Dan Gillmor writes after a visit to Nokia:
“Life goes mobile,” Nokia’s president Ala-Pietila said recently in an interview at the company’s headquarters. “That is a much more powerful vision than the one we had.”
Nokia is betting it can again capture the market’s emerging sweet spot as mobile communications expand beyond their foundation in voice conversations to incorporate a multitude of data and multimedia features and services.
The company wants to keep leading in mobile voice and simple messaging, and then pull together a variety of goodies for mobile users of corporate data and consumer multimedia.
Consider photographs and videos, Ala-Pietila said, or getting key corporate data to people on the move. You first ask what functions are natural to extend to a mobile environment. Then you must figure out how to provide them on an end-to-end basis among various kinds of devices and communications services.
ts newer devices, including the increasingly common camera-equipped phones, have great potential in a service-focused world. An upcoming mobile game platform called N-Gage may draw snickers from serious PC or console gamers, but the mobility may well be a killer feature. No one knows for sure, but Nokia can afford to take the risk. Another new device, which combines an MP3 music player with phone and messaging, also looks like fun.
The next growth wave, Ala-Pietila said, will “build on the services and needs derived from mobile enterprise data and mobile consumer multimedia.”
Nokia+T
