Doing that amount of blogging, geez, it really takes it out of you.

There’s a lot going on and a lot still to publish. I’m just taking a break at the moment

Link: Nokia World Blog

In a Q&A session with OPK (check out Stephen’s earlier post if you’re not hip to that TLA), the unsurpressable Ewan MacLeod of SMS Text News brought some much-needed levity when he asked the Nokia CEO what his first handset was (a five-kilo monster in 1984 that stretched the limits of what could be a “mobile” phone), and what he’s currently carrying. It was hardly surprising to seem him pull out a Nokia E61, which seems to be the business phone du jour, at least for the Northern European set, knocking off the venerable Communicator.

The E61 is a pretty fantastic device, but its popularity raises another question: what next for the Communicator series? If mobile-phone sites and forums were to be believed, another Communicator was expected to be announced here. But with the success of a device like the E61, is the Communicator form factor outmoded and outdated? There’s not much that can be done on a Communicator that can’t be done on an E61 (camera aside, of course), and the Series 80 software platform’s been absorbed into S60, and the QWERTY thumboard is a more than capable sub for the bigger keyboard on the Communicator.

I’m in two minds about the Communicator. It’s a bit bulky for your suit, compared to an E61. I’d like to see the next generation though — if they can get it slim enough, it might be worth a look. Otherwise, I’m sticking with the E61 form factor.

Somewhere about 4am last night I woke from a dream feeling distinctly uncomfortable. I had thought that I was really late for the start of the conference today and had visions of arriving to find out that the huge pile of 2,000 free Nokia N93s had all gone.

The good news was that I saw it was only 4am.

The bad news was that the free N93-bit was, perhaps rather predictively, not entirely accurate!

I had a super time, and I’ve tons to post. I had to miss the party — bit of an arse that, but it means I keep everything organised in terms of schedules. I’m sat waiting for the plane at Amsterdam airport right now. Tons more to come.

Link: webitpr | SIL Wins Nokia’s Best Mobile Game Award

Telcogames, a global publisher, developer and distributor of mobile games, last night scooped the award for Best Mobile Game in the 2006 Forum Nokia PRO Awards.
SIL the latest puzzle game to be launched and developed by Telcogames is a 3D silhouette matching puzzle game available for all Smartphone devices and for download on PC.  The game is currently launching across carriers and non-carriers globally and has already generated buzz in the puzzle market with its clever innovative game play, simple and intuitive controls and its pure addictive nature. 

I was just about to write about this after finding the info in the conference pack, then got the email through from Webit. Congratulations to all at Telcogames.

Just saw Darla Mack, international mobile diva, on the summary video that Cliff played at the end of his wicked presentation. Hi Darla! She was in the movie talking about the Nokia New York launch. Cool!

I’m sat in Cliff’s presentation — focusing around the Nokia stores and the Nokia brand - fascinating.

He talked briefly about the new flagship stores in Russia, Chicago, New York — Rafe mentioned there’s a London one coming. Funnily enough the Nokia Lakeside Thurrock store wasn’t mentioned
He talked about the experience, the brand experience, the brand equity. Clearly he knows his stuff — having moved mountains at Nike and Ikea prior to joining Nokia.

The Consumer Experience circle

- The Desire to Change
- Hunt for information
- Purchase experience point — the most crucial for Nokia. The person in the store has a huge influence on what actually happens. If that sales person has been told to sell more Motorolas then that’s a real problem for Nokia.
- Setting the handset up correctly — before they leave their store
- Daily experience — how it works, how it performs
- Services and features
- Discover new services and features
- Help experience — when you come back to the brand to learn/get assistance
- Communication with the brand

Cliff commented that retail can play a part in every single part of these points.

Retail is the true media — the most powerful you can deliver.

And flagship –> Consumers need to truly understand what the devices can do — but they also want an experience to match their aspirations. They want to be wowed in the store, they want to feel good.

Great product, service, presentation, experience == loyalty, which has to be earned.

Nokia needs to ‘delight at retail’, ‘give people the best possible experience.’

The results so far:
- 5 stores today, Mexico coming soon, London site in Regent Street signed and identified

‘Who the hell identified the dummy phone’ — fine when it was just a phone, but when it’s the kind of devices available nowadays, we must put live handsets into the store.

