Microsoft buys Nokia Mobile Devices Unit (3rd September 2013)
Now it has happened folks - the "it's never going to happen!", the "why would they?", the "what's in it for them?" event that was for the first time speculated on early 2011: MICROSOFT has purchased NOKIA Mobile division for NZD 9.2 Billion!
This makes Microsoft a mobile device (hardware) company, leaving Nokia to concentrate on building their mapping, infrastructure and advanced technologies divisions; who even knew of these other divisions (except mapping of course).
As a company Nokia is now a lot smaller, however the money from this purchase as well the additional deal with Microsoft signing on for Nokia mapping for the next 4 years will mean Nokia is a lot healthier organisation as before. And from Maps perspective this is exciting as they can now concentrate making Nokia Maps a real player on the Geospatial industry.
Read one of the original articles here.
This makes Microsoft a mobile device (hardware) company, leaving Nokia to concentrate on building their mapping, infrastructure and advanced technologies divisions; who even knew of these other divisions (except mapping of course).
As a company Nokia is now a lot smaller, however the money from this purchase as well the additional deal with Microsoft signing on for Nokia mapping for the next 4 years will mean Nokia is a lot healthier organisation as before. And from Maps perspective this is exciting as they can now concentrate making Nokia Maps a real player on the Geospatial industry.
Read one of the original articles here.
Samsung clearly winning the SmartPhone sales war (27th April 2013)
Samsung is really making waves with their SmartPhones sales; they have almost doubled their quarterly sales and are now selling 2 times more than Apple - 71M vs 37M. The other Android based SmartPhone vendors like LG, Huawei and ZTE are also growing and are now almost third the size of Apple sales - 10M each.
Across all mobile phone sales, Samsung sells twice as many as the second largest Nokia, who sells twice as many as the number 3 Apple who sells twice as many as number 4 ZTE - 115M vs 62M vs 37M vs 15M.
See the original article here.
Across all mobile phone sales, Samsung sells twice as many as the second largest Nokia, who sells twice as many as the number 3 Apple who sells twice as many as number 4 ZTE - 115M vs 62M vs 37M vs 15M.
See the original article here.
Apple has patented a rectangle with curved corners (10th November 2012)
The US patent office is becoming more ridiculous every day - how can you patent concepts that have been used for years or even decades every day by millions of people. Well Apple has managed to do this and it is expected that the patent wars with Samsung and various others are just started (article).
The fact is that if this is allowed, then what good is this kind of institute as it certainly does not do what it was setup originally to do; protect innovative designers against copy-cats. This also means that Apple a) is nervous about it's competition and it's position in the market place, b) has lost any innovative brain power it had with Steve. Shame on you Apple!
The fact is that if this is allowed, then what good is this kind of institute as it certainly does not do what it was setup originally to do; protect innovative designers against copy-cats. This also means that Apple a) is nervous about it's competition and it's position in the market place, b) has lost any innovative brain power it had with Steve. Shame on you Apple!
Oracle to license Nokia Location Platform (2nd October 2012)
Well this one I would never have guessed; Oracle has licensed Nokia Location Platform to be accessible from their Fusion Middleware platform. This is an interesting and surprising move, as there are some complications:
Great move from Nokia - they signed in Yahoo, then major deal with Microsoft, huge car manufacturers and now Oracle. I feel IBM deal closing in as Java platform is managed by IBM and Oracle together.
- Oracle use Java, Nokia Maps API is .NET based (but as it is API and web services, probably does not matter that much)
- Oracle already has a deal with TomTom for routing in their database, Nokia Location Platform includes (originally) Navteq based routing. Also note that Apple Maps is TomTom based :)
- Nokia and Microsoft are close allies, Oracle and Microsoft have never been that friendly
Great move from Nokia - they signed in Yahoo, then major deal with Microsoft, huge car manufacturers and now Oracle. I feel IBM deal closing in as Java platform is managed by IBM and Oracle together.
Micro-Location smarts in your local supermarket (30th September 2012)
Location intelligence is now mainstream and what better way to prove that than showing you how it is starting to spread outside the common ideas and IT/business; some supermarkets have merged location together with customer insights to start helping you out in your local supermarket to better find where your favorite products are stored.
Micro-location intelligence assumes that super market has mapped their products and categories to shelves and and shelves to a blue-print that has been geo-referenced. This is then joined with semantic search and customer insights to help you as a customer to find what you need (or did not know you needed) and also to help the shopkeeper to better understand what they should be offering. See the full article here.
