Nokia

Some speculations in the media say that Nokia and Microsoft may announce their new smartphone on August 17. The rumors are based on a joint invitation sent by the two companies Monday for a “party” scheduled for this date. The party will be held in Cologne, Germany.

The invitation does not specify what the event will be all about. It only mentions that there will be a live act, great djs, and free grub. Still, this fact gave some feed for the speculations that the event will be crowned with the announcement of Nokia's first Windows Phone 7-based smartphone.

Motorola Solutions Inc was declined to dismiss a class action lawsuit filed against the company over allegations that it misled its shareholders about deteriorating prospects for its cellphone business, resulting in investment losses.

On Monday, US District Judge Amy St. Eve in Chicago ruled there is a "genuine dispute" as to whether predecessor company Motorola Inc in 2006 and early 2007 hid key information about its ability to compete with such rivals as Nokia Oyj and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Pictures of the upcoming Nokia phone on Windows Phone 7 platform leaked the Internet. The images were published by the Hungarian website TechNet. Earlier Nokia unveiled its plans to launch first Windows Phone 7 smartphone this year, while the sales are scheduled for the next year.

The handset codenamed Sea Ray almost absolutely replicates recently announced N9 excluding the flash light placed in another corner and camera button on the side. The smartphone runs Windows Phone 7 Mango.

Nokia announced its first and last MeeGo running smartphone N9 this week in Sigapire.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that the commercial launch will take palce later this year. As you know Nokia abandoned its plans to further support MeeGo after it entered into a partnership with Microsoft to adopt its Windows Phone platform for all its mobile devices. However, Nokia decided to unveil one of the models it was working on.

The N9 handset features a large touchscreen and comes in black, cyan and magenta colors.
 

As Nokia has freed the niche in the market with the abandoning to develop its own software Research In Motion is missing crucial targets to introduce its new BlackBerry models, thus disregarding the still free space.

Citigroup downgraded RIM to “hold” from “buy” and explained in a note that new BlackBerry touchscreen models may miss the crucial back-to-school buying period due to production delays, while giants Apple and Google zoom ahead.

Microsoft plans to purchase Nokia’s mobile division - smartphones, feature phones, plain-vanilla phones – for $30bn and the deal is expected to complete this year as "both companies are very much in a hurry," as speculated by a prominent blogger Eldar Murtazin, the publisher of Mobile-Review.

While Murtazin didn’t specify the amount of $30bn in his blog post the figure was cited by SoftSailor, which doesn't point to their specific source.

Nokia discards its Ovi brand as the company is preparing to make smartphones based on Microsoft’s mobile operating system Windows Phone 7. Starting July and August some new Nokia phones will see the Ovi service rebranded as Nokia services in a transition that the company expects will continue into next year, according to a blog post. For example, Ovi Maps will become Nokia Maps.

As Nokia abandoned further development of Linux-based MeeGo operating systems mobile phone maker LG Electronics and others are moving toward adopting the platform.

Last year the association of Nokia and Intel produced an open sourced MeeGo but later the Finnish phone maker declined to work with it shifting to Microsoft’s Windows Phone instead.

The launch of new handsets by HTC overshadowed that of Nokia who announced this week two new Symbian based models. HTC unveiled its HTC Sensation that features a great library of movie and TV shows via a wide screen and with a fast 1.2GHz processor.

This week Nokia launched two new models on an updated Symbian platform that features new icons, better text input, faster Internet browsing and a refreshed Ovi Maps application.

Today Nokia unveiled two new smartphone models on a new version of its Symbian software platform. According to the official statement the new models the E6 and the X7 will come later this quarter priced at 340 euros ($491.6) and 380 euros respectively excluding subsidies and taxes.

Stephen Elop, Nokia’s new CEO, said earlier in February that Symbian software is not good for the company adding that the company would instead use Microsoft Corp's unproven software as its primary platform.

A new forecast made by Gartner echoed similar conclusions of IDC saying that Android will be a dominant operating system with Windows Phone 7 to come on the second place by 2015.

Further the latest Gartner forecast shows that Apple’s iPhone OS will decline to the third place behind Windows Phone while RIM’s BlackBerry will come fourth that year.

This fall Nokia plans to update its mobile operating system Symbian^3. Nokia Benelux product manager Mark Dressen was talking about the future plans of the company this week. He said that in the fall of 2011 Symbian^3 will have a revamped user interface which will affect such models as E7 and E8. Other models like C6 and C7 may be included too.

SponsorPay has announced that it has received US $5 million from Nokia Growth Partners (NGP) and existing investors. The Series A2 funding is directed to expand mobile platforms of SponsorPay.

“Since inception, we’ve focused on delivering a high quality user experience and expanding the business internationally to achieve a premier position in the industry. The investment allows us to carry our success forward to the mobile market. We are excited to work with such a reputable financier,” commented Andreas Bodczek, CEO and co-founder at SponsorPay.

A new Windows Phone update is to come soon, as promised by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who also said that new partner Nokia would supply "absolutely phenomenal" handsets.

While the market has a skeptical attitude towards the new alliance, Ballmer believes that the scale that Nokia would bring to an already improved Microsoft mobile platform will be good news for operators, developers and consumers.

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said on Sunday that a deal with Microsoft would bring billions to the mobile phone maker. Last week the company announced its alliance with Microsoft to rival Google and Apple in the smartphone industry.

"Microsoft is contributing to Nokia substantial monetary value," Stephen Elop said on Sunday in a presentation ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"Some people interpret that to be in the millions or tens of millions," said Elop, who left Microsoft to take the helm of Nokia in September.