Daily Marauder

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While once formidable competitors like Motorola struggle just to deliver their phones on time, Nokia wants to transform itself into a next-generation entertainment company. Last August, Nokia, the world’s largest cellphone maker, created Ovi, an Internet service and online music store. Its intent, analysts say, is to compete directly against Apple. (Iwantmedia 6/24, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/business/media/23nokia.html?_r=3&ref=technology&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin 6/23)

The N96

Following reports Monday that Google is facing delays in completing its mobile-phone system, the company asserted that the handsets based on its Android operating system would go on sale in the second half of the year as it previously indicated. One of Google’s major issues is that carriers and phone makers have to configure Android into their systems, and analysts say they may have been distracted by the need to react quickly to the introduction of Apple’s new iPhone 3G. (ClipSyndicate/Bloomberg 6/23, The Independent (London) 6/24)

Nokia have today announced that they will be acquiring the remaining 52% of Symbian they don’t own and will be releasing the complete Symbian platform under the Eclipse open source license. Nokia have also announced the creation of the Symbian Foundation, which is an alliance of mobile vendors and application providers that any company can join. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/24/nokia-acquires-symbian-goes-open-source 6/24)

Sales of cell phones fell 22% from January to April, but revenue dropped only 8.7% as consumers paid almost 20% more for handsets than in the same period a year earlier, according to an online survey of 150,000 customers conducted by the NPD Group. But a separate NPD study suggests that cell phone retailers could make ends meet through aggressive marketing of accessories, such as Bluetooth headsets, car kits, memory cards and devices for music players. (TWICE 6/23, cellular-news (U.K.) 6/23)