The world’s top cellphone maker, Nokia, has agreed to buy social networking start-up Plazes as part of its major push into offering Internet services. Plazes provides location-aware services that people can use to plan, record and share their social activities. Nokia did not disclose the value of the deal.
As per Gartner, the Global Sales of mobile smartphones shot up 29% during 1st quarter of 2008. Nokia continued to maintain its leadership with 45% share of the market and sales are up 25% on year. Research in Motion was the second-biggest smartphone vendor with 13.4% of the market driven by sales of the BlackBerry Curve and Pearl, while Apple Inc. ( AAPL) was the third-largest vendor with a 5.3% share in the market.
Nokia, the world’s top cell phone maker, has unveiled three new phone models, targeting the highly competitive market for mid-priced phones. The shipments of the new phones — Nokia 6600 Fold, Nokia 6600 Slide and Nokia 3600 Slide — would start during the third quarter. The selling prices are going to be in the range of 175 to 275 EUR.
Long Term Evolution (LTE), Nokia Siemens Networks’ tests, announced last week, is a potential successor to 3G. The test offers theoretical data rates of up to 173 megabits per second. Currently, Mobile WiMax is the leading competitor in this arena that offers data rate upto 70 mbps. The fastest currently available mobile broadband, HSDPA, offers around 7.2Mbps.
