Nokia after a few days of speculation finally confirmed that they are leaving Japanese market and will no longer sell any of their devices in Japan. Nokia’s move to quit Japanese market comes out of the current economic downturns and small market share of Nokia in Japanese handset sales.

“In the current global economic climate, we have concluded that the continuation of our investment in Japan-specific product variants is no longer sustainable,” Timo Ihamuotila, executive vice president at Nokia, said in a statement.

Nokia however, will continue to sell the luxury mobile phones brand “Vertu” which Nokia owns. Its global research and development as well as sourcing operations in Japan will also continue. A typical Vertu has an unimaginable price tag of $5,000-$10,000, and it has offered models that ranged up to $310,000. Vertu has decent sales in the Japanese millionaires market.

Another reason speculated in the market about Nokia’s exit is the slow growth opportunities left in the somewhat saturated Japanese market. Over 85% of Japan’s population already owns a handset and the Japanese prefer very high-tech phones from Japanese makers only. Nokia, the biggest handset maker in the world have just 1% market share in Japan.

Nokia aims to focus more on the emerging markets in Asia and Africa where billions of people still do not have mobile phones. “Nokia has bigger opportunities in other markets,” said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst with Gartner Research, “not in a shrinking market like Japan.”

With this news, all the possibilities for Nokia 5800 XpressMusic’s launch in Japan also comes to an end. Bad news for Japanese fans!

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Original post by Admin

Latest contest from the Nokia Music store: fill out a ridiculously short form for a chance to win one of two limited edition Marshall amps, courtesy of The Killers and their new album.

More details: contest ends December 5th, and successfully entering the contest adds your email address to The Killers’ Official Spam list.

Win a Limited Edition Marshall Amp

Original post by ang

No- Nokia 5800 is NOT officially launched in Russia yet, wait till Dec 5 for that.
Yes- Nokia Flagship Store in Russia start selling Nokia 5800 in limited numbers now but the entire inventory sold out in 30 minutes.

Just as the news spread out in Russia about the handsets hitting Nokia Flagship Stores, people were reported to camped up in line for days, offered bribes to get the handset first and bought out the entire stock in just few minutes of starting the sales.

Over 900 people are reported to added their names in the waiting list for the 5800 model. Check out the full report of a Nokia employee here.

Beware Iphone! The journey has just begun for the “5800 Era”.

Some pics of the crowd dying to grab Nokia 5800 in Russian Nokia Flagship Store-
(Click to view full size)

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Original post by Admin

Amazon now lists the North American Nokia N85 as being in stock on December 6th! Does that mean other retailers are getting them soon? The Nokia N85 is my current favorite phone. You can read the first part of the Nokia N85 review before deciding to add it to your cart.

I’ve been happily using the Euro version of the Nokia N85 for a month now, but because of the frequency specs, I can still use the fast 3G network from AT&T here in New York. The North American version coming out next week will come with USA warranty in case something breaks.

If you don’t know by now why I favor this phone over the current flagship Nokia N96, read the 5 reasons why the Nokia N85 is better than the N96.

Thanks to our reader, ajc3, for the heads up on the forums.

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Original post by Mark Guim

Nokia has launched its first true touch screen 5800 XpressMusic model for the Taiwanese with a reported price of T$14,900 (US$446). The price is a bit higher than the expected but as we see with Russia, Spain and Hong Kong, Nokia Tube is likely to be bundled with an exciting offer for the Taiwanese market too.

Nokia is also expected to come up with a Nokia Music Store, Comes with Music service and a Chinese version of OVI service for the Taiwan market in 2009.

According to market reports, it is a strong belief that all country-specific bundle offers will come to an end at the start of 2009 and we can see an almost uniform price of 279 Euros (plus taxes) worldwide, as promised by Nokia earlier. As we wrote earlier, the bundle pack offers may be a short-term strategy to prevent Grey market sales in the holiday season.

We may have to wait for an official announcement by Nokia Taiwan to check out more details on what exciting offer they have on cards for the Taiwanese.

[Via Digitimes]

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Original post by Admin

Nokia today announced officially that it has started shipping Nokia 5800 XpressMusic ‘Tube’. As we reported earlier, the Gadget will now or soon be available in select markets including Russia, Spain, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Finland, among others.

Nokia says the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, “delivers an affordable music device with a touchscreen interface to the mass market”.

“When it comes to music phones, people all over the world want a device that is a great music experience and still works really well as a mobile phone, without sacrificing features. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic delivers on this and allows consumers to quickly and easily access and share the content that is most important to them with the people that are most important to them”, said Jo Harlow, vice president, Nokia.

The phone is relatively inexpensive among touch devices and, in Europe, should cost 279 Euros at full price and substantially less when linked to a contract. It also supports Nokia’s Comes With Music subscription service and will cost more up front in return for a year’s worth of unlimited but permanent downloads.

So all you eager-beaver music mobile maniacs, be ready for the start of a revolution. The long wait is over for some countries and still a few weeks to go for the US and most of Europe markets.

Press Release

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Original post by Admin

Guest writer: Brenda, Nokia Friend View team.

Hi all! We are very grateful about all the feedback we’ve got during Friend View’s first three weeks of public experience in Beta Labs.

We have been reading feedback thoroughly and discussing it in the team. There have been many questions and we have been answering as many as possible, some through e-mail and some by replying to comments on the Beta Labs’ Blog and even in some other blogs. Unfortunately, it is not possible to answer to each and everyone, so through this new post we’ll try to clear some common concerns and questions that have arisen since Friend View’s Beta Labs launch.

