Seeking to bridge “the now to the next,” Nokia has set its sights on Internet services, next-generation wireless technology, and mobile application development.
Among the company’s efforts include the impending beta release of Point & Find, a technology for finding information and services on the Internet by pointing a camera at real-world objects. The upcoming beta release lets users watch a film trailer, read a film review, or find a nearby cinema to buy tickets by pointing a camera phone at a movie poster.
In another recent move, Nokia joined forces with IBM to link mobile phones to Lotus Notes. In the wireless radio technology space, the company is focused on LTE (Long Term Evolution of Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network), said Jim Harper, a Nokia senior technology marketing manager.
LTE requires fewer network elements than earlier-generation networks, and it requires no circuit-switching, he said. It’s being proposed as a competitor to WiMax, a technology that Sprint has begun rolling out in the U.S. this fall.
In the development tools space, Nokia is positioning its Qt application development framework (pronounced “cute”) as a platform for building applications to run on different types of systems. Applications also can be developed once and run across various desktop OSes, said Dilip Kenchammana, a Nokia product line manager.
Another focus is cognitive radio, in which a device can dynamically jump between different frequency bands to increase bandwidth capacity, for purposes such as sending audio bits or data.
Nokia has also previewed several research projects, including:
* Videoconferencing pet, which features a mobile unit that can, for example, let grandparents catch a glimpse of their far-away grandchildren. It acts as a physical avatar of the caller.
* Mobile 3D video, which provides immersive video experiences and rich communication.
* Mobile Millenium, which offers a next-generation real-time traffic data platform that uses GPS-enabled phones gather data on traffic.