Tag: nokia

Nokia and Microsoft team up on AI

Posted on June 1, 2021 by - News

Nokia has been telling the world+dog that it has come up with multiple AI uses cases delivered over the public cloud, with its chum Microsoft.

By integrating Nokia’s security framework with Microsoft Azure’s digital architecture, communications service providers (CSPs) can securely inject AI into their networks nine times faster than using private cloud and scale fast across their network. AI use cases are essential for CSPs to manage the business complexity that 5G and cloud networks bring, and will help accelerate digital transformation.

Nokia launches Data Marketplace as-a-service

Posted on May 6, 2021 by - News

Nokia has launched its Data Marketplace as-a-service to encourage secure sharing of data and AI models, allowing what it describes as digital transformation and data monetisation for enterprises.

The outfit said that as AI and machine learning are increasingly crucial in business decision making. Nokia Data Marketplace is designed to help enterprises and communications service providers (CSPs) use data in strategic decision making, by providing real-time access to massive trusted datasets.

The new service also enables enterprises and CSPs to become data marketplace providers themselves, by monetising data exchanges between customers or business ecosystem participants.

Nokia Data Marketplace ensures trusted data exchange and authorisation mechanisms, it’s claimed. This allows a wide range of vertical use cases, including electric vehicle charging, environmental data monetisation, supply-chain automation and preventative maintenance powering numerous vertical segments, including transportation, ports, energy, smart cities and healthcare.

Friedrich Trawoeger, Vice President, Cloud and Cognitive Services at Nokia, said: “Our customers need secure and trusted access to data for effective business decision making. With Nokia Data Marketplace, enterprises and CSPs can now benefit from richer insights and predictive models to drive digital ways of working and tap into new revenue streams.”

Nokia teams up with Intel at the data centre

Posted on April 7, 2021 by - News

Nokia said that its Nokia AirFrame data centre solutions will be upgraded with the third Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors to increase their compute capacity, faster data lanes and higher memory capacity.

This means that AirFrame products will be upgraded immediately following the availability of the latest processors.

Nokia’s AirFrame data centre is designed for running demanding virtualised and cloud-native software workloads in the 5G era.

Nokia partners with Vi Business

Posted on December 10, 2020 by - News

Nokia has partnered with Vi Business, the enterprise arm of Vodafone Idea to provide enterprises with support for digital transformation and enhance security.

Last year, Nokia and Vi business partnered to launch SD-WAN to help businesses with transformation. As the adoption of future-ready network solutions increases, this partnership will offer differentiated propositions in cutting edge technologies like Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), private wireless and gigabit passive optical networks.

Under this partnership, Vi Business will enable enterprises to use best-in-class technologies to increase operational efficiency, enhance business agility and increase the security of their infrastructure.

Openreach deploys Nokia fibre networks

Posted on May 21, 2020 by - News

Nokia said that Openreach will deploy its fibre solutions to help meet its target of bringing ultra-fast and reliable broadband access to 20 million homes across the UK by the mid-to-late 2020s.

The roll-out with Nokia focuses on deploying GPON and XGS-PON fibre access technologies to expand Openreach’s fiber-rich network to reach 4.5 million premises by the end of March 2021. It’s also capable of delivering up to 10Gb/s symmetrical broadband speeds in the future, in areas where demand for additional capacity is required, it’s claimed. Nokia’s solution supports a smooth evolution from current traditional deployments to virtualised access-network control and management (SDAN – Software Defined Access Networking) by software upgrade.

Nokia denies Juniper deal

Posted on December 1, 2017 by - News

nokia-lumiaThe dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn claiming that the former making of rubber boots, Nokia was about to buy network rival Juniper.

The rumour was that Nokia was readying a $16 billion offer for the California-based networking vendor.

Nokia, however, released a statement directly contradicting the report, stating: “Nokia is not currently in talks with, nor is it preparing an offer for, Juniper Networks related to an acquisition of that company.”

Wall Street had reacted favourably to the potential deal, with Juniper’s share price rocketing over 22 percent. Juniper currently has a market cap of just over $11 billion.

Juniper was saying nothing.

Nokia’s roots are in telecoms infrastructure. In 2016 it reported revenue of over €20 billion.

It is not as if Nokia does not have the previous form for expensive buyouts. Last year the firm acquired Alcatel-Lucent for $16.6 million to boost its manufacturing of mobile equipment, after offloading its mobile phone business to Microsoft in 2014.

Nokia quickly merges Alcatel-Lucent operations

Posted on January 5, 2016 by - News

wellington-bootFormer rubber boot maker Nokia has gained control of French counterpart Alcatel-Lucent following its $17 billion all-share offer and the two telecom equipment makers are planning to swiftly merge their operations.

Nokia wants to be in a stronger position to give Ericsson and Huawei a good kicking in the telecom network gear markets.  To do that it has to absorb  Alcatel-Lucent and restructure its channel rather fast.