Client update

A new S60 client has been released already. Updates should come automatically when you start the application on the phone.

This update has some small fixes, probably not very visible to many but meaningful nevertheless. Some fixes were requested by our users, as e.g. supporting T9 and adding the same zoom keys as Nokia Maps for E71 & E90, among others.

Web version improved

There is already a mobile version of www.friendview.nokia.com for downloading the client. Now, when you go to our home page from your S60 browser you’ll be able to instantly download and install Friend View to your phone. Since last week we’ve also done some small fixes in the web UI in general.

FAQ & concerns

Maps & Cache: Friend View does cache maps in your phone’s memory card, so they are not downloaded more than once (unless you clear the cache yourself). There sometimes can be some slowness of the previously cached maps shown on screen, and this has led to a possible misconception about the loading of maps.

Also, as some of you have noticed, we’re following the Sports Tracker look-and-feel in order to share map content. Our map content cache is shared with this version of Sports Tracker. This is the reason why Friend View maps are different than Nokia Maps, which may be on your phone already.

Location & Standby: If you have Location Sharing ON, your GPS (precise location) or Network-based (approximate location) are updated to the server and shared with your friends periodically. And while Friend View is in the background (or standby mode), your location is still updated but this happens less often. In this way your phone saves battery. So far, Friend View does not load information from the server while it is kept in the background, it only updates again when it comes to foreground (a blinking icon on top-left corner indicates searching network) . Your location might seem old , when the application comes from background to foreground, until the foreground application re-acquires your position from GPS or network based location.

Keep up with Friend View

We are working on more improvements and considering your ideas and requests. There is still a long way to go, and we’ll hope to keep hearing your comments to make Friend View more fun and interesting.

Let us hear from you!

Original post by admin

Nokia Wellness Diary was just updated to 1.25. Changelog:

• supports newest models: N79, E71, N85, 6210, 6220
• supports newest version of Sports tracker (v. 1.78 beta v.1.82 beta)
• exercise intensity scale changed
• minor improvements&bug fixes

Original post by Ilkka Peltola

The original 6260 was a flip and the first S60 phone that I ever owned. The new 6260 is a slider and an S40 device. Where did it all go wrong?

To be honest, the two phones have very little in common. The latest 6260 slide looks a lot like the 6220 Classic and 6210 Navigator, with one very noticeable missing piece of the puzzle: the Symbian OS. That’s a surprise considering the phone has some pretty power-packed features, like a 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss camera with dual LED flash/autofocus/15 fps VGA video, integrated GPS + A-GPS, WLAN, HSPA, 6 hours of battery life on GSM, TV-out, 8GB microSDHC support, and Bluetooth 2.1 + A2DP. Wow, that’s a mouthful.

There’s also onboard stereo speakers, an interesting addition considering the 6260 slide only has a lackluster 2.5mm audio jack. And the battery can support up to 30 hours of music listening. Seriously, if you’re going to go that far, why not just spend the extra 50 cents needed to pop in a 3.5mm port?

It also looks like the Navi-wheel has returned, only to be resurrected as the “360^o Navi-key.”

Pricing: 299 euros ($384 USD) unsubsidized, putting it right smack in midrange territory.

The Nokia 6260 Slide will start shipping in the first quarter of 2009.

Original post by ang

Beware of Reset Generation! I am currently addicted and can’t seem to put my phone down once I start playing. If you haven’t been excited about N-gage on your phone before, this game will make you. The main difference from the other N-gage games I’ve played is that there’s a multiplayer option that enables me to play up 3 other players.

Reset Generation on Nokia N85

I tried earlier games on N-gage before, but I wasn’t intrigued and moved on. When my Nokia N85 came with free activation code for any game, I gave it another try and asked others to recommend one. Reset Generation was mentioned a few times, so I got curious.

Intro

Reset Generation is a fast-paced, multiplayer puzzle game where players must guide their heroes to rescue other players’ princesses. It’s not as simple as you think because there are many aspects in the game to consider. Building combos, firing cannons, picking up weapons, and summoning monsters are all part of the game and it requires chess-like thinking if you want to pull off a win.

Playing the Game

Each character has their own special powers or weapons that can only be activated when the special power meter is full. You can find out about their powers when you play the tutorials, or when others use it on you during multiplayer games.

Nokia found the right formula to keep your thumbs on playing Reset Generation. It is really addicting learning the ins and outs of each character, discovering the combination of moves, and the frustration of losing against other players. I lost 18 multiplayer games until my first win… but I’m getting better. Each multiplayer game is about 5-10 minutes long.

Reset Generation gameplay screenshots

Graphics and Sound

Reset Generation is not as visually appealing as the more recent games, but graphics is not really important in puzzle games. The audio is pretty good. It stays in sync with the fast pace of the game.

How to Get the Game on Nokia Phone

If you have an Ngage-enabled phone, you can play a demo of Reset Generation easily in the games menu. You’ll need to enter an activation cade for the full version. There are different ways to get an activation code:

• People who purchased the Nokia N85 will have an activation code that came with their phone.
• Nokia flagship stores gave out free activation codes for Reset Generation. Visit or give them a call.
• … or buy an activation code through the N-gage menu.

Play On PC

You can also play the full game of Reset Generation for free on your PC (no Mac support). You use the arrow keys for movement and Control or Shift for actions. The experience is very similar to the phone. I really like the fact that the availability of this game makes sure there are almost always other people to play with whether you are using Ngage on a Nokia phone or in front the your computer at home.

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Original post by Mark Guim