Versatile Amphibian

I’m still trying to sort my thoughts about the Mobile World Congress. To start with, here’s my Match of the Day style summary of the two best things I saw at MWC and the two worst things I saw at MWC… I liked: Ubuntu Tablet Ubuntu is best known as a server O/S, but they also offer a smartphone and now a tablet version of the open source O/S. The tablet version is extremely slick and easy to navigate: apparently they have some partners ready to launch hardware for it this year (although it installs seamlessly on a Google Nexus tablet). I know it won’t catch on, but it was still really nice to see some innovation in interface design. I didn’t like: the way the industry is missing the point Mobile is the hot topic in many industries, particularly when it comes to providing very localized sales, marketing and other services. The cellular industry is in a prime place to enable this sort of new commerce market. So why was it nowhere to be seen at MWC? Because it seems that t...

Nokia announced three new Asha handsets yesterday to great fanfare, in addition to a new, lower priced Lumia. I played with all four devices at Mobile World Congress, a process that got me thinking about Nokia’s current range. My conclusion is that, despite being great products and well engineered, they’re not addressing a serious problem with Nokia’s range – the lack of credible smartphones in the crucial $150/ €100 price bracket. This part of the market is important as it is outside of the typical average selling price of contract smartphones and therefore not impacted by the distortion of operator subsidy that so damages the success of high end Lumias by making them effectively equivalent in price to the unassailable iPhone. For those who haven’t encountered it, Asha is a low-end device based on Nokia’s venerable Symbian 40 “smart-ish” platform that is aimed at feature phone users upgrading to a more feature rich device, either in emerging or developed markets. All three of the new ...