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

If you are interested to see more 3rd Edition PF2 screenshots in familiar use cases, have a look to s60 pages. The flash animation is now updated to FP2 level. Graphical UI transition effects are not included yet to this demo. We'll add them later on.

In my initial FP2 post I promised to look into developer aspects of it. FP2 has strong emphasis of making life of developers easier. Open C is the biggest new thing but there are enhancements also in other areas. We have updated Flash Lite to Flash Lite 2.1 and the taken the first step in Java platform evolution to Mobile Service Architecture (MSA).

Open C

Tommi already told the most important points of Open C. For those of you who have been following Symbian announcements lately, Open C was not that big surprise. On 16th of January this came out:

Symbian Ltd today announced the introduction of POSIX libraries on Symbian OS™, which will significantly reduce the effort required to migrate existing desktop and server components, and mobile applications from other platforms, onto Symbian OS. The move will help broaden and deepen application development for Symbian OS and help improve developer productivity. Symbian OS is the market leading operating system for smartphones.

P.I.P.S. - PIPS Is POSIX on Symbian - will enable C programmers to more easily migrate existing middleware and applications, either commercial or open source, to Symbian OS by providing standard POSIX C APIs on Symbian OS. This has been achieved by supplying a new framework of POSIX C APIs for use by both C and C++ programmers. The new APIs are packaged into industry standard libraries - libc, libm, libpthread and libdl - and are tightly integrated with Symbian OS to optimize performance and memory usage. In addition, an updated tool chain will further reduce migration effort.

Now when Open C was announced with FP2 it brought 5 more standard C libraries available for S60 developers. Those libraries are libz, libcrypt, libcrypto, libglib, libssl. The result is an initial release of the Open C library that covers more than 70 percent of the functions contained in the desktop and server projects on which the mobile libraries are based. The implementation includes 100 percent coverage of libraries containing such mobile-critical features as password hashing (libcrypt), compression (libz), and loading DLLs (libdl), while scaling back coverage in libraries containing esoteric functions that hold little relevance to mobile developers.

This effort makes native development on S60 easier and is especially important when porting open source projects to S60. The core application logic and functionality is not dependent on the specific platform on which it executes but naturally also Symbian OS programming skills are needed when porting applications to S60. Forum Nokia pages provide more details.

Java

3rd Edition FP2Java technology supported is Java ME, consisting of MIDP 2.1 CLDC 1.1. For the first time we comply with Mobile Service Architecture. The idea of the Mobile Service Architecture (MSA) to minimize fragmentation of Java. The Mobile Service Architecture defines two stacks: a full MSA stack that comprises 16 JSRs, and a subset of eight JSRs. FP2 follows MSA subset implementation.

If you are thinking, what is behind this MSA and where it all started, have a look to this old Nokia press release. Two and half year ago Nokia and Vodafone were ready to announce MSA. Naturally MSA development work had started earlier than this announcement and development is still ongoing. As you know first PF2 devices are estimated to enter to market 2H2007 so 3 years after initial MSA announcement. I wouldn't call us fast in this case.

Flash Lite

FP2 Flash Lite version is upgraded to 2.1. It has been available from Adobe pages, but from FP2 onward this version is preinstalled to the devices. More information about Flash Lite 2.1 can be found from Adobe pages. A depth of integration is one big difference in FP2 Flash Lite 2.1 when compared to the downloadable version. The downloadable Flash Lite 2.1 is good for standalone Flash applications. Preinstalled works perfectly also with platform applications. S60 Browser is a good example application where Flash Lite components can be displayed. It's a good idea to utilize already available tools and environment to develop Flash Lite 2.1 compliant applications and content.

S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 was announced today.  I have been marketing responsible of the release and finally it's possible to talk publicly about this fortcoming release.

Let's have a look what's in there. In the press release we emphasize development aspects. But let's start from the UI.

Usability has several improvements in applications and in general. Multitasking is essential feature of smartphone but the truth is that all S60 users don't know about it. Long press of menu key is not that intuitive way to find it. In FP2 onward multitasking works like before, but in addition to that it can be found always under options menu (right  left softkey). See the new line "Active applications". This will lead to same multitasker menu as long press of menu key. 

Another very visible change in all the applications and menus is having labeled softkey in the middle. The softkey has different functions in different apps and situations and labeling it makes UI easier to use. Less clicks, more intuitive UI.

Active Idle has gone through renewal as well. Original Active Idle with horizontal customizable toolbar has now vertical toolbar option, which makes possible to show more application specific information on idle screen. There is RSS/Atom feed support so selected news feed can scroll on the bottom of the idle screen. Everyone is familiar with thumbnail picture feature when phone is ringing and there is picture saved to phonebook. This feature is now enhanced so that better quality pictures can be used and picture takes whole screen, it's not just thumbnail anymore. Looks cool.

Own pictures can be used much more widely to personalize UI. There is a slideshow screensaver. It allows you freely select pictures from the gallery to be used as screensaver. Also  wallpaper has similar type slideshow functionality. Again any pictures from the Gallery can be used.

 Messaging application doesn't have separate mechanism to write SMS and MMS anymore. You just select create a message and bearer is selected automatically. If the final message has only text, it's SMS. If there are other media components included to message, such as pictures or video, message type is MMS. Small, but important change. Messaging toolbar improves usability further.

Phonebook has been able to show contacts data from phone memory and SIM card. However there has been one big limitation. You either have phone or SIM card in the same view. In FP2 this is history. Phonebook supports combined phone+SIM view.

