A marriage of handsets and computers

The way people live in the near future will be facilitated by mobile technologies that see mobile phones and computers converge. Nokia calls it the 'mobile computer' era. The Nation 's Asina Porwasin reports.

Espoo, Finland: By 2015, about 6 billion people will be connected to the Internet, mostly via mobile devices, not computers. For this reason, Finnish telecoms giant Nokia wants to become a total mobile-Internet-based service provider facilitating Web access for consumers in all segments with its wide range of handsets and services.

At its "The Way We Live Next 3.0" - held at Nokia House last week - Nokia envisioned the following scenario: mobile devices in the future, called mobile-computers, will play an important role in every aspect of people's lives and, rather than being a giant handset manufacturer, Nokia will be a giant mobile-service provider. It plans to have 300 million users of Nokia services by 2011, said Nokia's senior vice president, head of corporate strategy, Heikki

Norta.

The services that Nokia is focusing on include messaging, maps and navigation, music and applications on Nokia's Ovi store.

He added that an increase of mobile penetration of 10 per cent increases GDP growth 6 per cent, while an increase in broadband Internet penetration of 10 per cent boosts GDP growth 1-2 per cent.

"It shows that mobile and broad band Internet accessibility are so

important. Nokia will bring Internet connection to mobile devices in all market segmentations," said Norta.

Nokia believes that by the year 2015, mobile phones will be a vital "assistant" for consumers, helping them manage their lives and enabling them to create, share and get the most out of life.

There are two important factors that will make this scenario a reality. "Cloud" technology, which will play a role in servers, and intelligent mobile devices, that can be used to log on to the Internet as well as for work offline.

"In the future the mobile device will connect people to

each other over high-speed con nections allowing real-time

services. Creating and consuming data over the Internet will

blur," said Norta.

To achieve the goal, Nokia is developing two new mobile-

phone technology platforms: Symbian and Maemo.

Shaun Puckrin, head of devel oper services at the Symbian

Foundation, showed The Nation a roadmap of the Symbian platform.

The first handsets running Symbian 2 will appear in the first half

of 2010, and the first Symbian 3-based devices will be available in the second half of next year, Puckrin said.

He said the highlight applications of the Symbian platform are Swype (a finger-tracing text-entry service) and Near Field Communications. They are expected to play key roles in the next generation of Symbian devices.

Meanwhile, the Maemo platform is a core software stack that runs on mobile devices such as the Nokia N900. The Maemo platform is built in large part of open-source components. Nokia

hopes the Maemo platform will be another flagship technology to empower Nokia mobile phone devices in the coming "mobile-computer" era.

Additionally, for existing mobile devices, Nokia sees a lot of opportunities in emerging markets, especially in China and India, where Nokia has established Nokia Research Centers in order to research and develop mobile applications to serve the countries' specific needs.

Nokia has been developing a wide range of mobile applications to help people in emerging countries improve their quality of life. Two examples are the Nokia Life Tools and Nokia Money applications.

Nokia Life Tools had been piloted in India's Maharashtra state, before its scheduled commercialization in the first half of this year. The first two Nokia Life Tools applications are aimed at agricultural and educational users, debuting on the low-end mobile phones Nokia 2320 and Nokia 2323.

Nokia Life Tools for the agricultural sector is designed to help local farmers keep up with important information, such as market prices of crops, weather, news, advice and tips.

"First of all, farmers have to subscribe to use this service, which costs only US$1 [Bt33.25] per month. When applying, they enter their zip code. Then the list of crops in that particular area will pop up and they can choose what price they need information on. We provide infor mation for them via short message system (SMS) once a day everyday," said a Nokia staffer at a demonstration booth.

Another Nokia Life Tools service is in the education sector. The service is designed to help teach local people in remote areas English and general knowledge. For the "Learn English" application, people who subscribe will be taught basic, intermediate and advanced levels and offered exam- preparation tips.

Meanwhile, Nokia Money is another flagship service that Nokia

believes will find a lot of subscribers in emerging markets, where many mobile phone users don't have bank accounts.

Nokia's vice president and gener al manager of Mobile Financial

Services, Teppo Paavola, said mobile financial services represents a strategic area for Nokia. There are big gaps in demand to be filled in the financial services sector in emerging countries.

Of the total global population of 6.6 billion, 4 billion are mobile-phone subscribers, while only 1 billion have bank accounts and 1.6 billion have credit cards, Paavola said.

According to research by the London Business School, by 2014,

mobile payments will total ¤18 billion (Bt895billion). Around ¤12 billion of this is in emerging countries, while only ¤6 billion are in the developed countries.

"There is a lot of room for Nokia Financial Services, especially in the emerging markets. We have designed and developed the financial services keeping in mind the need to facilitate access for large groups of people via their existing mobile phones. Nokia's more than 100,000 distributors will become Nokia Money agents," said Paavola.

Nokia will launch Nokia Money in the first half of next year, but it is not sure where the product will debut.