Nokia's second acquisition of LBS start up

After acquiring the start up Plazes http://plazes.com/ in 2008, the next lucky company to be acquired is Bit-Side. Bit-Side http://www.bit-side.com/ , which is a German based company with 39 employees is expected to be integrated into the Nokia Service Unit.

Bit-Side is a media-sharing software company with several products such as entertainment and games software and media –sharing programs for Androis, iPhone and Symbian.

Bit-Side is expected to focus mainly on Nokia maps. Seems like Nokia is looking for location based social networking. The company has strategically decided to expand and improve the navigation/LBS/maps etc in order to gain product competitive advantage and slowly move towards offering software as a complimentary product or stand alone.

Modu Gets $7M from Qualcomm; but would it be enough to actually launch the device?

I started hearing a different music from Mudo’s employees in the last couple of months, after the MWC 2008. Modu has an interesting idea but would the $7M be enough for the R&D completion, production, operation, marketing and sales?

It makes you wonder if for this competitive and dynamic market a low budget penetration strategy is recommended…think about the iPod massive global campaign to get into the music players market in 2005…It seems like a successful market penetration would need deeper pockets.

After raising a gigantic figure of $100M this round is not as promising but is probably crucial for the next period. Nevertheless, raising any dollar at this challenging time is impressive.

Nokia website change – is it the best execution to its strategy?

Align with the company's strategy to become an Internet leader; Nokia launches the new updates on the main site http://www.nokia.com/ . Nokia's continues effort to penetrate the new OVI services in the market is finally revealed at the home page. I actually wondered how long it would take Nokia to distribute OVI services through all their channels, especially the main site.

Talking about it on their home page is a significant move but is it enough? Let's say I'm interested at finding out about Nokia games, why doesn't it have a link to N-gage and each of the services from the home page? Now I need to choose a region and then a minimum of 4 clicks (in cased I know what OVI is…). I'm sure Nokia's aim is to drive more traffic to it's' sites, so why not make it easy and accessible?

Nokia's multi-brand strategy (Nokia, OVI, Mosh-mobi, ect) should be re-examined as it may confuses consumers and not necessarily being as efficient as possible…

Mobile Persuasion

Interesting presentation, iPhone Vs Nokia Tube…is it a lost battle? Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Mobile Persuasion

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: mobile design)

I have a dream – Personal Home Page

Getting daily invitations to join social/business networks, blogs, websites, search engines and many other online initiatives emphasizes the amount of web traffic we all consume. On one hand, information is transferred quickly and the amount of data is gigantic. On the other hand, web usability has still along way to go to meet customers’ needs.

The “Favorite” option on your Explorer, Mozilla, or Chrome is indeed helpful in managing web favorite sites but is it the ideal solution? It requires an active search of “pulling” the info required. An easy to use platform “push” based is an opportunity.

Google obviously has an interest at creating a one stop solution for all it’s web applications but is it the perfect solution?

I have a dream that when I open my laptop I will first open my personal home page with a drag and drop option for all my web data with a personalized design and recent updated news. I have a dream that my personal home page would have several widgets for search, email accounts, calendar, all contacts and easy access to my favorite sites – business and personal. I have a dream (agreed with Google) that all my info, favorites, blogs, sites would be organized clearly, efficiently and comfortably…

Mobile Trends for 2009

Taking into consideration the global economic slowdown, leading players at the mobile industry will have to adjust quickly and provide more source of revenue or increase existing channels to compensate decreasing mobile usage. Here are major trends for revenue growth:
1. SMS usage growth – despite of the economic crisis SMS usage is expected to grow, especially among the youth segment but not only.
2. Mobile advertising and ticketing/ coupons. Instead of receiving the invoice or ticket to your email, which is definitely not the best solution for the environment, customers will start receiving it as a MMS to the mobile. Easier, convenient and environment friendly.
3. Content and more content
4. Location Based Services – but not necessarily paid services. Google, Nokia and other players offer free maps; the trend of paying for navigation is yet to come.
5. Social networking on the go – the revolution of facebook, flicker and twitter will expand to the mobile as well.
6. Mobile Internet – dramatic increase of internet usage and a larger variety of services offered
7. Touch screen/ high end devices – for niche market
8. Mobile security – preparing the surface for mobile frauds and scams. Having access to growing information and billing methods
9. Bluetooth is becoming an advertising platform. Finally marketers will start to acknowledge this technological advantage for promoting products/services within a geographical area.
10. Quick Recognition/ 2DBar Codes – campaigns on newspapers and billboards that provide user with very fast access to information – anything from an SMS to a mobile link, to an application download. QR reader should be installed on the device (Nokia, Android devices).