* Nokia increases market share in mobile phone business

"Worldwide sales of mobile phones to end users in the third quarter of 2007 reached 289 million units, a 15% increase from the same period last year," says Gartner, Inc.Nokia's mobile phone sales to end users totalled 110.2 million units reaching a market share of 38.1% in the third quarter of 2007. This quarter, Nokia not only exhibited the highest year-on-year market share increase, but also raised operating margins thanks to effective cost management and global distribution strategy. This was achieved despite the average price of its phones falling from €90 to €82. Other points to note are the success of the Korean manufacturers, Samsung and LG, and the sad decline of America's Motorola. Gartner says:Motorola's sales into the channel remained weak and, with limited surplus stock, sales to end users were not enough to maintain its No. 2 position. Motorola's market share dropped 7.6 percentage points from the third quarter of 2006, relegating the vendor to the No. 3 position. "Motorola today is a pale version of the company it was a year ago," [Carolina Milanesi, research director for mobile devices research at Gartner] added. Although the Razr2 was well received and accounted for 900,000 of the overall sales, Motorola needs a much stronger portfolio to return to its former market share. Gartner reckons sales of mobile phones in Western Europe reached 47.2 million units, with 45m sold in North America, 24.5m in India and 13.1m in Japan. Average penetration in Western Europe is 115%: everywhere except France, there are more mobile phones than people.

* Nokia is thinking green with Eco Sensor concept phone

Nokia has already done a "greener" phone with the Nokia 3110 Evolve model, but it also has a "futuristic Nokia Eco Sensor Concept" phone, reports Unwired View. It says:Nokia Eco Sensor concept includes a wearable sensor unit that will house a number of optional sensors to monitor environment, health and local weather conditions, a dedicated mobile phone and a set of dedicated mobile software applications and services.The carrying strap made from solar cells will power the sensor unit and all the devices will "talk" to each other via low power near field radio technologies.Concept phones are like concept cars: not designed for production. But the Eco shows the sort of things Nokia is considering for future products. And with the baby boomer population now entering old age, it's probably right on the money with the idea of incorporating health monitoring.

* Nokia will bring Silverlight to its mobile users

"Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, the world's leading smartphone software, as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way," it says in a press release.Silverlight is also coming to Windows Mobile (as was revealed last May), but at the moment I don't know what will appear when.

* Nokia to buy Symbian, make it open source

Symbian was spun off from Psion as a way of making it independent, and a number of companies own pieces, including Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Samsung and Siemens. However, Nokia is now offering to buy the 52% of Symbian that it doesn't already own, for €264 million, and says it will make the system open source. Nokia says:The acquisition is a fundamental step in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, announced today by Nokia, together with AT&T, LG Electronics, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone. More information about the planned foundation can be found at www.symbianfoundation.org.One of the reasons for the move is to "to unite Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and [DoCoMo's] MOAP (S) to create one open mobile software platform."According to Symbian's press release:"Establishing the Foundation is one of the biggest contributions to an open community ever made," said Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, CEO of Nokia. "Nokia is a strong supporter of open platforms and technologies as they give the freedom to build, maintain and evolve applications and services across device segments and offer by far the largest ecosystem, enabling rapid innovation. Today's announcement is a major milestone in our devices software strategy." Symbian is by far the world's leading smart phone software platform, with more than 200 million devices sold. Around 18.5 million were sold in this year's first quarter. The move looks as though it's positioning Symbian to compete against Google's Android, and at the same price: free. However, it's hard to know how much of a threat Android represents when there are no Android phones. Motorola has tried hard, but so far, Linux has been a failure in the mobile phone market.

Nokia N95 8GB

A new look. A bigger screen.

Up to 8GB of internal memory. The Nokia N95 8GB multimedia computer has more
of what you're looking for. 5 megapixels, DVD-like quality video, Carl Zeiss
Optics. Access your music, emails, plus advanced web browsing & integrated GPS &
Nokia Maps. Upload photos instantly to Flickr, download videos with ease. It's
what you need. It's where you are.



Operating Frequency

* WCDMA 2100 + E850/900/1800/1900MHz

* Automatic switching between bands and modes




Dimensions

* Volume: 96 cc

* Weight: 128 g

* Length(max): 99 mm

* Width(max): 53 mm

* Thickness(max): 21 mm



Memory Functions

* Up to 100MB internal dynamic memory for messages, ringing tones, images, video
clips, calendar notes, to-do list and applications

* Up to 8GB internal flash memory for multimedia content such as music,
pictures, ringing tones, map data