Nokia Slows

While Apple (AAPL) had a great quarter, Nokia (NOK) lost market share and reported a disappointing quarter last week. The loss in market share follows its decision not to match aggressive pricing from its competitors at the cost of profitability. While market share slid to 38% from 40% last quarter and 39% last year, gross margin was 35.6%, up from 34.2% last year. Revenue for the third quarter was €12.2 billion, down 5% y-o-y and 7% q-o-q. Net profit was down by 30% to €1.09 billion. Diluted EPS, excluding charges, was €0.33, down 20% y-o-y and 11% q-o-q.

Nokia bought back 14 million shares for 250 million during the quarter. It currently does not plan to buy back shares in the next quarter. Cash and other liquid assets were €7.2 billion at the end of the quarter.

By segment, Devices & Services revenue was €8.6 billion, down 7% y-o-y and 5% q-o-q. Lower priced products and the weaker dollar drove the mobile device ASP down to €72, from €74 last quarter and €82 last year. Nokia Siemens Networks revenue also declined 5% y-o-y and 14% q-o-q to €3.5 billion. The new segment NAVTEQ had net sales of €156 million.

During the quarter, Nokia shipped 117.8 million units, up 5.5% y-o-y but down 3% q-o-q. Converged mobile device shipments were 15.5 million units versus 16 million in Q307 while converged mobile device industry saw shipments increasing to 44.2 million units, versus 31.7 million units in Q3 07. Nokia recently started shipping the Tube, its iPhone challenger, and the next quarter should reveal how it is faring against the iPhone, which sold 6.9 million units in the recent quarter.

By region, Nokia had the strongest mobile device revenue growth in Latin America, followed by Greater China. Net sales were down y-o-y in North America, Europe, and to a lesser extent in Asia-Pacific and Middle East & Africa.

Nokia and Qualcomm (QCOM) recently entered into a new 15-year agreement ending their three-year patent dispute. Nokia will be paying Qualcomm a lump sum of €1.7 billion ($2.3 billion) as per the agreement, which covers various standards including GSM, EDGE, CDMA, WCDMA, HSDPA, OFDM, WiMAX, and LTE.

Nokia also announced its plans to acquire OZ Communications to strengthen its position in consumer mobile messaging. On the messaging front, Nokia is beta testing its push email solution and plans to roll it out soon. This is a critical functionality in order to compete with the iPhone and Blackberry.

For the fourth quarter, Nokia expects its mobile device market share to be at the same level or slightly up sequentially. It is currently trading around $15 with a market cap of $56 billion. It hit a 52-week low of $14.70 on October 16 when it reported its Q3 results.

I am holding on to my Nokia holdings based on the assumption that its global channel is going to be an asset as the smartphone and convergence device movement goes beyond the early adopter segments in North America.

Source : http://seekingalpha.com/

Nokia's "Comes With Music" arrives on 3 Mobile network

3 is the musical number

Clearly very much in tune with Nokia's "Comes With Music"
service, the phone network provider have duly jumped onto the mobile
musical bandwagon to give access to Nokia's online music store.

3 Mobile will give its customers with a compatible Nokia N95 and computer, free reign to devour the very innards of Nokia's 4 million track superstore whenever you get that audio bug.

Boasting a range of tuneage covering the radio playlist dominated
chart busters, to the lesser known independent musical outings, 3 look
like they are bagging a potential number one in the music download
domain.

Owning your downloads until you kick the proverbial bucket, or at
least until your ears cannot sustain the drum and bass carnage any
more, will also be sweet music to the ears of 3 Mobile customers and
Nokia fans.

"Comes With Music" is up for grabs on the 3 Network from November 3rd.

Nokia Comes With Music N95 8GB is available on an 18 month contract
with 300 mins/texts and 1 GB of inclusive internet access for £35.

Source : http://www.t3.com/

AMD announces executive promotions

AMD announced on Thursday (23 October) that it has appointed Bob Rivet as chief operations and administrative officer and Emilio Ghilardi as chief sales officer at the beginning of 2009.

Rivet was previously the company's executive vice president and chief financial officer, whilst Ghilardi was senior vice president and general manager of sales for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Ghilardi will take up his new role at the beginning of 2009.

Prior to joining the company Rivet served as senior vice president and director of finance of the Semiconductor Products Sector of Motorola.

Ghilardi joined AMD earlier this year from HP, where he most recently served as the vice president and general manager of HP's EMEA Consumer Business Unit.

Comments on this story may be sent to admin@m2.com
For full details on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) click here. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has Short Term PowerRatings of 6. Details on Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.

Source : http://www.tradingmarkets.com/

Did AMD mess up shaders on Radeon HD 4830 samples?

Of
course, this could have really screwed up the HD 4830 launch for AMD
since the missing shaders account for about a 10% drop in performance
according to the testing performed.



As you can see, the FPS changes linearly with
the number of shaders in the GPU. Please note that this is data from
some real empiric testing. All those ten tests were performed with a
real running HD 4850 (running at HD 4830 clocks for better
comparability), without reboot in between, shader count was changed on
the fly.



If you look back up at the first graph, you can easily see that the AMD
4830 result matches the result I got with 560 shaders and the
PowerColor 4830 matches 640 shaders.


This test confirms that 3DMark06 Perlin is a valid test to determine
the relative shader performance of a RV770 card. It also confirms that
the register contents reflect the active number of shaders and that
AMD's sample has the shading power of a HD 4850 with 560 shaders and
that the PowerColor card is equally as fast as a HD 4850 with 640
shaders.

