Nokia Readies iPhone Response

Nokia remains at work on its answer to the Apple iPhone, codenamed “Tube,” a company official said on Monday.

Shown in a slide at the Evans Data Developer Relations Conference in Redwood City, California, Tube looks similar to the popular iPhone. The Nokia device showed graphical displays, such as a promotion for the movie Shrek the Third. Other capabilities will be featured, such as the ability to upload photos.

“It’s our first touch device,” said Tom Libretto, vice president of Forum Nokia. Interfacing with the system is done via touch similar to the iPhone. He said the company has not published the planned date of shipment for Tube.

Nokia believes it can compete with iPhone, and during his presentation, Libretto compared volume shipments of iPhone to Nokia’s shipments of phones. Since the launch of iPhone in June, Apple has shipped 5 million to 6 million of the devices, paling in comparison to Nokia’s device shipments, Libretto said. “We’ve done that [volume] since we’ve had dinner on Friday,” he said.

(Apple afterward said 4 million iPhones had shipped worldwide by January.)

The Tube will support Java, something Apple has been reluctant to do with iPhone.

Nokia, RIM Lead in Phone Innovation: Study

Nokia is the mobile device maker with the best innovation and implementation strategies, followed by Research In Motion (RIM), which produces the popular BlackBerry smartphone, and Samsung, according to a recent analyst report.

The ranking was issued by technology market research firm ABI Research, whose innovation scores for the 10 companies included were based on a handful of factors, including choice of partnerships with cellular carriers, distribution channels, relative cost, hardware scalability, interface customization, handset differentiation, patent portfolio, battery life, handset size, support for third party application developers and operating system source code licenses, among others. ABI’s implementation rankings were based on factors like smartphone shipments, brand equity, the number of handset models available, choice of OS, smartphone market share, smartphone average selling prices, distribution networks, operator relationships, and manufacturing facilities.

Nokia scored the highest in both innovation and implementation.

“Nokia’s commitment to driving smart OS into a wider range of devices, and the success of its N series devices, especially the N95, gives it a huge market presence,” said Stuart Carlaw, ABI research director, in a statement.

Espoo, Finland-based Nokia is also the world’s leading producer of smartphones, and the Symbian operating system (OS) found within the vast majority of Nokia handsets is the most widely used mobile OS, followed by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and RIM’s BlackBerry OS, respectively, according to Canalys, another technology market research firm.

Nokia may be the global smartphone leader, but in the enterprise space RIM is king with nearly three-quarters of business users, a ChangeWave survey recently found. Palm is RIM’s closest competitor for enterprise smartphone users with 18 percent of the market, followed by Motorola’s nine percent share and Nokia’s seven percent of users, according to the ChangeWave survey.

ABI also predicts that the worldwide market for smartphones will triple over the coming five years from 10 percent of the total handset market in 2007 to 31 percent by 2013.

ABI’s full ranking of the top 10 smartphone vendors is as follows:

1. Nokia
2. RIM
3. Samsung
4. Motorola
5. Sony Ericsson
6. High Tech Corp (HTC)
7. Palm
8. LG
9. Sharp
10. Hewlett-Packard (HP)

Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte Handset Launched

Nokia today announced the launch of its premium handset Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte. The Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte is inspired from nature and holds a single Sapphire (world’s most durable material) as the center-key.

The handset features 3G capabilities along with 3.2 megapixel auto focus camera with 8x digital zoom and 1GB built-in memory space. The handset has a 2.0″ QVGA 240×320 pixels OLED display with up to 16 million colors. An ambient light sensor to adjust the handset’s screen brightness automatically, is also provided.

The handset has a high-end metal and glass composition. It has a smooth slide mechanism — comprised of ball bearings and a spring mechanism. The handset’s polished steel case is decorated with a genuine sapphire gem stone and soft brown napa leather.

The handset comes with unique tap-for-time and turn-to-mute features and living wallpapers that move organically throughout the day. By double-tapping the steel surface below the display, an analogue clock appears. Incoming calls can be silenced on the phone inconspicuously by simply turning over the phone, screen-side down.

Nokia has created a soundtrack for the new device composed by producers Kruder & Dorfmeister with visuals by Fritz Fitzke.

Nokia’s new anti-fingerprint coating reduces smudges on metal and glass, and unsightly outer seams are hidden with an all-in-one microUSB connector.