Wireless Archive

Nokia’s Q3 2013: $162 million profit, $7.79 billion revenue

Nokia has just announced its Q3 2013 financial results, revealing an operating profit of EUR118 million ($162 million) from EUR 5.66 billion ($7.8 billion) revenue. That's up massively year over year, but nonetheless represents another quarter of middling results. The report is the first since Microsoft agreed to purchase Nokia's phone business, and that division - Devices and Services - performed as expected, posting a small loss of EUR 86 million ($118 million).

So, Microsoft is buying the part of Nokia that is losing money, while the parts that make money remain in Finland. Seems like a good deal for Nokia-proper. In the meantime, Microsoft will be saddled with a devices division that is still losing money, and whose increase in sales consists largely of low-end, low-margin devices (like the 520). Interesting - especially since Windows Phone was supposed to prevent Nokia participating in a race to the bottom. I'm sure Microsoft's super-successful Surface division welcomes Nokia's devices division.

The cold truth: even more than 2.5 years after announcing the switch to Windows Phone, Nokia's Lumia range still cannot make up for drop in sales of Symbian devices and feature phones. This is roughly the same timeframe in which Samsung rose to the top. With Android.

Read into that what you will.

Ex-chairman admits Nokia was unsuccessful with WP

Jorma Ollila, ex-chairman of Nokia, admits Windows Phone was the wrong choice.

While Nokia brought in Elop and focused on Windows Phone, Ollila admits Microsoft's software hasn't helped the company. "We were not successful in using Microsoft's operating system to create competitive products, or an alternative to the two dominant companies in the field", he says, while noting it's "impossible to say what would have happened to the company if different decisions had been made in early 2011 or at some other time."

As if failing sales, a terrible financial situation, and a sale to Microsoft weren't enough evidence to conclude Windows Phone was the wrong choice for Nokia, we now have it straight from Nokia itself.

‘The problem with Android is choice’

I think many who extol Android's flexibility fall into the tinkerer category, including some tech bloggers. They love all the ways they can customize their phones, not because they're seeking some perfect setup, but because they can swap in a new launcher every week. That's fun for them; but they've made the mistake of not understanding how their motivation differs from the rest of us.

A whopping 70%-80% of the world's smartphone owners have opted for Android over iOS. You could easily argue that 3-4 years ago, when Android was brand new, that it was for early adopters and tinkerers. To still trot out this ridiculous characterisation now that Android is on the vast majority of smartphones sold is borderline insanity.

Choice is not Android's problem. People who assume out of a misplaced arrogance that they represent the average consumer are the problem.

This is how a Finnish journalist tried to save Nokia

This is quite possibly one of the most beautiful articles you'll ever read about Nokia's demise. Five years ago, in 2008, a journalist wrote a letter to Nokia, on his own behalf, as a regular person (so not as a journalist). In it, he detailed how Nokia phones used to be easy to use by everyone. However, the Nokia E51 he was using now was a complete mess, insanely hard to use. He ended the letter with prescient words: "This will cause problems for Nokia".

The letter made its way to Nokia, and apparently caused waves inside the company, up to the highest levels. Company executives wanted to explain the company's strategy to him, and eventually, one executive even met up with him on a personal note. After first parroting the usual corporate speak, the executive eventually broke.

"I agree completely with everything that you wrote in your letter and what you have said now."

I was astounded.

"I completely agree with you and I want to apologise on behalf of Nokia for producing a bad telephone for you."

Then he started to tell about how a top-secret project had been launched at Nokia, in which a completely new operating system was being designed. It would result in new kinds of telephones. They would be easy to use and they would change everything.

I met the director again a few years later.

Then it turns out that he had been talking about the Meego. However, the project moved forward slowly, and finally the new CEO Stephen Elop shelved it completely.

This same Nokia executive took one of the many original iPhones Nokia bought home right after it was released.

As an experiment, he gave the telephone to his daughter, and she learned to use it immediately.

In the evening as the parents were going to bed, the drowsy four-year-old appeared at their bedroom door with a question: "Can I take that magic telephone and put it under my pillow tonight?"

That was the moment when the Nokia executive understood that his company was in trouble.

Heart-breaking.

How to get real applications running on the Galaxy Gear

The Galaxy Gear just got interesting.

While the Samsung Galaxy Gear isn't the greatest piece of consumer technology we've ever seen, once you sidestep Samsung's not-very-useful software, you'll find a pretty cool platform for hacking.