Micro-location intelligence assumes that super market has mapped their products and categories to shelves and and shelves to a blue-print that has been geo-referenced. This is then joined with semantic search and customer insights to help you as a customer to find what you need (or did not know you needed) and also to help the shopkeeper to better understand what they should be offering. See the full article here.
Good times are just around the corner (9th September 2012)
Windows Surface, all the new Windows 8 tablets and new Nokia Lumia Smartphones are almost available. And it looks like Microsoft, Nokia and all the other Windows hardware vendors are really going to push the market - both financially and technology-wise.
This little presentation shows 17 of the most waited for Windows 8 devices from Microsoft side of the fence - and they look glorious indeed. I would not mind taking on most of those devices - and what is really exciting is that expectations on prices are that these are really competitively priced.
Low pricing is of course a necessity, especially now that Kindle is becoming another major player in the tablet market - see this article too for more detail.
This little presentation shows 17 of the most waited for Windows 8 devices from Microsoft side of the fence - and they look glorious indeed. I would not mind taking on most of those devices - and what is really exciting is that expectations on prices are that these are really competitively priced.
Low pricing is of course a necessity, especially now that Kindle is becoming another major player in the tablet market - see this article too for more detail.
Apple vs Samsung patent war - who actually won? (25th August 2012)
The jury has now given their verdict and Samsung has been judged to infringe on 7 out of 8 patents and with 21 of their devices. Consequently they now need to pay $1Billion to Apple as damages, which could even go up another 3 times that. Samsung lost all counter-sues as jury decided Apple did not infringe any of those.
See the following articles: #1, #2 and #3 for more detail on what this could actually mean.
This means Samsung will now have to rethink their UI on most of their mobile devices, actually the scariest part is that some of the UI choices like pinch-zoom are in use on most Android devices (not just Samsung). Lot of Apple innovated UI features are now agreed by law to be used on Apple devices only, and as they are de-facto UI features, this is bad for consumers and developers; who wants to develop several different UI features, standards approach would have been so much better.
Apparently some believe this could also be a good thing as Samsung now needs to figure out new and innovative ways for UI - I disagree, as forced innovation is never good (if it is not broken do not fix it).
See the following articles: #1, #2 and #3 for more detail on what this could actually mean.
This means Samsung will now have to rethink their UI on most of their mobile devices, actually the scariest part is that some of the UI choices like pinch-zoom are in use on most Android devices (not just Samsung). Lot of Apple innovated UI features are now agreed by law to be used on Apple devices only, and as they are de-facto UI features, this is bad for consumers and developers; who wants to develop several different UI features, standards approach would have been so much better.
Apparently some believe this could also be a good thing as Samsung now needs to figure out new and innovative ways for UI - I disagree, as forced innovation is never good (if it is not broken do not fix it).
Australian CommBank releases their own Android tablet (20th July 2012)
Now don't take me wrong - it is interesting to see that hardware is so cheap that a reasonably small bank (22 million people in Australia) can afford to do this, but this is actually one of the scariest news I have seen for awhile.
Why you ask: well, Android is already suffering of fragmentation, but at least with hardware vendors you would expect there to be some consideration on things like standards and compatibility. Fragmentation is not helping anybody, so wishful thinking would assume that at some stage vendors got together and started making sure there was some standards to comply. So that the Android markets stayed healthy compared to competing markets.
But why would a purely commercial (small) entity like a bank care at all about other Android devices or about state of the Android markets; they would just build their own device with specific enhancements to their business. They would have no idea or care whatsoever on IT common best practices, other vendors or what kind of damage they might do to the markets. To me this trend is just plain scary - or maybe I am just paranoid. What do you think?
Why you ask: well, Android is already suffering of fragmentation, but at least with hardware vendors you would expect there to be some consideration on things like standards and compatibility. Fragmentation is not helping anybody, so wishful thinking would assume that at some stage vendors got together and started making sure there was some standards to comply. So that the Android markets stayed healthy compared to competing markets.
But why would a purely commercial (small) entity like a bank care at all about other Android devices or about state of the Android markets; they would just build their own device with specific enhancements to their business. They would have no idea or care whatsoever on IT common best practices, other vendors or what kind of damage they might do to the markets. To me this trend is just plain scary - or maybe I am just paranoid. What do you think?
