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GLOBAL – Today in London, our two companies announced plans for a broad strategic partnership that combines the respective strengths of our companies and builds a new global mobile ecosystem. The partnership increases our scale, which will result in significant benefits for consumers, developers, mobile operators and businesses around the world. We both are incredibly excited about the journey we are on together.

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• Nokia N9, Symbian Belle, Nokia 603
• See the new look Nokia Conversations
• Staff picks, world firsts and more

While the specific details of the deal are being worked out, here’s a quick summary of what we are working towards:

• Nokia will adopt Windows Phone as its primary smartphone strategy, innovating on top of the platform in areas such as imaging, where Nokia is a market leader.

• Nokia will help drive and define the future of Windows Phone. Nokia will contribute its expertise on hardware design, language support, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies.

• Nokia and Microsoft will closely collaborate on development, joint marketing initiatives and a shared development roadmap to align on the future evolution of mobile products.

• Bing will power Nokia’s search services across Nokia devices and services, giving customers access to Bing’s next generation search capabilities. Microsoft adCenter will provide search advertising services on Nokia’s line of devices and services.

• Nokia Maps will be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services. For example, Maps would be integrated with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and adCenter advertising platform to form a unique local search and advertising experience.

• Nokia’s extensive operator billing agreements will make it easier for consumers to purchase Nokia Windows Phone services in countries where credit-card use is low.

• Microsoft development tools will be used to create applications to run on Nokia Windows Phones, allowing developers to easily leverage the ecosystem’s global reach.

• Microsoft will continue to invest in the development of Windows Phone and cloud services so customers can do more with their phone, across their work and personal lives.

• Nokia’s content and application store will be integrated with Microsoft Marketplace for a more compelling consumer experience.

We each bring incredible assets to the table. Nokia’s history of innovation in the hardware space, global hardware scale, strong history of intellectual property creation and navigation assets are second to none. Microsoft is a leader in software and services; the company’s incredible expertise in platform creation forms the opportunity for its billions of customers and millions of partners to get more out of their devices.

Together, we have some of the world’s most admired brands, including Windows, Office, Bing, Xbox Live, NAVTEQ and Nokia. We also have a shared understanding of what it takes to build and sustain a mobile ecosystem, which includes the entire experience from the device to the software to the applications, services and the marketplace.

All the details: Nokia Lumia 800

All about our stunning new smartphone.

The specs; the price; the facts

Today, the battle is moving from one of mobile devices to one of mobile ecosystems, and our strengths here are complementary. Ecosystems thrive when they reach scale, when they are fueled by energy and innovation and when they provide benefits and value to each person or company who participates. This is what we are creating; this is our vision; this is the work we are driving from this day forward.

There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.

There will be challenges. We will overcome them.

Success requires speed. We will be swift.

Together, we see the opportunity, and we have the will, the resources and the drive to succeed.

You should check out:

Nokia Strategy 2011
Welcome to the Third Ecosystem
Mobile Phones: the next billon
Ask Steve and Stephen
Nokia Strategy and Financial Briefing [video]
Five reasons to get excited about a Microsoft partnership
Blogbite: today’s announcements and a preview of *that* interview
Stephen Elop and Steve Ballmer answer questions from Nokia Conversations readers

There has been a lot of speculation about Symbian in recent years. Nokia acquired Symbian in 2008 and established the Symbian Foundation, making Symbian available royalty free and in open source. At that time, this was the fairest way to ensure that the huge ecosystem benefitting from Symbian development didn’t lose out. Since then the competitive landscape has changed considerably. With competition comes choice and every company has had to make choices about their software strategy based on their own priorities and capabilities.

Make no mistake, Nokia chooses Symbian.

Do not confuse the endof the Foundation with the end of the Symbian platform. The Foundation has been very important in steering the platform through increasingly challenging waters, but the Foundation and the platform are not the same. Nokia has no intention to change the plans announced on the 21st October to continue to develop and evolve Symbian.

