“The big M, Motorola, announced its latest offering calling it a media monster. The Motorola Z8 boasts superior quality video capture and playback on a cell phone, with up to 30 frames-per-second video and 32GB expandable memory.The Z8, apparently also the world’s first kick slider, will hit the stores in Europe and Asia in June, while those in the Americas may have to wait longer than that. Heavy-duty features include mobile TV, and a 512MB memory card pre-loaded with The Bourne Identity (remember the car chase?)Thanks to the Z8’s HSDPA support, you can experience mobile broadband in the fast lane at 3.6Mbps. With dedicated access keys to get to your music first as well as storage for up to 1000 songs, you can take advantage of the Bluetooth AVRCP and A2DP profiles with the bundled Motorokr S9 stereo wireless headphones.The Moto Z8 allows one-click sharing of your photos and videos via easy uploading to Flickr, MySpace and YouTube. Mobile content services from BSkyB can also be accessed on the handset. More specs and features in the extended entry.” via mobilewhack.com
Symbian Q1 Results 15.9 million phones shipped
Symbian have released their Q1 2007 figures, highlights include a total of 15.9 million phones shipped in the first 3 months of the year, cumulative shipments of 126.4 million and cumulative shipments in Japan of 20 million Symbian OS phones. The summary highlights are as follows:
15.9m Symbian smartphones shipped by licensees in Q1 2007, a 35.9% increase on Q1 2006 (Q1 2006 – 11.7m). 126 million cumulative Symbian smartphone unit shipments, as of 31 March 2007. 20 million cumulative Symbian smartphone unit shipments milestone reached in Japan since first 3G Symbian model shipped in 2003. All models shipped since have been 3G.
14 new Symbian smartphone models commenced shipment in Q1 2007: 12 models were 3G enabled and eight models were for the Japanese market, launched in diverse segments including business, mobile TV, music, fashion, sport.
New Symbian smartphone models which were announced in Q1 2007 but were not shipping as of 31 March 2007 include the MOTORIZR Z8, the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic, the Nokia 6110 Navigator, and Eseries devices for the enterprise: the Nokia E90 and the Nokia E61i. Those already shipping include the Nokia N93i, Nokia N76, and Nokia E65.
Symbian announced the latest evolution of its product, Symbian OS v9.5 , which brings high performance features designed for richer consumer and enterprise experiences as well as significant savings to phone build costs and time-to-market.
At 3GSM in February 2007, Telefonica Móviles Espana, T-Mobile and Telecom Italia announced their choice of a platform based on Symbian OS . They join Vodafone, Orange and NTT DoCoMo in sharing the benefits of reduced time-to-market for new service delivery, scalability, and cost reduction.
7,478 third party Symbian applications are commercially available, as of 31 March 2007, up 58% (Q1 2006 – 4,735 applications).
The sale to Sony Ericsson of UIQ Technology AB and intellectual property rights in the UIQ user interface were completed.
In the press release there’s an Executive Summary from Nigel Clifford that is well worth reading.In the Symbian Outlook section of the summary Clifford comments that:
“We are seeing two significant areas of new smartphone growth in addition to the established multimedia and enterprise markets: emerging economies and mass market segments. Both have stringent requirements for security, high performance, extended differentiation, long battery life, and low cost. Through deep collaboration with Symbian OS licensees, support of a thriving ecosystem and development of market-leading multimedia, graphics and connectivity solutions, Symbian is driving the market, enabling even richer experiences at lower cost.We look forward to continued growth in adoption of Symbian OS through 2007. We will see a continuation of innovative devices across a range of segments from the world’s leading handset vendors, who have all launched or are developing phones on Symbian OS v9.”
This sums up the story for Symbian for 2007 and beyond. While it will continue to innovate and invest at the high end there is a major focus on expanding the accessible market for Symbian OS. By driving down costs Symbian can bring its software to further segments increasing both the overall numbers but also increasing the impact of advantages gained by using a platform.
Nokia rev's Linux tablet firmware
“March and April have been busy months for Nokia and its Maemo open source software project. The results include new firmware releases for Nokia’s Linux-based 770 and N800 Internet tablets, along with a much-improved Maemo.org website and new software roadmap.Interestingly, Nokia previously said it would not offer a fourth firmware update for the 770 Internet Tablet, now about a year and a half old. However, developer interest apparently led to an “OS 2007 Hacker Edition” that includes many applications backported from the newer N800’s firmware (missing are applications licensed from third parties specifically for the N800). In an outstanding review of the new OS 2007 firmware published at Linux.com, Nathan Willis praised Nokia for continuing to support the 770, despite financial sacrifices involved in doing so. His review concludes, “Maemo 3.1 is incrementally better than maemo 3.0, but the investments that the company has made in growing the developer community are better still. I secretly harbor the suspicion that — despite public denials — at least some thinkers inside Nokia view maemo as a potential replacement for Symbian on its mobile phone lines. If so, they are laying good groundwork.”Meanwhile, Nokia has delivered its first firmware upgrade for the N800 Internet Tablet, which shipped about six months ago. The “3.2007.10-7” firmware release reportedly improves video and Flash performance, adds support for the device’s built-in FM radio, and increases Opera browser stability. However, the update still leaves the N800 unable to render Flash websites such as YouTube well, nor to properly display some websites based on AJAX and other recent technologies, according to Willis. He suggests Nokia ditch Opera for Minimo, a cut-down version of Mozilla whose development is partly sponsored by Nokia, according to anonymous sources.The new firmware releases for the 770 and N800 are both based on Maemo 3.1, which shipped at the end of March. Both are distributed through Nokia’s Tablets-dev.Nokia.com website. To learn more, find Willis’s Linux.com review here. Or, visit the freshly updated Maemo.org website, which features a new software roadmap and a new trademark usage policy. “via linuxdevices.com