Having moved its smartphone business to Microsoft, Nokia’s next project is a $100 million investment fund for companies specializing in smart cars.
BBC News reports the fund will be administered by Nokia Growth Partners, while Nokia itself aims to bring its navigation offerings — one of three key points the Finnish company will pursue alongside networks and new technologies — into the connected car market.
Nokia is only the latest to enter into the fray, with Google, BlackBerry, Apple and Intel — who has its own $100 million fund for the rapid development of Internet-connected vehicles — seeking to make their mark on the potentially disruptive market. While Google’s Android will soon find its way into offerings by Hyundai and Audi, Apple’s iOS-based CarPlay has found partners in Ferrari and BMW.
As for what’s at stake for all who enter, the connected car market promises to not only bring the smartphone experience into the vehicle, but to connect vehicles with each other, altering driving behaviors while increasing safety as NGP partner Paul Asel explains:
For the last few years there has been a surge in innovation that has brought technological advances leading to safer, cleaner, increasingly connected, intelligent and more affordable vehicles. Vehicles are becoming a new platform for technology adoption very similar to phones or tablet.
No one wants to pay extra fees.
It’s okay, you don’t have to pay. Just watch this Taco Bell ad first.
What exactly happened to Nokia between ultra-popular candy bar phone (as pictured) and now, with no market share (really) at all?
I remember back in high school (around 02-03) when people started getting phones. I was very envious of their Nokia candy bar phones…
Until I got a Kyocera slider. Then they envied me.
Nokia didn’t sign a google android deal to be a marketer because they still had a heavy share of European sales and had their own OSes that worked in various countries. They basically tried to go their own way while the big players and Apple went the opposite direction. When Nokia had a good chance to retake a fair share of the market with Android their CEO signed an exclusivity deal with Microsoft for a direct cash infusion that eventually caused them to sell off the whole division to MS.
Basically they were late to the game, signed to play for the wrong team because the money was good, and failed completely to see the market change.
Thanks, that’s a nice summation.
You’re welcome. I loved my Nokia phones as a young adult, then I got a Razr, a Sidekick LX, and finally android phones. Dramatic shifts in tech in a little over a decade…
Phone fashion changed rapidly and Nokia failed to make the right moves to adapt. Same deal with Motorola and Razr. In contrast, Samsung seems to have made the right moves to profit from changes in phone fashion.
The very first cell phone I purchased (not owned) was a Nokia 3310 on Cricket around 2002. Back then, Cricket was limited to a few cities, so once I left a market, the phone was effectively a paperweight that could play Snake until I returned.
Eventually, I rolled through a few Kyoceras on Qwest (now CenturyLink) while in Tacoma for 4.5 years, then hopped aboard the prepaid bandwagon with another Nokia — the 1600 — followed by an LG 300G which replaced said Nokia after losing it in a cab.
Only in February 2011 did I finally enter the smartphone era, when I purchased a Virgin Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8530. That phone served me well until this February, when I became a post-paid T-Mobile customer. There, I obtained a refurbished LG Nexus 4, which should work for me until the Nexus 5 Mk. 2 arrives later on.
Oh. That very first cell phone I ever owned? A Motorola StarTAC handed down to me by my mom when she obtained a new cell phone for herself. I think she was on AT&T then.
So, you mentioned StarTAC and I had to go look it up because it sounded vaguely familiar. I stumbled across a French company that is selling colored versions of the model as I imagine some hipster fashion statement on low-tech goods. My life has been enriched, but I bring it up because you seem to have an MLP thing and it just seem to click at least in a semi-Technicolor way.
Total side note: I’m excited to get my Galaxy Note III later this summer. Just this week my Note Its microusb port has decided to get finicky for charging and that means it is time to go.
http://www.lekki.fr/en/10-motorola-startac