S60 Open to new features

This is the final post in the MRKTNGman blog. I'm moving to a new position inside Nokia. S60 is going to be part of my job but I will focus to Internet and location based services and have a more holistic approach Nokia portfolio including Series 40 as well.

Before I close down this blog, I want to write couple of words about techy highlights and disappointments. I have been about 4 years in S60 marketing and it has been a good spot to follow the market and smartphone development.

Successes/Highlights:

- S60 browser. I'm very proud of the full web browser S60 has and everybody should know about this great thing!

- WiFi. Spreading to wider range of devices. Works well on Nokia S60 devices. I see space for development in Wifi/VoIP I also recognize extremely interesting disruption opportunities when SIP implementation gets mature and global WiFi roaming is in place in simple way for consumers. People deserve a world without artificial borders even when they use a mobile device.

- GPS, maps and navigation. The first implementations are out and it's already clear that this is going to change the way we use devices. Wait and see A-GPS in real life. No more waiting to get first fix when opening the app.

- Amount of available 3rd party native applications. Open platform has really shown it's value in here.

- Transition to 3rd Edition. We have more robust platform than earlier. Better compatibility, secure platform. I must say transition looked painful in the early days but it seems that things are going quite well now.

- Easier SW development. Open C was good step and soon we see how web run-time attracts new energetic web developers to mobile. 

- Technology around SW enhancing user experience. Memory, Displays, Cameras, Processing, etc. has developed very rapidly and made possible good usability.

- Smartphones are truly pushing into mass market. Cheaper models (by the way, do you know that in Nokia we never say cheaper, it's affordable, so funny) of S60 are coming to market. Once again: CHEAPER S60 phones:-)

Disappointments:

- S60 consumer marketing and feature brand is still not having consistent approach. We have over 100 million S60 users but less than 100 million people know about S60. Simple solution with no extra cost is add S60 to phone UI to visible place. Funny point here is that Real and Quickoffice brands are more visible than S60. It seems that for externals it is sometimes easier to get through ideas and requirement than for us own people.

- VoIP is a disappointment but also a big promise in mobile. Currently technology is just not mature enough for mass market IMHO. Fist use experience still needs work and has to be finetuned to make this a mass market service. Battery life is a real issue and has to be solved. Presence service is essential as well as user search. The first one of these is now coming to SIP.

- General slowness of S60 platform development. This is an open platform, innovation is out there! Utilization has been somewhat slow when I compare to proprietary platform. However I think this issue is going to better direction now.

- Telecommunication focus. S60 is the best ever telecommunication platform. It supports more operator requirements than any other software in the world! The truth is that these requirements can be very different for different customers. Differentiation in telecoms is understood so that it is enough to be just different. Elsewhere differentiation means building of sustainable position by executing differently. Having Vodafone red theme instead of Orange orange theme is not differentiation.

- Lack of prioritization and sometimes vision. Maybe the earlier bullet explains this. Less features, but better designed features, excellent quality and good usability. The longest feature list doesn't make a software the best.

- Trusting and implementing so called open standards, especially I'm referring to OMA. This has strong link to general slowness. Open standards are needed for air interface. In the other areas we have seen them to cause only failures. SMS was not standardized in OMA.

It has been great fun. Thank you all about discussion and comments. It has been so nice to meet bloggers in the S60 events. If you want to contact me in the future just send email to firstname.k.lastname at nokia dot com.

Have a wonderful summer 2007!

-Jouni

S60 truphone client is getting better. There are several improvements including presence tag which is absolutely essential in new VoIP services. I'd love to try this and write more about this fascinating VoIP solution but Truphone account doesn't work for me anymore. I just have this message under "My account":  "there was a problem creating your account. Please contact customer service" message appears on ". Truphone customer service hasn't been interested to reply to my question in one month, so it has been kind of hard to try this. Anyway for those of you interested about free calls on mobile, having S60 with WiFi and being lucky to have valid Truphone account this it might be worth of trying.

The worst thing in a corporate blogging is that you can't tell the most delicious stories and then easily outcome is somewhat boring. Like last week I had meeting with.... <censored>:-) But I don't need to write it, there are people who get it. Read this article.

Telecoms is special kind of industry and succeeding there needs special set of skills. Disruption will definitely come some day and different skills are needed. How to nurture those skills inside the company in the transition phase? It's so interesting to see is any of the current telco players capable of playing it right finally. It's so hard to cannibalize own business and this applies for both vendors and operators. Then we have a newcomer in the industry and lot's of agile start ups and youngster internet companies. Is Apple capable of shaking telcostagnation? Only time will tell. Already now I can say that it has changed mindset in Nokia and iPhone is not even out yet. I hope iPhone is even better than in the advertisements. It just means that consumers will get better products from all the rest. Heja competition!