The Galaxy Gear ships with a "USB debug" checkbox in the settings. Check that box, hook it up to a computer, and it will be usable with ADB, the Android Debug Bridge. ADB will in turn allow you to fire up a command line and sideload whatever you want onto the Gear's 4GB of storage. The Gear runs Android 4.2.2 with an 800MHz processor and 512MB of RAM, so it can run real apps just like any other Android device. Considering that the original Android phones all had 528MHz processors and only 192MB of RAM, the Gear is a miniature powerhouse in comparison.

This could very well be the saving grace for this otherwise mediocre consumer device. I'm very curious to see what the XDA community can do with this.

Galaxy Round is the first phone with a curved display

Samsung has taken the wrapper off its rumored smartphone with a curved OLED display. The Galaxy Round, which will launch on SK Telecom in South Korea, has a 5.7-inch 1080p screen the same size as seen on the company's Galaxy Note 3, but there's a difference - it curves on the vertical axis in a similar fashion to some of Samsung's OLED TVs.

Technologically interesting, but otherwise, I fail to see the point. The screen itself is probably more resilient than traditional ones, but since I'm assuming it has a glass cover, that aspect becomes moot. Also, it just looks weird.

Then again, everyone doubted the Note - now it's a legitimate category and the Note series alone sold more than 40 million devices, so what do I know.

Schmidt: Android more secure than iOS

Gartner analyst David Willis, who is chief of research for mobility and communications and who runs Gartner's Senior Research Board, said to Schmidt: "If you polled many people in this audience they would say Google Android is not their principal platform When you say Android, people say, wait a minute, Android is not secure."

Schmidt didn't miss a beat, replying, "Not secure? It's more secure than the iPhone."

I don't know if it's more or less secure - all I do know is that there is no evidence pointing either way. People sometimes pretend that something is evidence, like reports that there are more malware variants targeting Android than there are variants targeting iOS - which has absolutely nothing to do with which of the platforms is more secure. For instance, we had a report from antivirus peddler F-Secure a few months ago, which stated that 79% of malware families targeted Android. Great. Too bad it didn't actually tell us anything about infection rate, the statistic which would actually tell us something.

Only 1% of malware families might be targeting platform Xyz, but if that 1% of malware managed to infect large numbers of devices, it's a far bigger deal than the 99% of malware families targeting platform Abc but only managing to infect a small number of devices. This simple fact seems - sadly unsurprisingly - lost on most bloggers and journalists.

So, lots of talk about how Android is supposedly insecure (almost always pointing to reports from... Antivirus companies), yet no proof that actually backs this statement up. Let me just repeat this common mantra: if you install antivirus on your smartphone, be it Android or iOS, you're wasting space and processor cycles on absolute total pointlessness.

Schmidt saying that Android is more secure than iOS is just as completely and utterly idiotic as saying the reverse. Both are just fine as they are. And in case you still haven't seen the memo, despite decades of evidence: antivirus companies are scum. Do not trust them. Ever.

Windows Phone nears double digit share across Europe

The latest smartphone sales data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, for the three months to August 2013, shows Windows Phone has posted its highest ever sales share of 9.2% across the five major European markets* and is now within one percentage point of iOS in Germany. Android remains the top operating system across Europe with a 70.1% market share, but its dominant position is increasingly threatened as growth trails behind both Windows and iOS.

Good news for Microsoft - bad news for Apple. Of course, we'll have to see how the iPhone 5S and 5C affect these numbers.

An homage to the Nokia N9, 2 years on

Still, the Nokia N9 and its MeeGo Harmattan software platform remain unmatched in various aspects of user interface and user experience. Even though MeeGo Harmattan has essentially remained stagnant and frozen in time for 2 whole years, it still represents a benchmark in some ways for what a smartphone user interface should be.

Virtually every N9 owner I've ever talked to loves the N9 unconditionally. It could have been the Eve of Nokia's resurrection. Instead, it became the symbol of its demise.

European Galaxy Note 3 region-locked

I really thought the days of region-locking were dying with the DVD, but it seems I was wrong - Samsung has decided to revive the odious practice with its Galaxy Note 3 smartphone.

Yes, if you buy an unlocked Note 3 in Europe and travel to, say, the U.S., you will not be able to use a local SIM card. In other words, you will be forced to buy your carrier's outrageous roaming fees or go Wi-Fi-only.

The worst part is that this is not a joke.

Ixonos shows off its Android multi-window tech

Mobile devices are designed primarily as a modal experience. You use one app at a time, but can switch between them quickly. Multi-window interfaces and floating apps have been implemented a few times as an alternative, but most of these solutions are a bit clunky. Ixonos has released a new video demo of its multi-window technology, and it looks much better. If only we knew where to get it.

