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Nokia ups the innovation stakes

By Mike on 31 July 2008

CALIFORNIA, USA – It’s always excited to hear about Nokia pushing more attention and investment towards innovation, quite simply because as users we’re ultimately set to benefit from the final products and services that emerge. So today’s announcement sees Nokia committing a further USD 150 million in Nokia Growth Partners (a global private equity and venture capital management firm), with a vision of investing the money in promising companies that are striving to tightrope the cutting-edge in order to improve the mobile space.

The new investments are planned to be focussed in line with Nokia strategies, of which Internet services remains one of the key areas, as highlighted by Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo when speaking at the 2008 Nokia Annual General meeting earlier this year:

“Companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with… our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an Internet company”

Since he said this, there’s been a huge surge of interest and development in context aware location-based services, and today’s announcement promises to continue to drive this fresh new area of progression.

“Target investments include companies creating innovative mobile applications and services that encourage rapid adoption of mobile solutions, such as context and location based services, mobile payments, mobile advertising, music and entertainment and other mobile services and software.”

What are your thoughts on this increased investment in innovation? Let us know below.

Photo from Photo Mojo

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ARJWright Says:
August 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 pm

Its a good thing that Nokia is also recognizing adn fostering innovation with some kind of backing/awards system. The thing that will need to be seen though is what happens when these grants and contest are over; will it be like other prorgams where you don’t hear from the developers for 18+ months and that project they worked on becomes neutered to a severe degree?

I also wonder how this can work along with Nokia Piolts in making a more open ecosystem of development and feedback that takes advantages of open source learned lessons and make something that doesn’t just grow Nokia’s marketshare, but the ability of people all over teh mobile usage line to benefit from things.