okia predicts more than 800 million people will be using GPS enabled devices by 2013

Nokia claimed it is well positioned for mass take-up of location based services through mobile handsets. The manufacturer’s executive VP of markets Niklas Savander forecast that by 2013 more than 800 million people will be using GPS enabled devices. He said: ‘It is a space that we intend to own.’

Nokia already owns an online map provider, Navteq, which it acquired in 2008 for £4bn. Savander claimed Navteq had laid the foundations for the take-up of location based services. He said: ‘Nokia, not Google, is the leader in mobile navigation. Ovi Maps leads the market in terms of navigation and reach. Ovi maps are far less hungry for data than Google maps, because it is optimised for mobile use.

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New Nokia CEO brings Ballmer philosophy to Nokia World, noting apps developers will be critical to vendors future

Applications developers will be key to Nokia’s ability to compete on the global stage, according to CEO-elect Stephen Elop, who made a surprise appearance at Nokia World 2010 this week.

“We are capable of building great devices,” of taking them to market, of dealing with telecoms operators, and of creating services, Elop said in a short address that closed the two-day London event.

But without developers, “we cannot create the vibrancy and the ecosystem that we need to be successful and to compete around the world,” Elop said. Developers take our technology and our platforms and “do things that we would never have anticipated that you would do,” he said.

During the address, Elop hinted at the influence his former role as head of Microsoft’s business division will have on his leadership at Nokia.

“At Microsoft… Mr Ballmer had a saying,” Elop said. “And that saying was: developers, developers, developers.” Elop, who described himself as “unemployed”, having left Microsoft last week, takes the helm at Nokia on Monday.

His biggest challenge will be to improve Nokia’s position in the high-end smartphone segment of the market. The Finnish vendor still claims a dominant market share – its Symbian operating system took a 41.2% share of all smartphones sold to end users worldwide in Q2, according to Gartner – but it has lost valuable percentage points in recent months; Symbian had a 51% share of sales in the second quarter of 2009.

In a bid to start redressing the balance, Nokia introduced three new high-end devices at Nokia World on Tuesday, which, along with the long-awaited N8 smartphone, will be in the shops in time for Christmas.

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Nokia has teamed up with Intuit to provide automated mobile marketing services

Nokia has teamed up with Intuit to provide automated mobile marketing services for small businesses that will also have a knock-on benefit for mobile operators, the two companies announced at Nokia World 2010 in London on Wednesday.

The pair aim to help companies in the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) segment of the market get more business by creating personalised offers and marketing campaigns, using location information and the mobile channel. Nokia brings its experience in location-based services and mapping to the table, alongside U.S.-based Intuit’s business software expertise.

“Nokia and Intuit have formed a strategic alliance,” said Mary McDowell, executive vice president, mobile phones, at Nokia, announcing the deal alongside Alex Lintner, president of Intuit’s global business division. In a joint presentation, the executives noted that their potential customer base is made up of around 500 million SMEs worldwide.

“Many of them lack the basic systems manage their businesses effectively,” said Lintner, in some cases relying heavily on mobile, rather than fixed, communications and connectivity.

“Our services will help increase their revenues at a modest cost,” he added. Location-based marketing and communications “will increase the foot traffic to their small business by at least 10%.”

For Nokia, the deal represents, “a great opportunity to leverage the strengths of Ovi Maps,” said McDowell. There will be “benefits for operators as well,” she added.

“Operators can increase their ARPUs,” as more businesses take up data plans on the back of these new market services, she explained.

The companies have yet to release further details on exactly what services it plans to launch, but more information is expected shortly.

“”We expect to launch these first services by the year-end,” said McDowell

Nokia pledges to connect “next billion” people to the internet

Nokia has unveiled a strategy to connect the ‘next billion’ people to the internet. Nokia’s vision of ‘Connecting People’ beyond telephony was highlighted on final day of its Nokia World event. To demonstrate its commitment to emerging markets, Nokia also updated a portfolio of ‘feature-rich’ phones and underscored internet services that cater to a world in which four out of five people are within reach of a cellular signal.

Mary McDowell, Nokia’s executive vice president for mobile phones, said the company is ideally placed to capture much of the projected growth in the global marketplace and that Nokia intends to maintain its leadership in voice and data for the masses.

McDowell said: ‘More people will join the information age using a mobile phone than a PC. With approximately 80% of the world’s population in reach of a cell tower, it is the mobile phone that will offer the first PC-like experience for many of the next billion people who will come online.’

She added that Nokia will leverage its local knowledge of consumers, distribution strength and scale to innovate and deliver what consumers deem is valuable at prices they can afford. McDowell also emphasised that in addition to well-made, well-priced devices, consumers everywhere crave apps that deliver globally and locally relevant content. She added that they want it quickly, easily and affordably.

‘New kinds of services and powerful software typically associated with smartphones are becoming more important in the traditional mobile phone space,’ she said. ‘We are rolling-out targeted services to meet consumer demand for connectivity, access to information and affordability.’

The company said that Ovi Mail has attracted more than 14 million email activations, the large majority of which are new users coming from emerging markets. In the last six months alone, 60% of new Ovi Mail accounts were from Southeast Asia Pacific and Africa, and more than 77% of people in the Middle East and Africa are now signing-up for Ovi Mail on their Nokia mobile phone instead of a PC.

In addition, more than 80% of Ovi Mail consumers globally are accessing their mailboxes from their mobile device

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