This is very awesome, and essentially very similar to Metro snapping - except with traditional windowing abilities, something Metro should have as well. They won't say who they are developing this for, but I wouldn't be surprised to eventually see Android applications running in a similar fashion on ChromeOS.

Just how inept was Nokia’s board?

Finland is boiling with rage this weekend over the $25 M bonus payment the CEO Stephen Elop is set to receive as he leaves Nokia after his two-year tenure. Questions are now being raised by the oddest aspect of the bonus: the board of Nokia seems to have given Elop a $25 M incentive to sell the handset unit cheaply to Microsoft way back in in 2010. This effectively means that the board hired a man who was given a giant carrot to drive down Nokia's overall valuation and phone volumes while preparing a sale to Microsoft. What could possibly be a reason to structure Elop's original contract in this manner? Did the board in fact end up promising Elop more compensation in case he sells the phone division than if he runs it with modest success?

Vindication. We were right all along.

BlackBerry cuts 4500 jobs, exits consumer market

So, BlackBerry has just announced it's exciting the consumer market, focussing on the enterprise instead. Worse yet, it's cutting 4500 jobs, half its workforce, which is a statistic for us, but a disaster for those involved.

The company sold just 3.7 million smartphones in the second quarter, most of which ran the older BlackBerry 7 operating system instead of the new BlackBerry 10. This means the Z10 and Q10 have been unmitigated flops. Hardly surprising though - even random people such as myself knew BB10 was going to be a hard, if not impossible, sell.

Cyanogen raises $7m to build a better version of Android

Cyanogen, makers of popular software based on Android that extends the abilities of smartphones, is making a bid for the mainstream. The four-year-old company, which began as a one-person side project, said today that it has raised $7 million from Benchmark Capital and Redpoint Ventures. The goal is to vault past Blackberry and Windows Phone to become the third-most popular mobile operating system, after traditional Android and iOS. And the company is already closer than you might think.

The announcement blog post has more details and background. This is either the best idea they've ever had, or the beginning of the end. I honestly have no idea which of the two it will be. I like the fact that they might be more popular than Windows Phone though - puts everything into perspective, doesn't it?

Sailfish runs Android applications, runs on Android devices

Users enjoying the unique gesture-based and modern Sailfish OS user experience will be able to take full advantage of the Android application ecosystem available through various app stores globally. Jolla will cooperate with leading global app stores to ensure users can seamlessly download Android apps just as they would do on any Android device.

Android applications, unaltered. Sounds great as a stopgap, but there's always the integration issue (will they make use of, say, Sailfish OS-native notifications and gestures?), and it may hinder the development of native applications. I'm curious to see how well it works.

Jolla has made a major breakthrough in Android hardware compatibility by developing Sailfish OS to run on common hardware produced for Android, particularly smartphones and tablets. Vendors interested to utilize Sailfish OS are now able to develop phones and tablets based on many different chipset and hardware configurations. This new level of compatibility will enable device vendors who use Sailfish OS to fully utilize the existing Android hardware ecosystem.

This is great news. This means that Sailfish OS will become available for popular Android phones, which will surely generate needed enthusiasm among people like us who read OSNews. Of course, the Jolla smartphone (mine's on pre-order, and I cannot wait) will be the optimal device for Sailfish, but this at least gives those who are interested the option to try Sailfish out before plonking down cash for an actual Sailfish device.

The specter of a Nokia Android phone

A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company's Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.

Another person said the idea of Nokia using Android wasn't a part of Microsoft’s discussions with the company about an acquisition, even though that was widely recognized as a possibility.

Windows Phone never fit into Nokia's DNA. It's too closed, too external, too controlled; Nokia had little influence over its own destiny with Windows Phone. It's not surprising that many of the brightest minds in the company left in the wake of the Windows Phone announcement (such as the team now at Jolla).

Nokia should have gone Android.

Samsung Galaxy Gear unveiled

The Verge on the Galaxy Gear:

There are a couple of significant downsides that temper my enthusiasm for the new Gear. First and foremost is the speed and intuitiveness of the user interface - or rather, the lack thereof. There's a tangible lag to anything you do with the Gear, while the swipe gestures are hard to figure out and do different things depending on where you are in the menus.

Also important will be the Galaxy Gear's battery life. It does use the Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy standard to communicate, but at 315mAh its battery is decidedly small. Samsung promises "about a day" of endurance from the Gear, but by the end of our briefing with the company, the cameras on most of its demo units were refusing to turn on due to the watches running low on power.

Yeah, no. I don't know what a smartwatch is, but this, is not it.