12 July 2008

Nokia Versus Google!
Nokia to become an Internet Company?

I’m sure most of you will agree with me when I say that Nokia’s main intention over the past two years or so has been the fundamental desire to reinvent itself and switch from being a handset vendor only to being an "Internet company".

It was almost two years back when at Nokia World 2006 Conference when Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo told attendees that Internet functionality will be the driving force in the next phase of mobile phone industry growth.

Kallasvuo also dismissed speculation by some industry analysts that the market is mature, and said the Internet would provide new avenues for growth in the industry. He said that Nokia's intended to be "at the forefront of this new era."

Therefore I wasn't that surprised when Nokia announced few months back during Nokia's annual shareholder meeting that it wants to be more like an Internet company and less like a handset vendor. CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo seemed to finally and undoubtedly confirm the new direction of the entire company. "Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an internet company."

Kallasvuo told his shareholders. "Companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with. Make no mistake: We are taking on these challenges seriously and aggressively."

Nokia and Google are looking more and more like each other with all their recent acquisitions and developments. Also it seems that Nokia will move focus on services and spend less time on hardware design and to be honest I am not sure if it is the right decision and who will win the new cold war!? Internet giant Google or mobile goliath Nokia!? Android or Symbian?! Google or Nokia maps?

Well I’ll not give you the answer, I’ll rather offer another opinion, an interesting Eugene Alvin Villar’s article about the upcoming showdown between Google and Nokia:

Google versus Nokia? Any significant competition between these two companies was an unlikely thing a year ago since one is primarily known as an Internet service company and the other a mobile hardware company, two very different but complementary industries.

Well, the events of the past several months proved that things are coming to a head and Google is now in a market battle with Nokia. If you recall, several local bloggers got to talk with Nokia Philippines last May and it was revealed that Nokia wants to venture into the online content service industry, which brings it near to Google’s territory.

One thing I forgot to mention in my post about Nokia is that I asked William, the General Manager for Nokia Philippines, regarding Nokia’s plans for Google’s Android initiative.

I asked this since they claim that they wholly support open source and Android is supposed to be an open-source mobile phone application platform. Well, William said that they did not have any plans of supporting Android and that they’ll stick with Symbian OS.

I then quipped that Symbian is proprietary technology and William rebutted that Symbian is open source. Not wanting to argue further, I held my peace since I wasn’t quite sure at that time.

I guess the claim that Symbian is open source was actually a foreshadowing of Nokia’s announcement last June 24 to buy the rest of the Symbian shares and to create the Symbian Foundation. This move has the aim of making Symbian an open-source platform by 2010. No wonder Nokia is spurning Android—they have their own grand plans! (And I was right that Symbian was proprietary. Hah!)