In Germany it looks as though the closure of NOKIA's mobile phone manufacturing plant in Bochum has triggered German politicians to jump on the publicity bandwaggon and lose all sense of reality.

Sensible German newspapers such as the Financial Times Germany sum up the nonsense that is being heard and seen currently - such as German politicians giving back their NOKIA mobile phones:

"We are curious to see which mobile phone they will use in the future. BenQ is no longer possible, Siemens neither. Samsung? Well they have an unpleasant bribing scandal to go through. Motorola? They want to axe 7,000 employees by year end, double what NOKIA plans in Bochum. Well, as we said we are curious." I would like to add, maybe they will get Apple's iPhone, which is manufactured in China?

What surprises me about this all is the fact that people seem to be hanging onto jobs that can for the most part only be assembly jobs, so requiring low qualification. German politicians seem to be fighting constantly for jobs - such as those in coal mining - that have no real future. In addition, they lack clear planning and investment into higher education and research. It is easier and faster to jump at such topics in particular when there are state elections, as in Germany right now, than trying to find future solutions.
Fact is still that Germany has one of the highest side costs (not net labor costs), and that's simply due to the inefficiency of the German system which, despite an overall good economy, lags behind most other countries.
The net result will be that any other firm will think twice before bringing any new jobs to Germany.

While away for a week on family vacation I seemed to have missed quite a lot of shake-ups within the wireless industry. First of all Ericsson's wiping out 25% of its market capitalization within just one day with an unexpected profit warning. But that remained pretty much the only negative news. On the positive or encouraging side the news were:

• Europe will see mobile phones on planes while other territories are more skeptical in opening the skies to GSM and GPRS. So once above 3000 m it will be possible to check for e-mails with your mobile phone unless you are flying across a country - such as the US - where they don't allow this service.
• That mobile phones can, despite cut-throat price competition, be a highly profitable business was demonstrated once more by Nokia. No other phone manufacturer is able to increase net profits when the average phone price is going down. That will make them a strong number one in the industry for quite some time to come and enable them to fight off strong newcomers like Apple.
• With its founders pretty much out now, Skype seems to be looking for ways to generate more revenues and to have found mobile phones. End of October they are supposed to be launching the service with 3 Mobile (owned by Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa) in Britain, Italy, Hong Kong and Australia and other markets later. No plans for the US though. Now pessimistic people might think that 3 Mobile is probably desperate, since its 3G efforts so far have been largely unprofitable and cost them billions. The Skype phone is supposed to work with iSkoot software, a startup based in Cambridge, MA, which is backed by Khosla Ventures among others. Bold strategy it seems, but who knows, maybe the right move for both Skype and 3 Mobile.
• And finally a big not only political win for WiMAX was achieved in the ITU in Geneva where WiMAX got the same status as other 3G wireless technologies which practically means access to precious frequency spectrum. Maybe Ericsson's demonstrated WiMAX absence was not the right strategy after all? Also Cisco is rumored to move into the WiMAX space with an acquisition. Possible candidates named are Alvarion and Redline Communications. The latter seems a more likely candidate since they already work with Cisco for quite some time.
  

"Ovi" is short in Swiss German for Ovomaltine, a healthy (yes healthy, which is probably even true here in Switzerland) chocolate milk drink. In Finnish Ovi seems to mean "door" which makes a bit more sense since it will be Nokia's new mobile media portal to be launched soon. If you have seen some of the recent Nokia billboard ads in major cities then you have noticed that change is on the way. The worldwide market leader in mobile phones is taking competition seriously and using Apple's iPhone launch to remake their own image, and moving towards a content provider model as well.

Ovi will be the platform, offering music downloads as well as online games etc. According to their own press release, Ovi is set to become even more than a media download site. As yet they seem to be starting quite slowly, only providing music in WMA (with Microsoft's DRM) as well as games for the (still pretty unsuccessful) N-Gage mobile phones. My interpretation of this is that they have not yet fully figured it out. Do they want to compete with Apple or try to promote/push an unattractive mobile phone? Whoever came up with the word Ovi was BTW certainly not from Switzerland. A small - albeit high ARPU - country with just 7 million people, so not worth bothering I guess for them. Right now I prefer the real milk drink Ovi.

One of our clients is always using his Nokia 9300 with an external Bluetooth-connected GPS receiver and installed TomTom navigation software. Since it worked quite well, I also decided to do it and had to upgrade my Nokia 9300 with an appropriate 2GB flash memory card as well as buy an external Bluetooth GPS receiver. Here I settled for an only 40 £ cheap no-name from a UK online reseller. Today I brought it all up and tested it. To my surprise the whole thing worked out of the box, no problems at all and it is also quite fast at finding satellites. I can only recommend this solution. Only thing I need to find now is a way to mount the Nokia 9300 in the car so that I can see the display. Of course the spoken directions also let you simply place it next to you and you are fine that way, too.

The rumors originate with UK-based Route 66, Nokia's supplier for GPS software. I am a bit surprised that they can say so as they must be operating within an NDA, but they could be doing so out of desperation to try and win clients other than Nokia, who will certainly be squeezing the lowest possible per-phone license price out of them.

With about 2 months to go until Apple's iPhone is supposed to be launched in the US (Europe has to wait until the end of the year), among the established mobile phone manufacturers there is a combination of playing things down but at the same time launching some similar phones ahead of Apple. Interesting also to see that the S. Koreans are suddenly giving their phones a real name and not just an acronym like LG ... or SGH... Three of the supposed competitors are: Samsung's UPSTAGE, LG's enV and Nokia's 5300 Xpress Music. All are much lower priced than the upcoming iPhone and that seems to be their only differentiator. Also the service providers are busy working on their music download portals and price models such as e.g. Sprint Nextel, who are now offering a music download for the famous 99 cents, lowering it substantially from $2.50. And Verizon Wireless has a music website showing the LG enV. Both website designs have black backgrounds, another me-too borrowed from Apple, and that despite some older school marketers (e.g. Ogilvy) recommending avoidance of white on black by all means since it is difficult to read. New times, new marketing ideas...