Word: kallasvuo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Apple encroached on Nokia's turf when it introduced its much-heralded iPhone, Nokia is striking back by taking aim at Apple's dominance in the digital music biz. On Wednesday Aug. 29, in a gala event in London, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo announced that his company will soon fire up its long-anticipated music downloading service. The Nokia Music Store will go live later this year as a crucial component of a new Nokia website called Ovi. Competing against downloading sites like Apple's iTunes, it will let consumers download millions of songs directly onto their...
...which handset makers like Nokia have to sell their phones to mobile operators like Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 02. And those companies, in turn, sell services - not just voice calls but increasingly things like ring tones, music and other forms of entertainment - to consumers. In listening to Kallasvuo on Wednesday though, it was clear that Nokia is messing with the status quo. "This world does not work the way the old world worked," he said, explaining that Nokia is now an Internet company. "We have begun expanding our business beyond hardware to include services and software...
...Kallasvuo denied that this big push into services would damage relations with operators, saying that Nokia is finding ways to work with them. Executive vice president Anssi Vanjoki suggested that Nokia might even share Website revenue with operators. After all, the Website could be a golden opportunity for Nokia to sell advertising space, so how bad would it be to arrange a little revenue sharing with old partners? Vanjoki, who's in charge of marketing Ovi, says Nokia will be a more flexible partner than Apple, which so far has restricted the iPhone to one U.S. carrier...
...Nokia has been through this before in the early 2000s, when in deference to operators it toned down an initiative called Club Nokia, a portal for selling games and ringtones. But things are different this time, because as Kallasvuo put it, the Internet, and in particular the mobile Internet, "is one of the most opportunity-rich markets the world has ever seen." Nokia can't step aside for operators because the competition is already fierce and because more boundaries between which companies do what are falling every day. Not only has Apple entered the phone business...
...Keeping operators happy will be a challenge. CEO Kallasvuo is optimistic. Extolling connectivity, he told a story about how in the middle of a rainy golf outing he fetched an Internet weather report on his cellphone, indicating the showers would soon cease and allow him to resume playing. His impressed golf mates asked, "What do you have in that thing?" Long time business partners are now probably asking the same question, but not necessarily in the same approving manner. Nokia will manage, but it can expect a few storms along...