Formal closure of the deal is not expected unti the first quarter of next year, but the restructuring will happen before that.

Nokia Chief Executive Rajeev Suri said that from January 14, 2016, Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent will offer a combined end-to-end portfolio of the scope and scale to meet the needs of our global customers.

The stock is still down about 10 percent since the announcement of the deal in April as investors have worried about the integration process and special terms negotiated by the French government.

But in October, Nokia brought forward the deal’s 900 million euro cost-saving target by a year to 2018.

The deal, set to become the biggest transaction in Finland’s corporate history, follows a string of M&A moves that have restructured former mobile phone giant Nokia in recent years.

In 2013, it took control of its network business by buying out Siemens from a joint venture, and in 2014 it sold the ailing mobile phone business to Microsoft. Last year it also sold navigation business.

EC approves Nokia’s Alcatel-Lucent buy

Posted on July 27, 2015 by - News

euThe European Commission has approved Finnish telecom equipment group Nokia’s planned buy of Alcatel-Lucent because the two were not close competitors.

It said the merged Fin-French outfit will still face shedloads of competition even if it will have combined market shares around or above 30 percent for several specific types of equipment.

“The overlaps between the two companies’ activities are effectively limited,” the Commission said in a statement.

Nokia had a strong presence in Europe, where Alcatel-Lucent was small, with the positions reversed in North America.

Nokia launched its all-share deal then worth 15.6 billion euros to buys its smaller French rival in April. The move is seen as the company building up its telecom equipment business to compete with market leader Ericsson.

The merged group is smaller than the son of Eric, but bigger than Chinese rival Huawei’s and ZTE.

 

Nokia denies it wants its mobile phone business back

Posted on April 27, 2015 by - News

shoe phoneThe former maker of rubber wear for those cold Finnish nights, Nokia, has denied reports in Chinese media that it planned to return to manufacturing phones.

Nokia sold its mobile phone business to Microsoft and claimed it was quietly getting on with networking and other more lucrative things.

However the Chinese press was all abuzz with the news that Nokia was going to manufacture consumer handsets out of a R&D facility in China.

Nokia said that the reports are false. It even put it on its website, so the denial must be true.

“Nokia reiterates it currently has no plans to manufacture or sell consumer handsets.”

But Nokia has said it is looking into returning to the smartphones business by brand licensing, which is a little odd, but then there are a lot of things which are a little odd about Nokia lately

Soon after Nokia sold its phone business to Microsoft, it launched a new brand licensed tablet computer, produced under licence by Taiwan’s Foxconn, with an intention to follow up with more devices.

Nokia has agreed with Microsoft that it will not enter the mobile phone business before 2016.

Sebastian Nystrom, the head of products at Nokia’s Technologies unit, told Reuters in November that Nokia would be crazy if it did not look at mobile phone production eventually.

Nokia this month announced a takeover of France’s Alcatel-Lucent, a bid to boost its mainstay network equipment business, and also said it could hive off its map business.

All this suggests that Nokia sold off its mobile business with the long term aim of building a new leaner and meaner one, from scratch. Of course the denials might be true, for now, but if we look back this time next year the plans might have firmed up a little more.

 

Microsoft rolls out $29 phone

Posted on January 5, 2015 by - News

microsoft-in-chinaTech giant Microsoft started the New Year by announcing it was releasing a feature phone which will be priced at $29.
The Nokia 215 is aimed at emerging markets and for people who want a second phone and don’t have very much money.
The phone can connect to the internet but only at speeds of 237 kbps but the big selling point is its battery life which has nearly a month’s stand by time.
In addition, the Nokia 215 comes with a camera and has a screen about two and a half inches in size.  The camera’s resolution is 0.3 megapixels.
Software included is Bing Search, Opera, Facebook and Twitter.
The phone comes with either one or two SIM slots and is expected to be released across the world during the first quarter of this year.
While there is still considerable demand in poorer countries for affordable phones, Microsoft cannot expect to make that much money out of this market.
And, in addition, it faces competition from Chinese companies who have started delivering phones with far more sophisticated features for not that much more money.

 

Apple ruled Christmas

Posted on December 30, 2014 by - News

two-applesA report from Flurry indicated that Apple seriously outdid its competitors over the Christmas period.

The metrics company said that of all the devices activated in the week up to Christmas Day, Apple ruled the roost with 51 percent of device activations.

Samsung devices took second place with 17.7 percent of activations, Nokia took 5.8 percent, Sony took 1.6 percent and LG managed a measly 1.4 percent.

Microsoft owns Nokia now so it could be said to be third in the pecking order.

Flurry Analytics said the figures indicated that the introduction of Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus had a “blockbuster” holiday season, beating the somewhat dismal gizmo trend.

Flurry also said that the largest number of app installs on Christmas Day, with 2.5 times the installs compared to any day in the previous three weeks.

The company also managed to track the type of device, with full size tablets taking 16 percent, small tablets 17 percent, “phablets” three percent, medium phones 58 percent and smalll phones seven percent.