Amazon SmartPhone - coming in end of 2012 (12th July 2012)
There seems to be no end of large online organisations getting into the mobility bandwagon - little while ago it was rumored that Facebook was working on one (still nt confirmed) and now we know that Amazon (excited about the Kindle Fire success) is working on one.
The SmartPhone is supposed to come out late 2012, have a large screen (Samsung Galaxy size), customised Android OS and $200 price tag. It is also expected to have heavy set of Amazon online shopping functionality (no surprise there).
Read the full article here.
The SmartPhone is supposed to come out late 2012, have a large screen (Samsung Galaxy size), customised Android OS and $200 price tag. It is also expected to have heavy set of Amazon online shopping functionality (no surprise there).
Read the full article here.
Nokia MeeGo reborn by Jolla - ex-Nokia MeeGo developers (9th July 2012)
Ex-Nokia developers for short-lived open source SmartPhone OS MeeGo have formed their own company and are setting out to pickup where Nokia left off. Company Jolla Ltd will be designing, developing and selling MeeGo phones. The plan is to push out a new MeeGo in due time. See the article here.
I had already written off open source as SmartPhone providers, but might have to change my mind now. MeeGo was actually one of the coolest SmartPhones OS out there, but Nokia only made one device Nokia N9 with it. It got great reviews and some friends who have it say it is the best SMartPhone they've ever used. Apparently one of the best features is that it actually works real well as a phone as well as a SmartPhone.
I wish them well, competition is good as long as they follow standards like HTML5.
I had already written off open source as SmartPhone providers, but might have to change my mind now. MeeGo was actually one of the coolest SmartPhones OS out there, but Nokia only made one device Nokia N9 with it. It got great reviews and some friends who have it say it is the best SMartPhone they've ever used. Apparently one of the best features is that it actually works real well as a phone as well as a SmartPhone.
I wish them well, competition is good as long as they follow standards like HTML5.
Microsoft case study - e-Spatial (28th June 2012)
e-Spatial has been part of testing SQL Server Spatial since it's infancy; e-Spatial were part of the alpha and beta testing of the very first version (SQL Server 2008 Spatial) with 5 other organisations, some small companies like Esri and Mapinfo, and ended up even traveling to Seattle to workshop some of our findings and suggestions. e-Spatial have also been part of the private beta testing of SQL Server 2012 Spatial; some of those findings/suggestions were discussed in Nappy Valley winery around a bottle of nice California wine (me, Ed and our lovely wives).
MS has been very open and helpful on the testing and actually ended up implemented almost all our suggestions (I have to admit that most of the suggestions were already on the pipeline, just on back burner because of the time constraints). This has resulted SQL Server 2012 Spatial becoming quite special, a must have tool for geospatial analyst and specialists.
The following article is a case study MS decided to do on e-Spatial; it was done via several conference calls, was very easy/painless to do and I believe resulted with quite a good story :)
MS has been very open and helpful on the testing and actually ended up implemented almost all our suggestions (I have to admit that most of the suggestions were already on the pipeline, just on back burner because of the time constraints). This has resulted SQL Server 2012 Spatial becoming quite special, a must have tool for geospatial analyst and specialists.
The following article is a case study MS decided to do on e-Spatial; it was done via several conference calls, was very easy/painless to do and I believe resulted with quite a good story :)
Current Nokia Lumia versions not upgradable to Win8 (24th June)
What are Microsoft and Nokia doing? Nokia Lumia 900 only came out a couple of weeks ago and now the users are told they cannot upgrade it's Windows Mobile software; in other words you are already using a to-be-obsolete device! Everybody understands why this is - Win8 has been rewritten (again) from ground up, so it is not possible to refit it within legacy hardware - even when the legacy hardware is only 3 weeks old.
What Microsoft and Nokia should do (rather than just promise a token Windows 7.8 version with selected 8 features) is to give Nokia customers an opportunity to swap their device in Q4 for half-price, maybe with some kind of credit note or something.
Or maybe this is just a way to push Nokia's stock prices down enough for Microsoft to be able to afford buying Nokia? Or am I just paranoid and seeing conspiracies everywhere :)
What Microsoft and Nokia should do (rather than just promise a token Windows 7.8 version with selected 8 features) is to give Nokia customers an opportunity to swap their device in Q4 for half-price, maybe with some kind of credit note or something.