Thank you for everyone who participated in Chicago. Evening with S60 in Chicago Nokia Flagship Store was a real success. Yahootinis were strong and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. Next week we'll do this in Helsinki . Don't miss it!

It has email, web browser, camcorder, HSDPA, Wi-fi and GPS and it can even dance!

The Nokia zippo was the first one. Now anorectic models (118g) are out anyway and there is a new dancing queen (210g).

Do you have ICE contact in your phonebook? I think everybody should have. So ICE stands for 'In Case of Emergency' . The original concept, conceived by Cambridge paramedic Bob Brotchie, involved putting the acronym ICE in front of your designated emergency contact.

This is a great idea, but you might lose caller id of your most used contact, because most likely ICE is someone who you already have in phonebook. If you add ICE card and it has the same number than earlier entry, calling line identification is not working anymore. Phone is using few last numbers of phone number to match with names and when there are 2 names with the same number it won't show any name. On icecontact pages there is a hint to add * after the number and it will fix this problem. I think the idea is just to save ICE number to common place, but it would be nice that calling from this particular device to ICE calling also works without editing the contact or using separate phone. With my S60 phone and Sonera SIM card I just get number not in use message if there is * added after number.

What I'm thinking here is a new feature for the phonebook. When you open the phone for the first time, it should ask date, time, location and finally ICE contact. (Of course if should be possible to add ICE contact later on). This ICE contact should be separated from the others so that it doesn't mess up caller id display. This feature would promote ICE idea and maybe after 2 or 3 years almost everyone would have ICE in the contacts. One principle around ICE is that the person whose name and number you are giving has agreed to be your ICE partner. Phone could then send SMS to your ICE contact and inform that you have added he or she to this contact.

What do you think? Any comments? No promises about delivery schedule. Now finally some models are getting energy saving alerts and this could be also nice Corporate Social Responsibility act from Nokia.

The Symbian Partner Event is taking place in London on 9th of May. Lots of interesting presentations and exhibition.  If you happen to be around, remember to visit S60 booth. I have nice set of Widgets there to demonstrate. See you in London!

Last week was very busy week in Madrid. S60 Summit, Demonstrations, parties, dinners. I barely found time to do any shopping there:-) Phil has already listed web coverage of the S60 Summit in see into S60. No need to repeat.

100 million S60 phones landmark is now reached. Samsung announced a new device SGH-i400 and LG starts to ship JoY in Europe. Nice milestones.

In my opinion S60 should systematically announce shipment numbers like Symbian. Every quarter! Not every now and then, including sometimes Nokia numbers, sometimes all licensees. There was an announcement on 3GSM time about  S60 shipments. "Nokia alone has cumulatively shipped nearly 85 million S60 enabled devices by the end of 2006". Now it's 100 million all the licensees all together. Cumulatively. I like hard facts, exact terms, systematic approach, not marketing BS. If you know a card game called tuppi, one very basic principle is that cumulative points are never counted. It only matters what you have now.

FON offered a free access point on last November and I joined the group. Now couple of weeks ago FON access point arrived and I became officially a Fonero.

FON works with S60 but when accessing FON connection could go more smoothly. For some reason my phone gives several times a message. "This site has sent an untrusted certificate. Continue anyway?". But yes, FON works with a wi-fi phone. Does anyone know how to get rid of the warning message?

Installing FON AP was easy. But having my access point displayed on FON maps in the right way wasn't that straight forward. I was waiting that my AP appears automatically on map. It never came. Then I found out that for some reason my access point on the map was initially located to South Korea and I had to correct it manually. AP range is not huge but coverage is available outdoors. Welcome Foneros to use it. No limitations for bandwidth:-)

EU has investigated mobile roaming charges in Europe. I wrote about this long time ago. Operators has been slow in this issue  and now EU is getting into real action. The EU's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy has voted overwhelmingly in support of the proposed cap on EU-wide roaming charges, fixing the price at €0.40 for outgoing, and €0.15 for incoming calls. EU is making easier for people to move around and make business in other EU countries but in ancient telco business you can see national boarders still too well. Regulation is strongly needed and this is a great step.

Now as a smartphone user I'm interested to know what's going to happen for roaming data charges. If voice roaming is extortionately priced, roaming data is not from this planet. It's no surprise for me that EU politicians know well Graham Bell and mobile versions of his innovation. But I'm afraid they haven't heard about mobile data service yet.