War is declared (Original posted on 12 December 2008)

Hello to all readers of my first blog post.

One says that the war starts when all contenders have declared war.

Well, it seems that the war for the conquest of our brains and hearts has started.

There are 4 main fighters
- Google, which openly declares that they want to organize the world’s information,
- Microsoft, which wants to rule the world or so it seems…
- Apple, which always had to take a revenge against the previous one,

And finally, Nokia. With the official launch of N97 at Nokia World, its EVP Anssi Vanjoki has officially declared that “Nokia wants to coordinate the world“.

What does Nokia mean by that?

Well, it wants to not only locate us on the map, as Google Maps does, but create a dynamic network of relationships around it.

For example, locate dynamically your Facebook friends or your LinkedIn contact or your Messenger contacts. But also interact, communicate.

How? Well, for sure, Nokia controls the “mobile computer”, the OS with Symbian, the map and dynamic content, with Navteq. Although it does not have Vodafone’s customer base, it has an estimated 15 million registered users and can increase it fast because Nokia sells 500 million handsets a year…

So this is Nokia’s first real response to the iPhone and to Android. Given the fact that Nokia’s previous star high end phone, the N95 sold 15 million units, this has to be taken seriously.

Because there are over 3.5 billion mobile phones in the world vs. 500 million PCs connected to the Internet, Nokia’s strategy may well be the right one. We’ll have to see the phone, the N97, to check how Nokia executes on its plans. It is scheduled for the first half of 2009.

It will also be interesting to observe how others are reacting. There are rumours that Microsoft is preparing its own phone.

Will the biggest mobile phone operators such as Vodafone or Orange remain passive? We would expect some consolidation. But that’s for another time.

Stay tuned.

Please do not hesitate to send your comments (always very welcome) to fbruneteau@ptolemus.com.

Frederic Bruneteau

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