Finland gives up on handwriting

Posted on December 1, 2014 by - News

Pieter_Claeszoon_-_Still_Life_with_a_Skull_and_a_Writing_QuillThe home of Nokia, Finland has decided to give up teaching handwriting, in favour of typing courses.

The Savon Sanomat newspaper reports that from autumn 2016 cursive handwriting will no longer be a compulsory part of the school curriculum. Instead the schools will teach keyboard skills and “texting”.

Actually, keyboard skills are surprisingly less common than most people think. Most people “pick up” typing and really have no idea what home keys are and some of the other black arts imparted by jack-booted typing teachers in schools. “Touch typing” produces speeds of 126 words per minute.

Some countries already provide an opportunity for students to learn to type properly, many others treat the whole idea as a low-level skill that can simply be “picked up.”

The teachers that the Savon Sanomat newspaper spoke to said that children would benefit from the changes to the curriculum, and that attention would be paid to those kids who may not have access to the same kind of modern-day gadgetry at home as their peers. Minna Harmanen, of Finland’s National Board of Education, said that fluent typing was an important “civic skill” that every child should learn.

Of course this does mean that we will be raising a generation of children who cannot leave a note on the fridge and might not be able to carve their own names in the desks at school.

Nokia’s N1 Android tablet is made by Foxconn

Posted on November 19, 2014 by - News

_79097039_6168ac6a-287c-499b-a17d-b6c10d1479d5While the Tame Apple Press rants that Nokia’s N1 Android tablet copies the iPad, it seems they are missing the real story – the N1 was entirely made by Foxconn.

Nokia has collaborated with Foxconn to bring its first Nokia-branded, Android-powered device. The outfit is planning to start working on smartphones as soon as the restrictions posed by the Microsoft deal expire in 2015.

What is weird is that it is a Nokia device which has been made by an outfit which is supposed to have sold its Devices and Services business to Microsoft in a desperate move to get out of that business. Instead, the N1 is made by Chinese contract manufacturing company Foxconn.

Nokia is nowhere in the picture. Foxconn will be handling the sales, distribution and customer care for the device. Nokia is licensing the brand, the industrial design, Z Launcher software layer and IP on a running royalty basis to Foxconn.

N1 is a bog standard tablet. The device is powered by Android 5.0, aka Lollipop. N1 showcases a 7.9-inch 2048×1536 resolution screen with a full anodized aluminium body. Tt is using the industry standard Type-C USB reversible connector, but otherwise it is a standard high-performance tablet.

It runs Intel’s 64-bit Atom Processor Z3580 at 2.3 GHz and will have 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. The device has an 8-megapixel main camera and a 5-megapixel front camera.

But it is also unlikely to be seen in the US. Nokia is targeting China with N1, where it will be available for an estimated $249 in the first quarter of 2015 — around the Chinese New Year.

 

Microsoft waves goodbye to Nokia

Posted on November 11, 2014 by - News

Microsoft's Lumia 535Software giant Microsoft released its Lumia 535 and 535 dual SIM smartphones yesterday, confirming news that it has decided to drop the Nokia brand name.

Both phones run Windows Phone 8.1.

The smartphones have a five megapixel front facing camera, a five inch display and will be released into the wild in “key markets” this month.

While pricing will vary depending on the different territories and operators, Microsoft predicts a typical retail price will be around 110 Euro.

The phones come in bright flashy colours like bright green and bright orange, but there are more sober hues too, such as cyan, white, dark grey and black.

Bundled with the phones are Skype, a pre-installed Office suite, 15GB of its cloud storage – One Drive, It also comes with Outlook and a personal “assistant” called Experience Cortana.

Nokia deal created anti-trust issues for Microsoft and Samsung

Posted on November 3, 2014 by - News

samsung-hqSamsung has told a court that its collaboration with Microsoft on Windows phones raised antitrust problems once Microsoft bought Nokia’s handset business.

The filing comes from Microsoft’s lawsuit accusing Samsung of breaching a business collaboration agreement. It claimed that Samsung still owes $6.9 million in interest on more than $1 billion in patent royalties it delayed paying.

However Samsung said the Nokia acquisition violated its 2011 deal with Microsoft because it effectively required the sharing of secret information with a rival.

Samsung said it agreed in 2011 to pay Microsoft royalties in exchange for a patent license covering Samsung’s Android phones.

Samsung agreed to develop Windows phones and share confidential business information with Microsoft as part of that collaboration. Microsoft said it would reduce the royalty payments if Samsung met certain sales goals for Windows devices.

Once Microsoft acquired Nokia, it became a direct hardware competitor with Samsung, the filing said, and the South Korean company refused to continue sharing some sensitive information because if it had done so it would have breached US antitrust laws.

The agreements, now between competitors, invited charges of collusion,” Samsung said in the filing.

Antitrust regulators in the United States and other countries have approved Microsoft’s Nokia acquisition.