Not Another Mobile Phone Blog

Sony Ericsson is the world’s fourth largest mobile phone company. Sony Ericsson is struggling in the Indian market from last two quarters and is facing stiff competition from rivals like Nokia, Samsung and LG. Samsung is now number 2 in the Indian market. Economic Times has reported that Sony Ericsson is in talks with Spice Mobile. Spice Mobile is the handset company that belongs to the Modi Group and is demanding INR 80 to 100 per share. People at Spice have confirmed that Sony Ericsson and Spice are in talks over the take-over but nothing has been finalized till now. Sony Ericsson wants to have majority stake in Spice but there is no confirmation if this would be a 100% buy-out. I am not sure if this but-out is going to give any leverage to Sony Ericsson in the Indian mobile handset market. Sony Ericsson is third in the Indian mobile handset market and faces tough competition from Samsung. May be the Spice Mobile buy-out will help Sony Ericsson in enhancing its low-priced mobile handset portfolio and add some Spice to its life.

After acquiring majority of stake in Symbian yesterday, Nokia announced that they have taken full control of the mobile OS company. This came as a real shocker to most of the people in the mobile industry. Now Nokia will control Symbian, even before it was doing that but now it has the RIGHT to control what happens in Symbian. By the way, Symbian is going to be made free and CNET reports, that the first Symbian Foundation handsets will come out in 2010, thats not too far. CNET reports that, the Foundation will start taking shape in 2009, with 2010 seeing the first handset from this foundation. Google's Android has already been delayed and WSJ reportyed that Android handsets will now come in late 2008. 2007-2008 was more of the iPhone year, I think 2009-2010 will be the year of open source mobile platforms like Android and the mobile platform from the Symbian Foundation. Michale Mace who runs the blog, Mobile Opportunity has done a nice analysis on the Symbian Foundation and whether it will hurt or help Nokia. A must read for every mobile phone enthusiast.

Nokia is buying Symbian to enable open mobile platform. According to the Nokia Press Release,

Nokia announced it has launched a cash offer to acquire all of the shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own, at a price of EUR 3.647 per share. The net cash outlay from Nokia to purchase the approximately 52% of Symbian Limited shares it does not already own will be approximately EUR 264 million. Nokia has received irrevocable undertakings from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ), Panasonic Mobile Communications Co. Ltd. and Siemens International Holding BV to accept the offer, representing approximately 91% of the Symbian shares subject to the offer. Nokia also expects Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. to accept the offer.
[Via: Nokia Press Center]

Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic and Siemens have come together along with Nokia to make the future of mobile free and this move might also be threat to the guys like LiMo and Android who have their open mobile platforms. I think more than the LiMo guys, Google might be tensed as their Android platform is already delayed. Today morning I posted on Nokia increasing its stake in Symbian and also talked about Nokia's chances of acquiring the mobile OS company.

[Image Via: Nokia Conversations]

With Symbian's 10th Anniversary just flown by, there is one more news round the corner, according to mocoNews, Nokia has bought over the stake of Siemens AG in Symbian, which is around 8.4%, thus making its own share to be around 56%. After this stake take over, Nokia has become the majority stakeholder in Symbian. Incidentally Symbian is the top selling OS for smart phones and Nokia's ever increasing sales of smart phones have given good leverage to Symbian. Nokia increasing its stake in Symbian is a clear indicator that the company is pretty positive with Symbian being used in upcoming Nokia phones, including the Nokia Tube. Increasing its stake in Symbian would be a part of Nokia's strategy to gain control of Symbian. Nokia's top competitors use Symbian in their mobile phones and if Nokia gets total control of the OS then it can earn a lot of licensing revenues from the same. Just a thought, Nokia might have some other plans though...

[Image Via: Gizmodo]

The European Commission gave an unconditional nod to the Trolltech acquisition by Nokia in the first week of June. Trolltech is a Finland based company that develops the QT platform. The company is also a member of the LiMo Foundation. Trolltech has Linux based software development platforms and frameworks. Nokia has today announced officially that they have completed the acquisition of Trolltech. With this acquisition of Trolltech Nokia will add speed to its cross platform software strategy for mobile devices and also its internet tablets. Did you know that, the moment the LiMo Foundation came to know about Nokia’s plans to acquire Trolltech they stopped any contributions from Trolltech to the development of the LiMo Platform and vice versa. Sometime back, Nokia also showed a positive outlook to develop mobile phones that will run on Linux and not on Symbian, dont worry they will churn out Symbian phones also.

Now Apple will not be sourcing any chips from a third party for its 3G iPhone and iPod. Apple bought the chipset company PA Semi, some time back and from now on Apple would be developing its own chips that would be in turn used in their iPhone and iPod. Apple is very secretive when it comes to the development of its products and with this move Apple has become more secretive with its own chip development for the iPhone. Future generation of iPhones will have multi-core chips designed by PA Semi, and most probably Samsung would fabricate it for Apple. Steve Jobs revealed this information in his interview to the New York Times.

European Commission has given an unconditional nod to the acquisition of Trolltech for by Nokia. Trolltech is a Norwegian company that develops cross platform solutions and development tools. If you are not aware, Trolltech own the Qtopia mobile platform and is pretty positive about Linux for mobile phones. Trolltech is also the member of the ever increasing LiMo Foundation that has recently seen splurge in its memberships with big wigs like Verizon and STMicroelectronics joining the foundation. Qt technology of Trolltech was also used by Motorola in its Linux phones but now Motorola has parted ways with it and is fully supporting the LiMo platform of which both, Motorola and Trolltech are members. Today, EC gave permission to Nokia and the company is in the process of acquiring Trolltech. Sometime back Nokia said that, in future, they will be using Linux as a platform in other of their mobile devices apart from their Internet tablets. Nokia has not given a 100% nod for Linux on their mobile phones but they have not denied also and with EC giving a nod to the acquisition of Trolltech, it seems Nokia’s dreams of competing in the world of open source mobile platforms would come true.