nokia

The economic downturn is taking its toll on the cell phone market, as Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile devices, downgrades its outlook for the fourth quarter and 2009.

On Friday, Nokia announced that it now expects to only sell about 330 million mobile phones in the fourth quarter, bringing its total number of handsets sold in 2008 to 1.24 billion. The company had expected to sell 1.2 billion devices in 2008.

The company blames the weakening economy and currency volatility for its dismal outlook. Simply put, people aren't spending money on cell phones in … Read more

I'm a little tired of the candy bars and slider phones that seem to define today's mobile phone appearance. So anything that pushes the design envelope out of the rut without being ridiculously OTT gets my vote.

Heikki Juvonen is one such designer who has gone for odd-looking in his Nokia concept phone outing, which, oddly enough, has an aesthetic energy that's both futuristic and ergonomic. The end result is a handset that somehow sits well in the hand without being awkward to handle. Now let's hope Nokia loves this fat-bottom effort just as much to … Read more

AT&T took the wraps off the new Nokia 6650 Thursday. Offering a thin flip-phone design--still a rarity for Nokia--the 6650 shows a brushed metal skin in either red or silver. In fact, it could almost resemble the Motorola Razr if you squint.

As for features, the 3G world phone offers a music player with support for AT&T's Mobile Music service, AT&T Navigator, AT&T Video Share, voice dialing, a speakerphone, personal-organizer options, a microSD card slot, stereo Bluetooth, an XHTML Web browser, and a 2-megapixel camera. The 6650 will be available beginning … Read more

On Wednesday, Nokia introduced the latest model in its E series of smartphones, the Nokia E63. Traditionally, the Nokia E series, which includes the Nokia E71 and the Nokia E66, have been very business focused and slightly on the pricey side, but the cell phone manufacturer is hoping to break that mold and bring in more general consumers by selling the E63 at a lower price point.

The Nokia E63 will start shipping in Europe within the next few weeks for 199 Euros, which is about $248 here. Compare that with E71, which goes for $500 unlocked, and you've … Read more

When consulting online traffic maps to form your plan of attack for hitting the streets, how often do you suspect that the red, yellow, and green colors indicating the various speeds of traffic flow are inaccurate, show outdated data, or that they'll change by the time you get there?

The concept of online traffic maps makes a lot of sense, but until they're foolproof, users will always be skeptical. A new collaborative project between UC Berkeley and Nokia is trying to provide mapped traffic data with more accuracy than ever before. How? By tapping into the ubiquity of … Read more

This is a bit troubling, particularly since it affects one of the better (or so we thought) T-Mobile phones that we've seen this year. On Thursday, the carrier suspended sales of the Nokia 5610 Xpress Music.

According to T-Mobile, a "very small" percentage of devices suffer from a defective component that causes the display to go blank. We didn't see such a problem on our review device, but if you're stuck with one of the faulty phones you can contact T-Mobile to "discuss available options" (whatever that means). Nokia has otherwise done a decent job with its Xpress Music phones, so we hope the problem stops here. The full text of the T-Mobile statement is after the jump. … Read more

Apple's blowout quarter for iPhone 3G sales lifted it into second place among all smartphone vendors worldwide.

Canalys released market share stats on Thursday showing strong growth for the smartphone market even as the worldwide economic situation takes a turn for the worse. A total of 39.9 million smartphones were shipped during the third calendar quarter of the year, a 28 percent increase over last year's totals.

Nokia is still the leading vendor by a comfortable margin, holding 38.9 percent of the market. But shipments declined slightly, and market share fell 12.5 percent, compared to … Read more

The jobs of around 600 Nokia employees are at risk, as the Finnish phone manufacturer begins making changes to its workforce in the wake of disappointing profits.

In a statement Tuesday, the company said it is planning changes in its sales and marketing unit, affecting around 450 employees. In addition, the R&D division will "sharpen its focus on fewer, but stronger, research areas," Nokia said, with around 130 Nokia Research Center jobs affected. The company is also planning "workforce adjustments" in its global process operations, affecting around 35 employees.

Nokia will also close its … Read more

(Credit: Somebody Else's Phone)

If you found somebody else's phone, would you look through it? That's a rhetorical question. Of course! Your phone is your life, at least if you're under 25, and there's nothing more interesting than the "lives of others."

The advertising firm Wieden + Kennedy London translated the idea of "cellular oversharing" into a much gushed-about ad campaign for Nokia. "Somebody Else's Phone" depicts the lives of three twentysomethings through their text messages, multimedia messaging service, and pictures, and it essentially creates a new story format: … Read more