The key to 2012 and success this year has got to be in the social space. Look at it this way, everyone is going social. If you are not, you’re probably going to lose out. Same goes for mobile. It isn’t a wonder that companies like Apple have numerously had top engineering department employees go out to bars and leave iPhone prototypes in bathrooms and on table tops. This has not happened once.

You see, the reason is that Apple understands social. How a product is going to be accepted into a market can be directly gauged by how a small user test group will take a new device. This is undoubtedly a brilliant Acceptance Testing tool. In 2012, more companies better jump on this though. No-use coming up with a product that would have been improved had say about 50 test group users played with it before hand. Ask Nokia, they know. Every-time they are about to launch a new product into the market, they give it a test run. This is why tweeps like @oyolla had the Nokia 700 prototype months before and @Mwirigi a Nokia E6 running Symbian Belle.

God said “Give and it shall come back to you.” He wasn’t lying.

Bottom line: Take advantage to Read more »

So much to say; such little space.

Nokia recently partnered with Microsoft to have them as a hardware manufacturer and possibly rollout their new devices running on Windows Phone 7. This news shocked the world. Albeit it had heads turning and the tech crowds murmuring on who would benefit and where the marriage was likely to fall through. So far so good. The wedding still looks good from here with both parties enjoying good benefits from this.

I am a big fan of Nokia. Why? Well, they’re reliable and give room for innovation. Personally, I own quite a number of Nokia handsets. My very first was a Nokia 8210 that was a hand-me-down from the old man quite a few years back. It had seen better days and went straight to the ‘We Recycle’ promotion Nokia had globally. My current phone is the Nokia C7-00 that @Oyolla (GM for Nokia in the region) gave me for my pitch on my favourite Nokia app a few months back, a Nokia C2-00 which was the first dual SIM Nokia phone in the Kenyan market, a Nokia X2-01 which I loaned a friend after he has carjacked and robbed of his phones (he later conveniently refused to give it back to me), a Nokia E6 and a Nokia 2116 which I use as an office line for my small growing business (and side jobs). Read more »

We have waited for this for a long time and despite Nokia’s GM for the region, Kenneth Oyolla, flaunting one on his social timeline, you can now get yours if you live in the States as early as next month.

This baby is the only new Nokia device that runs MeeGo OS and is expected to cause a stir especially now that it hits the market alongside the much anticipated iPhone5.

It features a 3.9-inch AMOLED screen (resolution of 854 x 480 pixels) and a 1GHZ ARM processor to boost functionality of this all-gesture manipulated phone. The camera is an 8MP just like the Nokia C7-00.

A few other exciting features include;

>Operating system: Linux MeeGo
>Screen: 3.9-inch AMOLED capacitive 854 x 480 pixels
>Size: 116.45 x 61.2 x 12.1 mm
>Weight: 135 g
>Processor: ARM Cortex-A8 Model 1000 MHz TI OMAP 3630
>Graphic Processor: 2D/3D Graphics HW Accelerator with OpenGL ES 2.0 support
>Camera: 8 MP
>Talk time: up to 11 hours
>Standby time: up to 19 days

We expect it in the East African region sometime mid to late (14th – 31st) October. Expected retail is valued at 730USD (approximately 69,423KES).

See a video of the Nokia N9 here.

Global handsets maker advises users not to respond to dubious messages.

World’s leading handsets maker, Nokia, has warned mobile phone users over the re-emergence of a scam suggesting that people have won money or mobile phones, which in reality, is an attempt to get private information from people who reply to the messages.

The hoaxers previously used to send to the dubious information to email addresses telling people they had won a Nokia device. This scam has now moved on and is being sent out to mobiles phones via SMS, with the message suggesting people have won a free Nokia, and just need to provide their bank details to claim the free phone.

“We have been receiving a number of reports recently that scam artists are sending out hoax SMS and emails, purportedly from Nokia, that offer some sort of money if one were to respond in a similar way that lotteries are run. We would like to clarify that, those messages are not coming from Nokia and that we do not do money lotteries. We are asking people to beware and know that this ‘lottery’ is a scam,” said Kenneth Oyolla, Nokia, General Manager, East and Southern Africa.

“Our advice is that if you do receive something dubious like this, DO NOT reply to these messages or pass them on. The thing to do is to delete the message without responding. You might also consider contacting the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) to report such hoax messages,” said Mr Oyolla.

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Local apps on Ovi store have increased from just two in April 2010 to over 40 in January 2011.

The number of mobile applications on the Ovi Store has grown by over 1600 (%) percent in the last eight months indicating a sharp increase in demand for local content and rising interest from developers in Kenya.

Fresh statistics from Nokia indicate that Kenyan apps have increased tremendously from just two in April 2010 to over 40 in January 2011.

Interestingly, Kenyan applications are not only increasing in volume and quality- the content they carry is also broadening, enabling a larger number mobile phone users to interact, transact and learn more from the Ovi Store.

“The Ovi Store now has apps with content ranging from news and job offers to social media and mobile commerce. These are interesting times for developers and application users in Kenya and trends continue to change every day,” said Kenneth Oyolla, General Manager, Nokia, East & Southern Africa. Read more »