Nokia will close its battered gaming service N-Gage next year, acknowledging failure in its first major services offering.
The handset maker's mobile gaming push has encountered major challenges over the years, with consumers first shunning its dedicated gaming phones.
The online gaming service, opened last year, never moved beyond a niche audience.
Nokia has started to look for new revenues from online services as its traditional handset market is maturing, with games and music being the first focus areas of the cellphone maker.
"We will no longer publish new games for the N-Gage platform," Nokia said on its N-Gage blog.
It said the games from its first major services offering can be purchased until the end of September 2010, and the community site will remain in operation throughout 2010.
After closing the N-Gage service it will continue to sell mobile games at its Ovi Store, a smaller rival to Apple's popular App Store.
Agencies
Showing posts with label Sony Ericsson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sony Ericsson. Show all posts
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Will Sony Ericsson layoff additional 2,000 jobs?
Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Ltd, the mobile-phone venture of Sony Corp and Ericsson AB, said it will cut an additional 2,000 jobs to revive profit amid falling demand.
The measure will reduce costs by 400 million euros ($524 million) annually by mid-2010 and cost 200 million euros to implement, Sony Ericsson said in a statement. It follows a plan announced in July to slash 2,000 positions to save 300 million euros, which has been completed, and another unveiled in January to reduce costs by 180 million euros by the end of 2009.
Sony Ericsson reported its third straight quarterly loss today after it slipped to fourth place in global handset shipments at the end of last year. The London-based company has suffered as consumers snapped up touchscreen models from competitors such as Apple Inc with its iPhone.
“As expected, the first quarter of this year has been extremely challenging for Sony Ericsson due to continued weak global demand” Chief Executive Officer Dick Komiyama said in the statement. “We are aligning our business to the new market reality with the aim of bringing the company back to profitability as quickly as possible.”
Third loss
The first-quarter net loss was 293 million euros, compared with a profit of 133 million euros a year earlier, the company said. Sales fell 36 per cent to 1.74 billion euros.
Analysts in an SME Direkt survey predicted a 293 million- euro net loss on sales of 1.68 billion euros, based on 28 estimates.
Sony Ericsson’s gross margin, or sales minus manufacturing costs, narrowed to 8.4 per cent in the quarter from 29.2 per cent a year earlier.
Restructuring charges for the first two cost-cutting programmes will stay within the 300 million-euro sum set aside in July to pay for the measures, the company said.
The venture shipped 14.5 million phones, a 35 per cent drop from a year earlier. The company estimated its market share fell two percentage poi
nts to 6 per cent from the fourth quarter. The average selling price of its handsets fell to 120 euros from 121 euros in the fourth quarter as well as the year-earlier period.
Sony Ericsson predicts global industry handset unit sales will shrink at least 10 per cent this year from the 1.19 billion sold in 2008. Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest mobile-phone maker, yesterday reiterated its forecast of about a 10 per cent drop in the global handset market.
Nokia reiterated its margin targets for the year after announcing job cut programmes that will cover about 3,000 employees. The Espoo, Finland-based company’s first-quarter net income declined 90 per cent to 122 million euros.
Agencies
The measure will reduce costs by 400 million euros ($524 million) annually by mid-2010 and cost 200 million euros to implement, Sony Ericsson said in a statement. It follows a plan announced in July to slash 2,000 positions to save 300 million euros, which has been completed, and another unveiled in January to reduce costs by 180 million euros by the end of 2009.
Sony Ericsson reported its third straight quarterly loss today after it slipped to fourth place in global handset shipments at the end of last year. The London-based company has suffered as consumers snapped up touchscreen models from competitors such as Apple Inc with its iPhone.
“As expected, the first quarter of this year has been extremely challenging for Sony Ericsson due to continued weak global demand” Chief Executive Officer Dick Komiyama said in the statement. “We are aligning our business to the new market reality with the aim of bringing the company back to profitability as quickly as possible.”
Third loss
The first-quarter net loss was 293 million euros, compared with a profit of 133 million euros a year earlier, the company said. Sales fell 36 per cent to 1.74 billion euros.
Analysts in an SME Direkt survey predicted a 293 million- euro net loss on sales of 1.68 billion euros, based on 28 estimates.
Sony Ericsson’s gross margin, or sales minus manufacturing costs, narrowed to 8.4 per cent in the quarter from 29.2 per cent a year earlier.
Restructuring charges for the first two cost-cutting programmes will stay within the 300 million-euro sum set aside in July to pay for the measures, the company said.
The venture shipped 14.5 million phones, a 35 per cent drop from a year earlier. The company estimated its market share fell two percentage poi
nts to 6 per cent from the fourth quarter. The average selling price of its handsets fell to 120 euros from 121 euros in the fourth quarter as well as the year-earlier period.
Sony Ericsson predicts global industry handset unit sales will shrink at least 10 per cent this year from the 1.19 billion sold in 2008. Nokia Oyj, the world’s largest mobile-phone maker, yesterday reiterated its forecast of about a 10 per cent drop in the global handset market.
Nokia reiterated its margin targets for the year after announcing job cut programmes that will cover about 3,000 employees. The Espoo, Finland-based company’s first-quarter net income declined 90 per cent to 122 million euros.
Agencies
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Yahoo offers iPhone-like Web for masses
Yahoo announced a new mobile service on Tuesday that will deliver an iPhone-like experience for people who cannot or will not splash out for the iconic but pricey Apple device as times get hard.
Yahoo Mobile will launch at the end of March in a form downloadable to any phone with a Web browser and from May in custom versions for hundreds of smartphones.
"There is a growing number of consumers out there who are not Apple iPhone users but want a rich starting experience," Marco Boerries, the head of Yahoo's mobile division, told the media in an interview.