Users of S60 are very aware of profiles and personalization of those. There is nice improvement in FP2, you can set timer for profile. So you can set the phone for silent for one hour and then it goes back to general profile automatically. 24h is maximum time if timer is activated.

Browser is the most used data application in S60. Browsing is popular and people like to download media files. Currently if you download music or video file, you have to wait until file is completely downloaded and then you can open an play it. FP2 supports progressive downloading from browser which makes possible instant playback during downloading. Feeling is more like streaming type of. This will definitely increase usability and usage of media file downloading. Downloading function has also other improvements. When for example mp3 is downloaded, phone will as "Save as" option so it's easy to set it as ringing tone. After picture download you can set it as wallpaper in similar way.

As mentioned in the beginning, there are many changes in developer platform which will make life of developers easier. I will dig into non UI features in coming days. Product overview of 3rd Edition can be found from here. It includes now also FP2 features.

Have you noticed this? Nokia is planning New years eve concerts. I don’t know is this true at all, but sounds interesting and I certainly hope this is true.

Some time ago I was reading this story about Heineken skypecast and thoughts started to fly. 3G phones with videocall capability are getting more common. However usage is not that high. Early technical problems have been solved and video call is quite mature for mass market usage. There is an awareness problem, which has to be corrected. I have one idea for marketing.

Ingredients:
A concert (live aid type)
1. Tickets to physical concert in traditional way.
2. Webcast with advertisement based funding. Broadcasting. (Live aid was broadcasted on TV, but that’s so tv1.0.
3. Virtual presence by videophone.

What I mean by virtual presence by videophone, is a service where users call to specific local number and can see the concert by using the video call function of the phone. But more important is the broadcasting of own video. Thousands of people take part to concert remotely. Big screens on the stadium broadcast simultaneous video streams everywhere from the world. Would it be cool? World united to concerts. Part of calling charges could go to good purpose. Operators, manufactures and artists join together.

How about utilizing video calls to the other purposes? Think about SMS chat channels on TV. Sounds ultimately boring idea, but it is very popular. How to take user created content to new level on TV? Video phones can be utilized. Why this hasn’t happened yet? Is it about the poor penetration of videophones among young generations?

Actually concert with virtual presence sounds quite traditional idea when compared to some new phenomenon like this.

I think the best news of the week was this. Warren buffet is giving out 85% of his wealth. It means $30 billion capital injection to Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. Maybe it’s too early to say that capital nepotism is coming to its end but the richest men are showing the way. Hopefully others will follow. New trend is to give money for wise people rather than to inheritors.

In one earlier comment I already wrote about Microsoft, but I’ll repeat myself. I admire one thing in Microsoft, or to be exact in the ownership of Microsoft. Still significant part of ownership is on Bill Gates hands and when Microsoft creates profits and company value increases and it is good news for Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. This foundation will practically inherit all. Nokia’s ownership is more distributed and profits are not channeled such a way. Shareholders can’t be selected and their values, dreams and ethics can’t be influenced. So it’s extremely important to make things in a right way inside the company. I want to be part of the company which is handling well corporate social responsibility and taking environmental issues seriously. I’m totally convinced that most of Nokia’s customers want to feel good (also on ethical side) when they make purchasing decision. There is also a business potential, but personally I’m more interested about doing the right thing.

What could be the role of S60 in this? When we are talking about S60 and potential buyers, we are talking about people who actually belong to the highest 5% income segment in the world. Look at your pocket. If you have S60 device there, you are likely be in this group. Buying decisions in this group are not just economical but has to be also ethical. On the other hand many S60 potential buyer are kind of techie and this they values can be even opposite. This was the counter argument what I got when raised this issue.

I would split people to 3 groups. People who prefer ethical products (“greens”), people who are neutral (don’t care about this aspect) and people who don’t want to buy ethical products (“anti greens”). The middle group is the biggest. But is the third group so big and powerful that you don’t dare to change way of working and image of your product? You know my answer. Maybe it’s possible to find better “organic product” than S60 which could be used as spearhead product. S60 is close to my heart and I want to start a visible change from it.

Emarketer has published a study about business blogging. Blogs have a long way to go before becoming widely accepted corporate marketing tools. It seems that average marketing executives are more concerned about moderating/limiting what is being said on blogs, than listening and learning from the consumers.

Moderating and limiting hasn’t been our company’s approach to blogging. I must say that our experiences about business blogging has been only positive. It started from S60, Forum Nokia joined and others will follow.

I feel that corporate blogs have to be more honest than "oldfashioned marketing" and if too much old type of marketing techniques are used in the blogs, nobody will finally read them. Utilizing the feedback is a tough part. This is excellent way to take feedback directly from S60 users, but I must say that overwhelming amount of requirements is coming from sales companies, operators, developers etc. and it's a real challenge to find valuable ideas and get priorities right. After that it is “just” execution.

Take your S60 phone out of the pocket. How do you know it is S60 phone? Many people don’t know they are using S60 phone. You might ask, why they should know that it’s S60 phone? If we think 3rd party application market and compatibility, branding has to be visible in the product (SW) in a consistent way. Otherwise it doesn't make much sense to advertise "Designed for S60".

Google launched computing booth at Heathrow airport on last November. Providing network access at the airport is nothing new, WLAN is there, and you can easily buy some airtime. There was something new in this Google booth. Google provided laptops and free access. Hey, what’s the business case?

Google ranked the first among the most impact-ful global brands according to the Interbrand Brandchannel's fifth annual Readers' Choice Awards, edition 2005. Excellent outcome for a company at sever years of age.

The results of Interbrand survey made me wonder how expensive is it to build up the world’s most impact-ful brand nowadays?