators that build apps for lots of different devices—to strike deals with.

The problem is particularly acute across the Android ecosystem, he said, citing the variety of manufacturers, carriers and Google itself. "Who am I to deal with for different aspects of what we create?" Mr. Miller asked. "A big thing for us is to really get that map in place."

While a lot of the action this week involved tech companies courting media companies, the wooing is going both ways. In meetings in his hotel suite, News Corp. Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch demonstrated the company's soon-to-be-launched newspaper for tablets, called the Daily, for a variety of executives, including Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, according to people familiar with the matter.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703419104576068192735088396.html#ixzz1APiGpfnW