Nokia believes in Symbian because we know that it isthe only platform capable of serving our global audience with a range of devices carrying locally relevant content and services. We also believe that decisions were needed to make Symbian more competitive and attractive to developers. That’s why we announced we would focus on Qt and Qt Quick for application development. Qt is itself a thriving open source framework and already a firm favourite with many developers because of its ability to accelerate the development of rich, visual applications. We will focus on Qt and Qt Quick for our own development for both Symbian and the MeeGo platform, which means that applications developed in Qt for Symbian now will still work on Nokia MeeGo devices in the future (we’re planning 2011 for launch of MeeGo products). Finally, focusing on a single framework means that there will be no break between current and future versions of Symbian on Nokia devices. Anything developed for the latest range of Nokia Symbian smartphones would work on future devices, and importantly, any future developments of the Symbian user experience would benefit users of the recently launched products like the Nokia N8, Nokia C7, recently shipped Nokia C6 or soon to be shipped Nokia E7.

The Foundation’s decision does not in any way slow down our plans for Symbian or Qt. Nokia has already started to focus its own engineering resources on Qt and Qt Quick and we’re busy developing our own applications and services in the framework.

We are grateful to the Foundation and its employees for all they have done to keep Symbian as the the most used global smartphone platform. Now it is time for Nokia to drive where Symbian can go next. The end of the Foundation is the end of an era, but for Symbian, a new era is only just beginning.

– Jo Harlow, SVP, Smartphones

Established 10 years ago, the plant has produced a variety of top Nokia devices, including the best-selling Nokia 2760, the 6300 and the 5800, which has already shipped 1 million units.

Quantifying 500,000,000 in your mind is quite tricky – at least it is for me. So, I just typed the number into Google to see what might come up.

It turns out, that about 11 months ago, Mozilla had a similar celebration with 500,000,000 downloads of Firefox. Which, at the time it compared to “an audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the wright, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes.”

But these aren’t the only remarkable things to hit the 500 million milestone.

Late last year, Scientists shed light on a 500 million year old mystery, figuring out how 500 million-year-old fossils came to survive the gruelling temperatures beneath the Earth’s crust to become a mountainous ridge in the Rockies.

Last year a house close to Monte Carlo was valued at a whopping $500 million, before being snapped up by russian billionaire, and one of the world’s richest men, Roman Abramovich.

And finally, only last month Zimbabwe’s central bank was forced to issue a $500 million note following continuing hyperinflation through last year. The note is the highest current denomination.

So that’s our starter for 10. Congratulations to the team in Hungary on this pretty remarkable feet, now feel free to file your own interesting facts and stories around the number 500 million below.

First, quick explanation. The sensor is a tiny device, no bigger than a small thumb. It attaches to whatever you’d like to attach it to and communicates with your phone wirelessly (though we’re not totally certain how, just yet – there’s no official release so we only know what’s been reported so far). Drop whatever has the tag attached and your phone will alert you, via a software app that sits on your phone, and help you find the object, provided you’re within 100 meters of it (probably not good for speed boat jaunts then).

The system also works the other way around, so you could have the sensor on your person, and if you get separated from your device, an alarm will sound to let you know. Support for 100 individual sensors is provided by the app and each sensor has enough power to last 18 months before it runs out of juice.

This is all conceptual right now, albeit a working prototype rather than pie in the sky idea. Although I haven’t seen it in the flesh, I’m not sure if I like the idea or not. Something to help me find stuff before I rush out the door would be good – particularly for my wife – but I’m not sure if, practically, this would do the trick. It seems to have more in common with suddenly losing things, from what I can tell.

So, what do you think? Useful? Useless? Let us know in the comments below.

Read more about Nokia Locate Sensor on Electricpig, who also kindly let us use their pic.

When OPK was brought into Nokia originally, he was part of the team which transformed the company from a primarily rubber-based business to a technology business. I was aware that OPK was around then, but perhaps not aware that he was so instrumental to the move.

Tackling the change today then, where Nokia moves emphasis to services and software, away from hardware, there’s probably nobody better placed to lead and drive that move.

The article does question the sense of the move in the current economic climate – questioning whether people will be willing to pay for additional services, and whether the services section of the business will be delivering the $2 billion of revenue by 2011. I’m not placed to answer that, but it is an interesting question I think. In the grand scheme of Nokia’s annual revenues it isn’t a huge amount, but even so it’s nothing if it’s not ambitious.

And it needs to be. If services are to take off and develop in the way they deserve to to, then the targets and ambitions need to be set high. I reckon it helps to focus the mind somewhat. What do you think?

