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Author Archive for Payam Dastmalchi

By Payam Dastmalchi on July 22nd, 2009

Review: Blackboard for Nokia 5800

Blackboard for Nokia 5800 is a simple drawing application simulating a blackboard. The application can be downloaded for free from the Ovi store.

bboard

Features:

This is a very simple app. There are four touch control buttons: info, chalk, sponge and exit. Chalk is used for drawing and sponge for erasing. Sponge leaves wet trails simulating reality.

Actual drawing is done overlaying partially transparent PNG image on top of the background graphic. The erase functionality works just like erasing a blackboard in real life and does not clean neatly and leaves behind a mark. The information key is just rather a small box with the current version and company name.

Conclusion:

Blackboard for Nokia 5800 was developed by a Finish based Offscreen Technologies. The company has developed an end to end, integrated development environment for Symbian S60 3rd and 5th edition GUI application developments called Origo IDE. This unique empowers developers to quickly write codes in UI based environment compared to those created with C++.

Using such technology, Offscreen has been able to develop several high quality touch applications for S60 devices. Blackboard for Nokia 5800 is a simple app that many could find it handy for quick note taking and fun drawing projects.

General • Utilities
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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 21st, 2009

Nokia Internet Radio

Internet Radio , Search and listen for radio stations over the internet

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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 20th, 2009

Bloomberg

News & Info- Market news, stock prices, charts and analysis by Bloomberg TV.
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Apps
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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 19th, 2009

New Apps on Ovi Store

According to Nokia sources, they are now approving over 100 apps a day so we are starting to see series of new and interesting apps appear at the Ovi store. Here are some of the latest apps on Ovi store.

Touchnote – Utilities – $9.99 for 5 Pack

This is by far one of the most interesting apps in the store. Touchnote which just this past week was declared the best Mobile app service at the MobileBeat 2009 conference, lets you capture a moment on your camera phone and send it as a physical greeting card to anywhere in the world.

I Parked Here – City Guides/Maps – $ 2.99

This is another app that uses the location-based technology to help you remember where you parked. The app uses cell connections instead of the GPS systems and guides you to the car by turn by turn navigation and set up parking meter alarms.

Compass Touch – City Guides/Maps – Free

Simple but very useful app that turns your phone to a compass and gives you direction in degrees and longitude and latitude coordinates.

Battery Extender – Utilities – 14 day Trial / $14.99

Another great app from the makers of Tweets60 , that extends the battery performance of smart phones by fine tuning the settings on your device.

Motion Board – Games – $4.99

This is a great looking game that uses the phones accelerometer and challenges your body balance and handling techniques.



Apps and Games • Featured
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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 18th, 2009

Oviapplications Weekend Hits 7.18.09

  • Symbian Foundation launches Horizon apps store. Through this program, developers will get help building applications for Symbian devices and getting them in global marketplace. [VentureBeat]
  • On another Symbian news, Nokia sells off Symbian professional services to Accenture. This is another smart move from Nokia to distance itself from Symbian so other manufactures feel comfortable adopting the technology. [Accenture]
  • Another expensive Nokia phone will hit the shelf in U.S. On Friday Nokia announced the availability of 8MP Nokia N86 in the coming weeks. The company claims that with this phone, consumers will be able to replace their point-and-shoot digital cameras. [CNET]
  • In an interview with ComputerWorld, Nokia’s Product Manager for the US, discusses some of the challenges that the company has faced in NA and their plans to rectify its position. [ComputerWorld]
  • Google believes mobile app stores are a dead end and that unlimited data plans are the future. Google’s VP of Engineering Vic Gundotra also declares that web apps will win against native mobile apps. [WIRED]
General
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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 16th, 2009

Nokia’s Q2 revenue numbers

Nokia has just released their Q2 revenue numbers and as many expected they are hurting to say the least. Nokia’s operating profit was down 66% to 380 million euros compared to 1.1 billion euros last year ( wow, imagine that) with net sales dropping 25 percent YoY to to 9.9 billion Euros. Ouch!

The good news for Nokia is that they seem to be still selling tons of smart phones with Nokia 5800 XpressMusic being the most popular phone with 3.7 million units being sold this quarter alone. Nokia’s E71 device has also received a great response with a total of 5 million units shipping out. Nokia said that its smartphone market share rose to 41%.

In a statement, Nokia also said that it expects mobile device volumes in the third quarter to be approximately at the same level or slightly sequentially. The company also said it expected some delays and shortage in the third-quarter launch of new smartphones due to supply constraints.

Nokia shares fell 12% in early trading Thursday.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 16th, 2009

Only 2% of Ovi apps use LBS

As a follow up to my post yesterday about the state of LBS available in the Ovi store, a new study done by Skyhook Wireless reveals that Nokia Ovi store has the smallest ratio of available apps to LBS apps with only 2% of Ovi apps using this feature.

The report which analyzed the trends by looking at all the location-aware apps from Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Marketplace, Blackberry App World, Nokia’s Ovi Store, and the Palm App Catalog shows that $0.99 is the most popular paid category, and only a handful of apps sell for $6.00 to $8.99. Some location apps sell for $9.99 or higher in both stores. Most of these high-priced apps are navigation or sports-related like golf and sailing.