Or maybe this is just a way to push Nokia's stock prices down enough for Microsoft to be able to afford buying Nokia? Or am I just paranoid and seeing conspiracies everywhere :)
Android Fragmentation Visualised/Revisited (21st June 2012)
Even though I might sound like a broken record, I thought this article on visualising the fragmentation problem was too good to pass. OpenSignalMaps based this study on 700,000 devices across 6 months.
Some findings:
- 4000 distinct devices
- 600 distinct brands
- Android version 2.3 is still dominant - 55% (12 months ago it was 65%)
- huge number of different resolutions (480x800 most dominant)
- huge number of different dimensions (5:3 most dominant)
So basically things are getting worse!
Some findings:
- 4000 distinct devices
- 600 distinct brands
- Android version 2.3 is still dominant - 55% (12 months ago it was 65%)
- huge number of different resolutions (480x800 most dominant)
- huge number of different dimensions (5:3 most dominant)
So basically things are getting worse!
3D mapping/presentation engine wars? (8th Jue 2012)
There is some interesting things happening in 3D scene, so I thought to collect first chronologically some news on Google Maps scene. First news was on April/May when Google announced that they were selling their 3D modeller Skecthup to Trimble. Not at the time I could not figure this one out - 3D is where world is going to, so why sell your #1 tool.
The second thing that happened was Apple announcing that they are replacing their internal mapping app (Google Maps) in iOS with 3D Apple Maps, and of course Google reacted to that very quickly announcing their new 3D features yesterday,and then it all made perfect sense; the new 3D features Google announced were mobile support for 3D and auto-recognition of aerial imagery thus creating 3D (semi)automaticaly. So in other words they do not need 3D modeller anymore - why do buildings manually when you don't have to. Clever Google sold useless technology (to them) to Trimble.
Question remains on what Trimble is planningto do with Sketchup. Oh yes and to add the final insult to the mobile device scene - Google has also announced that their Google Maps app in Android now enables full offline capability out-of-the-box; users can download any maps for their area into the device and work on it offline. A great feature for NZ.
Note also that there is going to be a major facelift in ArcGIS Online in coming weeks - Esri is taking the game to the next level. 3D features already discussed on upcoming releases. What exciting times we are living!
BTW, has anybody heard anything new from Microsoft/Nokia aliance and their Nokia/Bing Maps?
The second thing that happened was Apple announcing that they are replacing their internal mapping app (Google Maps) in iOS with 3D Apple Maps, and of course Google reacted to that very quickly announcing their new 3D features yesterday,and then it all made perfect sense; the new 3D features Google announced were mobile support for 3D and auto-recognition of aerial imagery thus creating 3D (semi)automaticaly. So in other words they do not need 3D modeller anymore - why do buildings manually when you don't have to. Clever Google sold useless technology (to them) to Trimble.
Question remains on what Trimble is planningto do with Sketchup. Oh yes and to add the final insult to the mobile device scene - Google has also announced that their Google Maps app in Android now enables full offline capability out-of-the-box; users can download any maps for their area into the device and work on it offline. A great feature for NZ.
Note also that there is going to be a major facelift in ArcGIS Online in coming weeks - Esri is taking the game to the next level. 3D features already discussed on upcoming releases. What exciting times we are living!
BTW, has anybody heard anything new from Microsoft/Nokia aliance and their Nokia/Bing Maps?
Nokia, BING and Yahoo - what is actually happening (27th May 2012)
We've known for a while now that Nokia and BING have been working together to provide "killer" mapping API, and not just for mobile devices. It was end of February that MS/Nokia released a unified map design to be used on both Nokia Maps and BING Maps, see this article. Then just yesterday this article came out; traffic, routing and geocoding within BING Maps are now done using Nokia services.
I also know that BING search has been used within Yahoo for awhile now, but not as quite much as Microsoft might have wanted, as stated in this article. I especially like the speculations in the end of the article, I believe the writer has hit it with the question: "Should Bing Maps just step aside and let Nokia into the location services driver’s seat for both Nokia and Microsoft?" - this is exactly what I expect will happen.
I also know that BING search has been used within Yahoo for awhile now, but not as quite much as Microsoft might have wanted, as stated in this article. I especially like the speculations in the end of the article, I believe the writer has hit it with the question: "Should Bing Maps just step aside and let Nokia into the location services driver’s seat for both Nokia and Microsoft?" - this is exactly what I expect will happen.
