Home What's Brewing? Finland Is Now Microsoft Country! Is Windows Phone 7 Finnished?

Finland Is Now Microsoft Country! Is Windows Phone 7 Finnished?

It’s a tale of two cities: Espo (a part of the greater Helsinki metro area), and Redmond (a Seattle exurb). A tale of two Steves with ties to Microsoft: Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft manager who is the CEO of Nokia, and Steve Ballmer, the current MS CEO.  Then there are the two mobile operating systems: Symbian, a Nokia star that is fading in the cell phone night sky, and which will soon be phased out, and Windows Phone 7, a shooting star that the board of Nokia is now wishing everything upon.

In a joint briefing, Microsoft and Nokia have announced a partnership that makes Finland Microsoft country, and makes Windows Phone 7 , well, certainly something other than Finnished.  Nokia has adopted Windows Phone 7 as its primary mobile phone platform and it will also embrace Microsoft’s Web services stack, including the Bing search engine.

It did seem to be the “worst of times” for Nokia who has seen its market share cratering with no answer for the iOS and Android smartphone revolution and recently announced layoffs on the order of 20,000.  But does the alliance propel Microsoft  ahead with bold, new Nokia hardware firepower?  Can Nokia fortify Microsoft’s brand in Europe and Microsoft do the same thing for Nokia here (where it has encumbered access as an unlocked-only, non-subsidized option). The Redmond-Finland saga will soon be writ large.

The Twitter commentary has already begun. “Two turkeys do not make an eagle,” quipped Google’s Vic Gundotra (a former Microserf). Instead of retweeting, Elop struck back and invoked the Wright brothers:  “Two bicycle makers, from Dayton Ohio, one day decided to fly!”   [24×7]

RealNetworks Previews Unifi Personal Media Cloud Service to Mobile Operators at Mobile World Congress

RealNetworks® today previews Unifi™, a new personal media cloud service, to operators at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  Unifi, which won the “Best of CES” award from CNET last month at the Consumer Electronics Show in the software, services and applications category, will let users organize, access and enjoy the photos, music and videos they own on any Internet-connected device. Vodafone Germany will be the first operator to offer its 36.7 million mobile customers access to their personal media collection anywhere, with their subscriptions to Unifi easily managed through their regular monthly phone bill.

RealNetworks is working with mobile operators and other partners worldwide to bring the new Unifi personal cloud service to consumers’ PCs, tablets and smart phones. Consumers will have the option of adding Unifi to their monthly mobile service on a single bill. Unifi increases consumer engagement with mobile media, by enabling access their photos, music, playlists and videos from any of their mobile devices. In this way, Unifi encourages smartphone and data plan upgrades and increases ARPU.  [24×7]