According to the report, there are currently 23 location-aware applications in the Ovi store and there is a about 43/57 split between paid and free apps. The average price of an app is $3.11 with Utilities and social networking services being the most popular category in the Ovi store.

Now the real question is why are developers afraid to integrate more LBS apps for Symbian platform. Nokia has been committed in this space with several high profile acquisitions including the $8.1 billion takeover of Navteq so it is surprising to learn that we haven’t seen any innovative products come out.

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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 15th, 2009

Ovi Store Impresses First time Visitors

imagesPress Release : The recent Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Lab insight, “Ovi Store by Nokia Impresses First Time Visitors,” evaluates the recently launched Nokia Ovi application store. Target users evaluated the core aspects of the application store experience, including overall navigation and layout, content browsing and content acquisition.

Strategy Analytics’ user evaluation found that Ovi Store by Nokia has a simple and consistent layout and has a very intuitive content acquisition process – something that particularly impressed first time application store users. However, the current category layout is somewhat confusing, and needs to be improved as Ovi Store makes more content available to users.

“Users liked the multiple payment options that Ovi Store provides,” according to Christopher Dodge, Analyst, in the Strategy Analytics User Experience Practice. “Allowing payment via operator billing and credit card payment gives users flexibility as to how they pay for content.”

Paul Brown, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, added, “Browsing through content requires too many clicks. As the amount of available content increases, it is important that structure of Ovi Store improves.”

Press Release
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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 15th, 2009

Location-Based Applications for Nokia

location_based_services

One of the trends that we are noticing this year is the availability of more Location-Based Services (LBS) and applications. Using mobile devices, these applications leverage a users physical location to know where you/ and your friends are and use this data to provide enhanced services and experiences. We’ve also seen Internet giants such as Google enter into this market with Google Latitude and help fuel innovation across the board.

Luckily Nokia’s S60 and Series 40 platform includes a wide range of features to help developers and content producers make rich LBS applications and services. In this post, I am going to profile several of these apps that are available to download from the Ovi store.

Nulaz:

Nulaz mission is clear: “What is happening around you”- With Nulaz you can see where your friends are, share locations, and view local info. Nulaz also enables you to share this information with other social network (Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc).


Buzzd:

This is another location based social network and city guide that keeps track of local information in real time and helps you connect with people, events and places around you.

PhoneLocator:

PhoneLocator native S60 realtime GPS tracking application for Nokia S60 phones. It allows you to view the location of your phone and a trail of where it has been using this website.

Near Here:

For $2.99, you can download this City Guide app that helps you search for pretty much anything around you. With Near Here you can find practical places, your current location and save them in your phone memory for future.

Trackut:

Trackout is a free location based streaming service that enables users to create location oriented groups, network with friends and share location tagged data.

Looking at other mobile app platforms Ovi store has a lot more grounds to cover when it comes to LBS but this is one area that Nokia is very familiar with. Remember they made an acqusition of Berlin based Plazes last year which has evolved into Nokia Maps. With Plazes and other recent acquisitions (Twango, Loudeye, etc) Nokia is in a great position to connect people through location-based services, maps, music communities and gaming services.

Featured • General • Social Networking
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By Payam Dastmalchi on July 14th, 2009

Why American consumers don’t like Nokia phones

nokia-morph-concept-1

There has been a lot of speculation in recent weeks about the future of Nokia phones and Symbian OS. Many insiders believe that Nokia has missed number of trends in the last few years and it will be hard for them to catch up. A recent study done by Generator Research suggests that iPhone could surpass Nokia as the smart phone leader by 2013. The report predicts that Nokia will see its market share cut in half to just 20 percent by 2013 and names the rapid increase of the applications available for iPhone and price drop of 3G model to $99 as primary reasons for this.

This morning Wired magazine also published an article about why American consumers stay away from Nokia phones. This report is particularly interesting to me because in my previous job, I worked for one of the largest Mobile carriers in the US and I was part of Nokia’s “Retail Evangelist” team and we used to sit in focus groups and talk about this very specific issue and how Nokia can improve its market share in the US.

The article lists 7 items:

  1. Weak Brand and the fact that Nokia has stayed low key in their marketing efforts to compete with rivals.
  2. Lack of focus on CDMA handsets – believe it or not, many people in the US still use CDMA networks.
  3. Poor execution when launching the Ovi store or other high end phones.
  4. Lack of carrier relationships to subsidize handsets and put them in consumers hand.
  5. Unusual handset design- The article talks about the “American Standards of Beauty” which essentially means design values doesn’t matter in the US and consumers want something thin.
  6. Symbian OS.
  7. Lack of decent apps in the Ovi store.

Thinking back about my Nokia focus groups, this list is pretty legit and I think majority of consumers will agree that if Nokia plans to rival Apple or Palm then they have a bigger task of changing their overall culture and focusing on what matters the most to handset owners in the US.

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