Microsoft software banned in Germany (6th May 2012)
A colleague of mine sent this news item to me last week. In a nutshell it states that Windows 7 and XBOX360 have been banned from Germany markets, but that Microsoft is going to sell their products regardless. I still have not quite figured out what this actually means? Does it make sense that a judge can ban international global software from a country? And if they do, should vendor follow that ruling even though the reasons (patent for crying out loud) are silly and their software is used by most of that country already? And what does this mean for support - if you already own Windows 7 (or if you buy it internationally online) does this mean they are not allowed to support you? I am watching this in anticipation ...
Maybe RIM is not quite dead yet? (2nd May 2012)
RIM has new suite of Blackberry mobile products that promise to comply with Apple iOS and Google Android; clever move and probably the only way they can survive. See the new features here.
Media is quite excited about this idea, so maybe RIM are not quite dead yet. The really interesting bit on this news article is about Android and iOS promising the same soon. This would mean all these 3 (Apple, Google and RIM) would have cross-compliant mobiles – maybe Microsoft should start worrying as their Windows Mobile is not in the mix.
As I’ve said over and over – mobility changes so much all the time that who knows what will happen next.
Media is quite excited about this idea, so maybe RIM are not quite dead yet. The really interesting bit on this news article is about Android and iOS promising the same soon. This would mean all these 3 (Apple, Google and RIM) would have cross-compliant mobiles – maybe Microsoft should start worrying as their Windows Mobile is not in the mix.
As I’ve said over and over – mobility changes so much all the time that who knows what will happen next.
Who is going to be the winner: Microsoft, Google or Apple? (18th April 2012)
Microsoft has a master plan on how they can rise back from their underdog position. Google and Apple are dominating the mobile world and as I have stated many times previously, the time of desktop is gone. So the plan to bring unified OS across Desktop/laptop, Mobile/tablet and XBOX might not be silly, especially as the mobility parts are promoted by other big (now) underdog players like Nokia. How could that go wrong?
See the full article as it explains this "plan" quite well. Note that there has also been a lot of critique on Microsoft's unification as all interfaces are always dominated by the lowest common UI, in this case mobile; the new "blocky" Windows 8 look has been critiqued as a step backwards rather than forwards. I am also concerned on what MS is planning to do with graphical interfaces across different platforms.
See the full article as it explains this "plan" quite well. Note that there has also been a lot of critique on Microsoft's unification as all interfaces are always dominated by the lowest common UI, in this case mobile; the new "blocky" Windows 8 look has been critiqued as a step backwards rather than forwards. I am also concerned on what MS is planning to do with graphical interfaces across different platforms.
Is this the future of desktop (the small handful that will survice mobile revolution)? (16th April 2012)
HP Z1 is out and packs the whole desktop into a 27 inch monitor. Graphics accelerator, multi-core processor and heaps of diskspace - what else can you ask. Wireless keyboard and mouse of course.
This is the future of desktop - the super users that still need access to desktop devices can use something like this - no cables and no need for an additional desktop box. Please check the original article.
This is the future of desktop - the super users that still need access to desktop devices can use something like this - no cables and no need for an additional desktop box. Please check the original article.
Android fragmentation is worse than thought (14th April 2012)
Android OS and devices own almost 50% of all Smart Device industry. But did you know that it is not just one Android OS you use, but that most hardware vendors have their own version of Android OS with added features.
And that typically Android OS versions are not necessarily backwards compatible, and in many cases do not work except on specific hardware and devices.
This is called Android fragmentation and what it means is that when comparing iOS or Windows Mobile against Android you are not actually comparing apples with apples (pun intended).
The worst part is that this is not getting any better - the "recent" purchase of Motorola by Google could mean Google will be developing their own version of Android - with significant improvements on the OS.
Read this article as it is quite enlightening on what this actually means.
And that typically Android OS versions are not necessarily backwards compatible, and in many cases do not work except on specific hardware and devices.
This is called Android fragmentation and what it means is that when comparing iOS or Windows Mobile against Android you are not actually comparing apples with apples (pun intended).
The worst part is that this is not getting any better - the "recent" purchase of Motorola by Google could mean Google will be developing their own version of Android - with significant improvements on the OS.
Read this article as it is quite enlightening on what this actually means.
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