A New Era Of Mobile Computing In Pakistan & N97

I was one of the people who was invited at the sneak preview of the Nokia N97, held at Kamameshi (TSB) in Karachi on Friday and found it to be a really exciting experience as it heralds what’s coming now for the mobile space in Pakistan. You can read a wonderful coverage of it at http://senseapplied.com/index.php/nokia-n97-sneak-preview-karachi/. Now onwards.

Nokia Pakistan aims to usher in the era of the personal Internet with the Nokia N97. The device itself is simply part of the miniaturization trend  that’s been occurring since the early days of computing  from mainframe to the desktop to the laptop and now to your pocket. With each iteration, however, it gets more powerful than ever.

Dubbed the world’s most advanced mobile computer, the N97 aims to transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other. Designed for the needs of Internet-savvy consumers, the Nokia N97 combines a large 3.5″ touch display with a full QWERTY

keyboard, providing an ‘always open’ window to favorite social networking sites and Internet destinations. Nokia’s flagship Nseries device also introduces leading technology – including multiple sensors, memory, processing power and connection speeds – for people to create a personal Internet and share their ‘social location.

The phone adjusts to the world around us, helping stay connected to the people and things that matter most and helping to transform the Internet into your Internet.

The Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence and Nokia Pakistan is launching this together with Ovi services including OVI Shop which will be a boon for Pakistani developers on the mobile platform. Given that Pakistan is a price conscious, mostly entry phone level market for Nokia, they’re ensuring that OVI is compatible even with Series 30 devices.

This wasn’t the biggest news for me (at least). The really big & exciting news was the fact that Symbian is going Open Source. Giving that I firmly believed that HTML 5.0, combined with Silver Light on Android is the way forward for mobile computing, this is wonderful news. Finally we have a contender in the mobile space to Android.

Nokia’s moving quickly to make Symbian a free and open mobile operating system. This is excellent because it will start putting pressure on the company’s competitors to keep innovating and giving customers — device manufacturers, consumers, and carriers alike — what they want. Nokia said that it aimed to make Symbian  the “most widely used platform on the planet”.

I bet Microsoft will be less than thrilled at this. Not that they’re very aggressive in Pakistan in this arena. Internationally however to sell its WMP (Windows Mobile Platform) which is suddenly looking very expensive, I’m sure Microsoft will make Windows Mobile Platform a part of a larger, integrated experience, leveraging its desktop user base to make Windows Mobile more compelling to consumers whilst making it easier to connect to Windows Mobile, Windows, and Windows Live. How will they do it in Pakistan, i’m not sure.

Speaking of which, Nokia Pakistan also announced that they will bring Microsoft Silverlight powered experiences to millions of mobile users, which will be available for S60, Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Given that today’s consumers are looking for easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.

I bet Adobe’s feeling sick right now. This is a significant step in gaining broad acceptance for Silverlight and ensuring it is platform agnostic. This partnering will also have a large effect on mobile content support on the Silverlight platform in Pakistan. This is something i’m looking forward to.

All in all, great work Nokia Pakistan.