Nokia experience a 40% increase in sales across stores where their live products are demonstrated. Shocking.

He doesn’t like the idea of connecting the phones to flipping great padlocks. They’re working on a way to try and meet the security requirements (to prevent folk stealing the handsets) so that you can get a good experience handling and playing with the live handsets in store.

Nokia store team members are trained for 6 weeks — all the way through the Nokia brand and product back catalog.

‘Customer satisfaction filled with moments of delight’ is a target.

Best sellers in the Flagship stores — the top of the range ones. The N-Series in particular.

Nokia’s flagship stores sell 165% of the market average — willing to pay top price.

Fascinating.

I caught John from Mobizines and Stuart of ROK in the Expo earlier. Will write more on that shortly.

I’m sat in the Q&A with the Nokia CEO. He’s a really intelligent chap. You know what, I couldn’t have identified him from a line-up an hour ago. He comes across very well.

There was an opportunity to ask him questions — some of them were getting a bit heavy, so I decided to lighten the load and asked the chap standing with the microphone if I could put two questions to Olli-Pekka. He agreed. Get in!

So here we go, EXCLUSIVE to SMS Text News (and every other blogger/journalist in the room):

SMS Text News: Olli-Pekka, what was your first ever handset?
Olli-Pekka: ‘You had to carry it around, it was a 5kg ‘handset’ — this is back in 1985, I think. It was ‘hand luggage’!

Woosh!

And my second follow-up question…

SMS Text News: Which handset - from the ones that you showed earlier would you pick? An E-Series or an N-Series handset?
Olli-Pekka: I use a Nokia E61 [he brings it out of his pocket]. I use this as a business phone and to read my email during the day.

I thought that was it, but then he continued to explain that in the evening or at the weekend, he uses an N-Series multimedia computer to listen to music and the like. Wicked.

I’m sat in the Nokia World Q&A and Kari Tuutti is busy introducing the Media Q&A.

I turned round to ask the people behind me what they thought of my new SMS Text News business cards. Alex of the Irish Independent was kind enough to rate my card — I asked him if he could do an out-of-10 rating and he reckoned ‘7′. Kudos Alex and thank you.

I got a cab to the RAI Conference Centre this morning with Mahmood Ul-Hassan (Account Director, Software Platform Sales, Nokia) and Adam Birchall (Senior Manager, Technology CMO, Nokia). Friendly chaps. They were accompanied by an unidentified executive from a UK mobile operator (I said I’d keep him anonymous!).

Chap to the bottom right of me. He’s been sat trying to get his Windows Mobile device connected to the wireless LAN here for about 45 minutes — even longer than the poor lady with her Windows laptop one seat along.

His phone has been making little chirrips and chippy sounding noises. Looks like a Vario. What an idiot, eh?
He’s just put the phone away in frustration.

Here are some headlines from Luca’s presentation.

The Italian market is worth 43 billion Euros — 23 billion mobile (about 50% margin!!), 20 billion fixed line.

TIM has almost 90% of fixed line revenues and 42% of mobile revenues of the entire Italian market.

Key competitor is Vodafone.

Talked about the Italian’s wish to *buy* new handsets.

About 20-23 million handsets sold each year for 2.5 billion euro. TIM distributes about 1 billion euro worth of handsets.

Luca talked through a heck of a lot of different price plan and value propositions that they have been introducing. Listening to him talk is just completely painful. TIM clearly are pushing the marketplace forward. TIM, based on what Luca is saying, are streets ahead of some of the languishing shitty UK operators.

Really sharp suit.

I’ve been taking some pictures of stuff going on — ok, so I’m sat like the Prat-at-the-Back, but you know, it’s always nice to see some pictures.

Carlo turned to me just a moment ago, ‘Are you uploading those to Flickr?’ he asked.

‘Errrr,’ I say, ‘Errr, it’s a Three phone,’ I say, waving my N73 at him.

Carlo looks at me a little bit strangely. (Then points his finger and laughs, noting with derision that even with his American SIM, he gets full and unfettered 3G net access here.)

‘ShoZu doesn’t work on Three,’ I explain, ‘I’m going to have to bluetooth the pictures to the laptop.’