Read the full interview on TimesOnline

On Share on Ovi or on Twitter. More info here…

On Share on Ovi or on Twitter. More info here…

Central to Kiva.org delivering on its promise is its website. There
users can set up an account and become a lender (or a borrower). Those
requiring funding are entrepreneurs simply trying to better their lot.
The money they borrow genuinely helps them move towards economic
independence and improve their lives, the lives of their family and
those in the community.

Take Zabit Safaraliyev from Azerbaijan. He transports food to villages
to sell, using his car to get him and the foodstuffs from A to B. He
needs $1200 to buy spare parts for his car so he can continue his two
year old business. We’re dealing with real lives here and budding
entrepreneurs. $1200 isn’t much money, in the grand scheme of things.
When we see the amount of money governments are poring into some banks
to bail them out, a certain perspective lands when you see a situation
such as this. Zabit has already raised $225 of his required $1200. His request
was posted yesterday.

There’s Pov Choek, a 29-year-old widowed mother of two from Cambodia.
As a member of the eight-strong village bank loan group in the Andoung
Russey Village in Kampong Chhnang provence in Cambodia, she’s hoping to
expand her pig-breeding business. The business is already going well,
but she wants to expand by buying more piglets, and thus increasing her
income. Pov is part of a loan group, which is designed so that
individuals don’t have to take the risk themselves, they can rely on
the support of other group members, as the group, not the individual,
offers the guarantee.

Kiva itself doesn’t manage all the loans directly with the individuals.
In many cases it works with local field partners (in Pov’s case it’s
AMK, a leading micro finance institution in Cambodia). This enables the
process to work much smoothly, and local expertise on the ground helps
keep everything above board. It also enables entrepreneurs to get their
hands on funds more quickly as many local partners will already have
funds available, which they can then top up through Kiva, ensuring
there is always a steady stream of funds for new entrepreneurs.

Reporting back from the ground happens through Kiva’s journal on
Kiva.org. One of the latest entries includes a video from Kiva
volunteer (and ex Wall Street banker) Milena Arciszewski, who was
reporting back from her time in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Well
worth a watch so I’ve included it below. Entrepreneurs can gain access to journal reports on their phones via MMS, thanks to some software written by Kiva engineer Jeremy Frazao. This enables Kiva business to stay in touch with what’s going on.

Writing about Kiva has opened my eyes. I knew stuff like this was going
on, but I’d never really seen it up close (and sitting in my reasonably
comfy office, I use the term “up close” very loosely). I have a lot of
admiration for the people involved in Kiva, in every respect and can
see myself getting involved over time. Its use of mobile tech is limited,
but its use of web technology genuinely changes people’s lives. Please,
take a few minutes to have a look around and if it’s appealing, get
involved. What’s even better, tell people about it. The more the
merrier. Don’t forget to let us know what you think either.

Quick access to Media is cool too. Hot keys to access things like camera and gallery is fine, but being able to flick easily between one and the other is a nice bonus too. I’l looking forward to trying that.

Fingers, stylus, virtual keyboard, handwriting recognition, and a plectrum. That last one’s just a bit of fun, Jo says.

There’s plenty more too, but too much to go into right now. Oh, it’s 279 euros. Affordable then. It’ll be shipping, “shortly”.

Tero’s coming back now. He should have an update for Comes With Music for us. “A total music experience”.

It could be said that indoor navigation is more important than outdoor
navigation. No, not finding your way around the house in the dark, but
getting to your seat at a football stadium, or to that store you want
to visit in a shopping centre or, and this is a crazy one, finding a
product in a supermarket. That would be nuts. Even better and a real
problem solver, is finding the location of your car in a car park.
Imagine being able to take a picture of your car and then being able to
navigate your way back to it (actually – I’m going to do that next time
I leave my car in an airport car park!)

At work there are plenty of examples too. Finding a printer, or an
empty meeting room are regular workplace issues. Potentially, solved.

Wireless networks could be the key to finding your way around inside
but it’s only part of the answer. Making a solution that’s scalable and
can be easily rolled out is a much bigger challenge. How to map the
buildings, for example, is quite a challenge. Part of the answer could
come from the user community though, and in fact could become essential
to making this a success.

In fact, Nokia is already trialling indoor positioning in over 40 Nokia
buildings worldwide. And the first public buildings have already been
mapped, including some malls, airports and universities. Later this
year there’ll be a commercial trial with a shopping mall in Helsinki,
to explore how revenue could be generated by this service.

The best news though? This app is being considered for Beta Labs. Brilliant!