Yahoo will also launch a version of Yahoo Mobile, designed to be a starting point for users to access the Internet, for the iPhone itself at the end of March. A test version for a limited number of public users is going live this week.
Yahoo Mobile offers a front page with colorful, boxy icons resembling the iPhone's for launching popular applications such as a Web browser, mail, news, weather and social network sites like Facebook.
Users also have the option to easily add any software or Web sites they choose to download on their phones.
The company plans in coming months to promote Yahoo Mobile via a series of 70 major operator partnerships it has struck to reach 850 million mobile subscribers around the globe.
Fifty of those partnerships already offer Yahoo services and the company expects the rest to adopt Yahoo Mobile in coming months, Boerries said.
Yahoo has developed versions that work on hundreds of mid-range and high-end mobile phones from BlackBerry maker RIM, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, as well as phones running Microsoft Windows.
Boerries defines the universe of phones that can effectively run Yahoo Mobile as "every phone that's shipped in the last two years that has a decent HTML-capable browser." He added: "We don't want to make lowest common denominator stuff."
A more general version of the service downloadable from the Web will also work on older phones but will not be tailored to those phones' specifications. Boerries demonstrated it on an old Sony Ericsson model.
Boerries said last year's on-again off-again talks with would-be buyer Microsoft had not significantly distracted his team, and said he had kept his key staff together for years.
After some prior delays in introducing services such as Yahoo Go, Boerries professed relief that his fuller vision of putting the Web on phones had arrived on time: "It is really, for me, making it all come together."
"This is like the uber-replacement of Yahoo Go."
Agencies
Yahoo Mobile will launch at the end of March in a form downloadable to any phone with a Web browser and from May in custom versions for hundreds of smartphones.
"There is a growing number of consumers out there who are not Apple iPhone users but want a rich starting experience," Marco Boerries, the head of Yahoo's mobile division, told the media in an interview.
Yahoo will also launch a version of Yahoo Mobile, designed to be a starting point for users to access the Internet, for the iPhone itself at the end of March. A test version for a limited number of public users is going live this week.
Yahoo Mobile offers a front page with colorful, boxy icons resembling the iPhone's for launching popular applications such as a Web browser, mail, news, weather and social network sites like Facebook.
Users also have the option to easily add any software or Web sites they choose to download on their phones.
The company plans in coming months to promote Yahoo Mobile via a series of 70 major operator partnerships it has struck to reach 850 million mobile subscribers around the globe.
Fifty of those partnerships already offer Yahoo services and the company expects the rest to adopt Yahoo Mobile in coming months, Boerries said.
Yahoo has developed versions that work on hundreds of mid-range and high-end mobile phones from BlackBerry maker RIM, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, as well as phones running Microsoft Windows.
Boerries defines the universe of phones that can effectively run Yahoo Mobile as "every phone that's shipped in the last two years that has a decent HTML-capable browser." He added: "We don't want to make lowest common denominator stuff."
A more general version of the service downloadable from the Web will also work on older phones but will not be tailored to those phones' specifications. Boerries demonstrated it on an old Sony Ericsson model.
Boerries said last year's on-again off-again talks with would-be buyer Microsoft had not significantly distracted his team, and said he had kept his key staff together for years.
After some prior delays in introducing services such as Yahoo Go, Boerries professed relief that his fuller vision of putting the Web on phones had arrived on time: "It is really, for me, making it all come together."
"This is like the uber-replacement of Yahoo Go."
Agencies
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Motorola India issues pinkslips to employees
Seems the predictions of a tough 2009 for the cellphone market have started coming true. According to a report in a leading daily, more than 200 people Motorola India had hired just a few months ago to drive its mobile handsets business have been laid off.
The company has decided to stick to its current model of doing business through distributors, says the report.
Industry sources said that Motorola paid all the laid-off sales personnel two months salary in lieu of the notice period.
The company is also reported to have issued pink slips to at least 100 of its 4,000 employees in India in December. It is, however, not clear if the current number of employees given pinkslips includes these.
The December move was said to be a part of the Illinois-based company's earlier announced strategy of slashing 3,000 jobs, or about 5 per cent of its global workforce.
This week the company also launched MotoYuva EM325. The eighth MotoYuva mobile phone in India offers a one-touch access to MP3 library, a universal 3.5 mm jack, 2 GB of removable microSD memory and drag-and-drop USB 2.0 technology. The phone is available in India at a price of approximately Rs 5,149.
In an interview to a news agency, Sony Ericsson CEO, Hideki Komiyama said that the company expects a challenging year 2009 as the handset sales are expected to be down by 5-6 percent.
Sony Ericsson's predictions follow similar ones from Nokia and Gartner according to which the global handset market is set for a slowdown in 2009.
Indiatimes
The company has decided to stick to its current model of doing business through distributors, says the report.
Industry sources said that Motorola paid all the laid-off sales personnel two months salary in lieu of the notice period.
The company is also reported to have issued pink slips to at least 100 of its 4,000 employees in India in December. It is, however, not clear if the current number of employees given pinkslips includes these.
The December move was said to be a part of the Illinois-based company's earlier announced strategy of slashing 3,000 jobs, or about 5 per cent of its global workforce.
This week the company also launched MotoYuva EM325. The eighth MotoYuva mobile phone in India offers a one-touch access to MP3 library, a universal 3.5 mm jack, 2 GB of removable microSD memory and drag-and-drop USB 2.0 technology. The phone is available in India at a price of approximately Rs 5,149.
In an interview to a news agency, Sony Ericsson CEO, Hideki Komiyama said that the company expects a challenging year 2009 as the handset sales are expected to be down by 5-6 percent.
Sony Ericsson's predictions follow similar ones from Nokia and Gartner according to which the global handset market is set for a slowdown in 2009.
Indiatimes
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