On Wednesday, “Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said emerging rivals Apple Inc, Google Inc, Research in Motion Ltd and Microsoft Corp have helped to accelerate interest in using the Internet on mobile phones,” Eric Auchard reports for Reuters.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s be serious here and give credit where credit is due: Apple did it alone. The others simply trying to follow Apple’s lead:
• Net Applications: iPhone Internet usage share shows huge surge – August 22, 2008
• 85% of Apple Phone users browse mobile Web; iPhone is top device for news, information access – March 18, 2008
• Google sees 50 times more searches from Apple iPhone than any other mobile – February 13, 2008
• Google sees post-Christmas surge in Apple iPhone traffic – January 14, 2008
Auchard continues, “‘Suddenly you have the mightiest companies in the world there as your competitors. That is a little mind-boggling,’ Kallasvuo said in an on-stage interview at the Churchill Club, a speakers’ forum for Silicon Valley civic leaders.”
“Nokia recently struck a deal to use Microsoft e-mail software on its more than 80 million Series 60 phones sold so far. This should help Nokia quickly overtake RIM in terms of the numbers of phones running corporate e-mail, he said. ‘We will exceed the RIM client (BlackBerry) in some months with a very good e-mail system,’ Kallasvuo promised. RIM recently reported it had 19 million BlackBerry subscribers,” Auchard reports.
“He singled out the positive impact that Apple has made on the industry with its iPhone over the past year, saying the Cupertino, California computer and consumer electronics company had done the mobile phone industry ‘a big favor,’” Auchard reports. “‘We have a new, credible competitor in this business. You know I need to take my hat off,’ he said of how the iPhone has raised expectations for phones. He added: ‘Of course we need to be able to respond to any competitor and we will.’”
Full article, “Nokia CEO Wowed By iPhone, Sights on BlackBerry,” here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "JES42" for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: At least Nokia seems to finally be realizing that publicly knocking the vasty superior Apple iPhone is not a smart move.
Oh, by the way, Nokia, like all the rest of the knock-off artists, had better be careful:
We’ve been pushing the state-of-the-art in every facet of design… We’ve been innovating like crazy for the last few years on this and we’ve filed for over 200 patents for all of the inventions in iPhone. And we intend to protect them. – Steve Jobs, January 9, 2007
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