Where are you Mr Three CEO. I’m stuck at the sodding Nokia conference not able to get my photos to the sodding INTERNET because of your sodding policies. Bring on X-Series and open up the SODDING INTERNET gateway.

I thought that perhaps since I was in Holland, I might be able to use ShoZu properly. Not at all.

I was quite prepared to pay stupid-rates-per-meg for the privilege.

The lady in front of me has only just got her Windows laptop working and connecting to the internet. Ridiculous. Get a mac, lady!

Thought I’d try a Steve-Jobsy live(ish) record of Olli’s keynote.

Less than 15% of people are using the internet.

Approximately 41% of the world’s population will own a mobile phone. Of this, 13% will be using their mobile to access the internet.

1.3 million new mobile subscribers every day. 15 people every second.

More than 500m people have made their first ever phone call from a mobile device. People who never heard the dialtone. Likewise people who’ve never used a PC to access the internet are using their mobile to do so.

3 billion mobile subscriptions to be reached in 2008. Reckons it will be 3 billion next year. 4 billion subscribers globally during 2010.

Half the new subscribers to come from China and India.

Working on reducing the total cost of ownership of a mobile phone in half. I imagine this means the cost of ‘buying’ a mobile phone, not getting screwed by your mobile operator for 40p a minute

65% of the global market for phones is due to replacement — raising to 80% in a few years.

970 million mobile devices to be sold this year.

He’s shown us some new handsets (announced yesterday) and talked about their new ‘E’ series business line.

In a study across 11 major markets, 36% of 18-24 year olds browse the internet regularly from their mobile and are participating in online communities and networking.

850 million people today are using Nokia devices.

Reckons there’s great momentum to connect more people to the internet than any other company in the world.

There’s some WiMax enabled handsets coming in 2008.

Nokia is the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players. Vision is for people to access all the music they want, anywhere, anytime and at a reasonable cost. Cites an example of the Loudeye Nokia Music Community — apparently led by David Bowie

Reckons Mobile TV will move to a mass market phase in 2007.

Showed ‘tap and go’ mobile payments with the Nokia 3220 PayPass / MasterCard solution… I’ll need to look that up.

Showed Flickr working with the N95 — together with flickr integration. Showed pictures on screen with a Nokia N73. Theyre ‘truly challenging the standalone digital camera market’ head-on.

Showed some examples of location based services with the Nokia 770 tablet.

I’m in the conference centre. There’s wireless internet access back in the press area. Smart.

The introduction is being led by:

- Keith Pardy, Senior Vice President, Nokia Strategic Marketing, Nokia
- Alastair Curtis, Chief Designer, Nokia

The two chaps are doing their overview and welcome. I’m wondering if there’s going to be anything worth doing a real-time Steve-Jobs-style blog process? We’ll see.

Anyway, I’m thoroughly enjoying the experience.

So here’s how I am thinking of playing it. I’ll take the laptop and the E61. I’m going to attend each of the morning presentations then I reckon I will a) document the Expo and b) check out the ‘Connecting Simply’ stream.

I might be able to blog with a prolific sense of wonder or maybe I’ll need to bottle it all up and blog later on. We’ll see. Standby Huston.

MacLeod out.

That’s me established in the hotel off one of the main squares here in Amsterdam. I’ve seen quite a lot of interesting mobile related things already and I haven’t even been anywhere near to the Nokia World 2006 conference

For instance, I was rather impressed to find a disposable battery for Nokia (and other makes) hanging off a shelf at the Stansted Airport WH Smiths. £4.99 per pack — giving up to 480 minutes standby time… and, well, I can’t quite remember the talk time. Smart though, if you need power. I almost bought one so I could take a picture and document it here — until I noticed it had the large Nokia battery lead. They’ve recently swapped to small power leads and I forgot to bring my converter.

I am only in Amsterdam for 24 hours. Not even 24 hours, actually. Such is my jetset lifestyle. I have a critical meeting that I need to attend physically in London on Thursday morning, so I’m flying out tomorrow night.

I don’t quite know what blogging opportunities there will be at tomorrow’s conference. I’ll take the Apple anyway and we’ll see. Otherwise I’ll take as many pictures as I can and then post-blog it.