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• Mobile

By Tony Hallett, 4 November 2002 16:45

NEWS Nokia has announced a slew of new products which reveal the mobile giant's intention to move away from the relatively narrow market which made it the company it is today. It has unveiled a range of devices which focus non voice-oriented services, has marked its desire to diversify by entering into the games market with a console handset, talk of a web services software strategy and an upgrade to its Series 60 terminal platform. Of the five phones unveiled - most due to hit shelves in the first quarter of next year - the dual-mode Nokia 6800 catches the eye. It uses a hinge above its colour screen to allow a QWERTY keyboard to fold out, a bit like a straight boomerang. It is clearly aimed at those for whom text input is essential and also features a stereo FM radio, SyncML support and Java and MMS functionality. Alongside it in the category marked 'distinctly different' is the Nokia 5100. According to the marketing spiel, this tri-band handset "combines wearability and durability", featuring a stopwatch, thermometer, torch and even a calorie counter. In addition to a low-end phone for any first-timers still out there - the Nokia 2100 and the Nokia 7250, an attractive tri-band integrated camera phone - was the Nokia 6100, the handset giant's smallest and lightest effort to date, and due by year's end. Anssi Vanjoki, executive VP Nokia Mobile Phones, said: "This is how far the mobile phone can go. It has been perfected." Indeed, the theme at the Nokia Mobile Internet Conference in Munich has very much been about non-voice technology, recognising the need for operators to add services in addition to voice to raise average revenue per user (ARPU) levels. In this vein, the company also announced the Nokia N-Gage game deck, which looks a little like a Nintendo GameBoy. Vanjoki confirmed the model marks an entry into the gaming market but more details, including relationships with games developers, will be revealed next February. More importantly for other developers and enterprises, Nokia has made available server software for carriers - making it easier to detect users' presence, which is important for instant messaging and other applications - and mobile web services interfaces, crucial for linking together applications and components over the internet, ultimately delivering software as a service. A new version of Nokia's Series 60 software, which sits on top of the Symbian operating system, allowing easier porting of applications across handsets, is also out. Series 60 version 1.2 fits in with Nokia's theme of promoting open architecture. Niklas Savander, VP and GM Nokia Mobile Software, said: "Us alone is not going to make things better." And as if to underline a commitment to more than handsets - Nokia's most lucrative business and the one in which it is by far the market leader - the company showed off a music stand you can slot a phone into and play MP3s and downloaded songs out loud a camera headset featuring a VGA camera and voice activation and an observation camera. These will be available in the coming months and the last, in particular, is interesting. Looking like a webcam, it will sit on a desk or can be screwed to a wall, allowing a user to get pictures sent to a phone, or audio to be played back live. The opportunities for child minding or property security are broad but the device will require a separate SIM card and account.