Source : http://www.tweaktown.com/

Review: Gmail for Mobile 2.0 makes your Blackberry happy

If you have not had any luck installing the Gmail client for your smartphone, you're in luck. Google just released Gmail for Mobile 2.0
with J2ME support for many Blackberry models, such as the Blackberry
Pearl 8120 I'm testing right now. It also means that the best
cameraphone on the market, the Nokia N95 that shoots at 5 megapixels,
is also Gmail for Mobile-compatible.

This is great news for those who have struggled to get the
client to install. (Unfortunately, my Moto Q still doesn't work with
the new version.) Google didn't stop there, though. The new version is
worthy of the 2.0 moniker in that it runs noticeably faster. I found
that the Blakcberry ran as speedy as Gmail on the T-Mobile G1 for
e-mail searches, riffling through my 5.5GB of my Gmail in no time.

I have tested Gmail for Mobile on about 30 different phones over the
past year, and there is an obvious speed-up in the code, likely a
result of the work Google has done in speeding up Java applets and
getting Android out the door.

There's also a new offline mode, which points to a bright future for
people like me (and a friend I know who works in the insurance business
and relies on Gmail for Mobile) who lose their carrier signal on
country roads. Now, you can still access all of your mail, reply to
messages, and search your archive even when you are nowhere near a cell
tower - Gmail just syncs it all up when you re-connect. There's also a
way to save multiple e-mail drafts, and have multiple e-mail accounts
on the same phone. There's also a few new shortcuts -- Z for Undo, K
for newer conversations, etc.

I am a Gmail user on the desktop and on my phone. The one thing I'd
like to see implemented better on mobile is labels. I know I can access
them by wading through a few menu options, but I'd like to see actually
see them on-screen somehow, because I use them like crazy. Of course,
Win Mobile users would also love to be able to use the client at all.
Also, a people are commenting on the official Google Mobile blog
that version 2.0 is freezing for them on phones like the Nokia 2630 and
N82, so be careful out there. (It works on the Nokia E71, one user
reported.) I'm sure Google will work out these bugs, they almost always
do, unless of course it is not a bug but a feature.

Source : http://blogs.computerworld.com/

Nokia N85, the Music, Multimedia, and Gaming Smartphone

If you are one of those people who is longing for the fabulous old N-Gage games, but is avoiding the N-Gage device, the new Nokia N-series smartphones may have something for you. The Nokia N85, for instance, lets you play new N-Gage games. It can also replace your iPod as an MP3 player, or you can use its 5 megapixel camera to take photos. The N85 is a GSM and 3G phone, but its numerous features aside, its highlight is the crisp OLED display.

The Nokia N85 is a high-end multimedia smartphone designed for media and gaming. It has so many features that they have been listed at the bottom of this page. However, we'll highlight a couple of features; the display built on new OLED technology and playback keys.

There's nothing exceptional in a 2.6-inch display in 320 x 240-pixel resolution that can display 16 million colors in today's high-end smartphones.

The exceptional thing of the N85 display is the OLED technology. Organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology composes colors from red, green, blue and white light. Background light or other light sources are not required.
An OLED display provides bright and clear image to almost any viewing angle. Low power consumption makes it particularly suitable for battery-powered devices. Naturally, a new breakthrough technology has its price tag that's paid in the product price.

The Nokia N85 keypad slides into two directions. When pushed down, an ordinary numeric keypad is revealed. When pushed up, playback keys appear above the screen. This keypad is function-specific. If music or video is playing, play/stop and forward/rewind keys can be used. If an N-Gage game is running, game control keys are active. The keys show their status with lights. You can only see the keys that can be used, others are hidden.

From : http://www.khabrein.info/

Nokia N85, the Music, Multimedia, and Gaming Smartphone

If you are one of those people who is longing for the fabulous old
N-Gage games, but is avoiding the N-Gage device, the new Nokia N-series
smartphones may have something for you. The Nokia N85, for instance,
lets you play new N-Gage games. It can also replace your iPod as an MP3
player, or you can use its 5 megapixel camera to take photos. The N85
is a GSM and 3G phone, but its numerous features aside, its highlight
is the crisp OLED display.

The Nokia N85 is a high-end multimedia smartphone designed for media
and gaming. It has so many features that they have been listed at the
bottom of this page. However, we'll highlight a couple of features; the
display built on new OLED technology and playback keys.



There's nothing exceptional in a 2.6-inch display in 320 x 240-pixel
resolution that can display 16 million colors in today's high-end
smartphones.

The exceptional thing of the N85 display is the OLED technology.
Organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology composes colors from
red, green, blue and white light. Background light or other light
sources are not required.

An OLED display provides bright and clear image to almost any
viewing angle. Low power consumption makes it particularly suitable for
battery-powered devices. Naturally, a new breakthrough technology has
its price tag that's paid in the product price.



The Nokia N85 keypad slides into two directions. When pushed down, an
ordinary numeric keypad is revealed. When pushed up, playback keys
appear above the screen. This keypad is function-specific. If music or
video is playing, play/stop and forward/rewind keys can be used. If an
N-Gage game is running, game control keys are active. The keys show
their status with lights. You can only see the keys that can be used,
others are hidden.

From : http://www.khabrein.info/