Techzone

Although the atmosphere surrounding this year’s MacWorld has been rather downbeat from Apple’s standpoint and one of why Apple decided to exit a major marketing event like MacWorld. Macworlds are not going to be the same as they once were without Steve.

However, stealing the rumors for this year’s MacWorld are reports of the launch of iPhone Nano. Leading Apple fan sites like MacRumors have released conceptual photographs (the one above) of an iPhone Nano. Labeling these rumors as doubtful, serious doubts are being cast about the likelihood of such a device.

Nokia has removed one of the key obstacles for takeup of its new Internet offering, combining sign-ins for its overall services site, Ovi.com, and for its media sharing device.

Ovi.com is something like Apple’s MobileMe. You can sync your contacts, maps, music and documents from your PC to your online account in Ovi.com and access them on the go. Sounds pretty cool.

Nokia has completed an $8.1 billion acquisition of a mapping company called Navteq to jump-start its Internet business as growth in the cell phone market stalls. The handset maker has gathered access to all of the services to its Ovi.com site, but so far they have all demanded additional usernames and passwords, something analysts see as one of the major obstacles for takeup.

“We are pleased to announce that as part of improving your experience with Share on Ovi, we have merged our sign-in system with Ovi.com,” Nokia said in a letter to clients. “This is a key step in integrating Ovi,” Nokia said. Nokia said earlier this month it aims to make annual revenue of at least 2 billion euros ($2.79 billion) from Internet services in 2011, focusing on navigation, music, games, messaging and media — but is battling with more established rivals such as Google, Apple and Yahoo.  Nokia has not released user numbers for its Internet services, which created revenue of 115 million euros in July-to-September quarter.

On Wednesday, the French courts ordered Apple to come away from the monopoly of supplying iphones only to Orange.

At the time we published that article, Apple hadn’t yet responded to
the news. However, in an e-mail, company spokesman Alan Hely said that
Apple is deeply disappointed by the council’s decision. The iPhone, he
said, has created “vigorous competition among handset makers and
carriers that benefits all consumers. Our partnership with Orange has
enabled us to deliver unprecedented value to French consumers.”

The whopping 8 mega-pixel camera mobile phone with a touchscreen is here. These things get powerful by the day. Here’s a press release from Samsung.

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Wikipedia has officially launched a mobile phone optimized version of their encyclopedia at mobile.wikipedia.org. read more »

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According to two reports, Sony Ericsson and HTC are both semi-confirming Android handsets for 2009. An SE spokesman by the name of Garfield Brusewitz was quoted as saying that the company would introduce higher-end models of the Google-powered devices to start with, then supplement those handsets with cheaper versions aimed at a broader market. In another article, HTC says that it will launch one “or more” Android phones in the new year, aiming to have them on shelves by Summer. This hardly comes as a surprise from either of these companies, as HTC has been on-board since day one of the OHA and, you know, already has an Android handset out, and Sony Ericsson’s announcement of participation was naturally going to lead to some actual hardware.

via Engadget
http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/10/sony-ericsson-htc-say-android-powered-handsets-due-next-year/