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Most of the people you see using smartphones may well spend the majority of their time playing Angry Birds, but the reality is that many smartphones are also used for work. The analyst firm Canalys estimates that around one in five Nokia smartphones sold in the last quarter of 2012 went to businesses. Selling mobiles to enterprise customers is important to Nokia, but how does it all work, and why should companies choose Nokia phones for their employees? We’ve been talking to David Mason, global head of Business Mobility Marketing, to find out.

There are a many reasons why businesses are opting for Nokia’s Lumia family. David explains: “With devices like the Nokia Lumia 920, your smartphone comes with the same apps out-of-the-box that you work with on your PC; Microsoft Outlook and Office including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Giving you the freedom and flexibility to work when and wherever you need.”

There’s more to productivity than just providing the right tools, however; it’s important that people actually want to carry the phone they’re given. “For Nokia, it’s all about offering phones your employees will love,” says David. “It’s important, as the smartphone you use is personal; it expresses who you are, as well as being a tool for both work and your personal life.”

“The Nokia Lumia comes with robust shells and tough screens. The Nokia Lumia 920’s polycarbonate unibody is scratch proof. For the Nokia Lumia 920 and Nokia Lumia 820 there’s the option of wireless charging. Just put your phone down on a charging plate, when you get to your desk or walk in the door from work and put your keys down. That way, your phone’s always charged and you’re not running out of battery and scrambling for a charger to finish that call with your boss!

“We’re also seeing businesses use Lumia to take and share high quality photos of events and promotions, sharing immediately with their social media followers. And features such as Nokia Drive with offline maps and navigation mean you can avoid roaming costs when travelling,” adds David. “For the IT department, the security angle obviously appeals, with hardware encryption and device management and other features including secure boot which help to ensure that business data on the phone is kept safe and secure.”

The Lumia isn’t Nokia’s only range to offer something for businesses. David highlights Nokia Asha as another great alternative. “With Asha we also have a much lower price point. The Nokia Asha 302 and Nokia Asha 303 offers businesses email via Mail for Exchange. These are some of the most affordable business email phones on the market.

“We provide a range of handsets, so the company can choose what’s right for their different employees. For example, we have companies who buy Nokia Lumia 920 to replace BlackBerry devices, who are also upgrading feature phone users to full smartphone experience with the Nokia Lumia 620, a very affordable smartphone that still offers the full range of business features.”

Why businesses need Nokia

“Businesses are looking to mobilise key workers and support other employees bringing in their own smartphones,” says David. “They’re continuing to provide phones to people whose work is mobile – where never being out of reach or being able to act on information immediately is important.”

“For sales teams for example, providing them with email and calendar, pushing appointments to them, and navigation so they can get to the client are important. Having the organisation’s own business apps also available for the mobile sales teams is valuable so they’re up to date on product availability when they walk into the meeting. The apps your business builds for PCs and tablets on Windows 8 can work with tweaks on Windows Phone 8; you can reuse the same core code and use the same developer tools. These are among the reasons that Foxtons, London’s leading estate agents, chose Nokia Lumia for their agents.”

“Smartphones have become the norm in many markets and people bring their devices into work. So there’s an opportunity to mobilise and give greater flexibility to the people that you might not provide a phone for, letting them have access to your business email and other apps via their Nokia Lumia. We were delighted to hear that when KONE Australia recently allowed employees to choose their smartphone for work, more than 70 per cent opted for Nokia Lumia.”

Offering support is one way to help companies to switch to Nokia. “There are basically two angles to support,” says David. “The everyday ‘how do I get my people started on the device’, so things like basic training, what they need to get started, mobile training guides and things like that.”

“And then we offer more technical support as well with Nokia Expert Center. It’s an online service with a portal. We offer support for IT departments, so they can find out how to sort out the more technical issues they may have. Questions about what you need to do, what device management you can use, those are the elements we need to support. You can find technical documentation and get your questions answered online.”

After running through all the benefits for businesses, it all comes back to what people actually want from their company smartphones, though. “The thing that really drives the market in business smartphones is what the consumer, the employee, actually wants. It’s a very personal device. If you buy them a phone they don’t want to carry, they’re not going to use it. As Janette Smrcka, IT Director of Mall of America said, ‘We’ve got a device we’re really proud to use.’”

Would you like to see your company switch to Lumia? Let us know in the comments below.

Image credit: cadfael1979, neur0tica

We’re delighted to say that the enhanced version of our popular music streaming service on Nokia Lumia smartphones, Nokia Music+, is now rolling out for a monthly subscription fee of around £3.99 / $3.99 / €3.99 per month. Even better, there’s a free seven-day trial, which you can access easily within the application using your Nokia account details.

Nokia Music+ is now live in the UK, Ireland, US, Norway, Sweden, France, and Italy. And will be appearing in markets with the existing Nokia Music service as an update in the coming weeks.

Building on the same easy to use music discovery service, Nokia Music+ lets you create your own mixes or stream from playlists curated by our expert team of musicologists and international artists. Mixes can also be saved for offline playback if you have limited network connectivity or want to save your data allowance.

A recap of the main additional features that come with Nokia Music+:

• The ability to download an unlimited number of playlists for offline playback;
• Unlimited track skips providing greater opportunities to self-curate streamed music;
• The option to select even better quality audio when connecting via Wi-Fi;
• Lyric streaming for many tracks;
• Listen to Nokia Music via Internet-enabled devices including pc or tablet;
• Free 7 day trial.

If you give the trial a go and want to go back to the original free service, Nokia Music will continue to be available free of charge, with no advertisements, registration or subscription. So, why not give it a try and let us know what you think.

To get the upgrade you simply need to open Nokia Music and head to the Settings where you should find the Upgrade option waiting for you. Tap on the Upgrade icon and you’ll be taken through to the screen allowing you to subscribe right away, or hit the Try button for your free seven-day trial.

Have you tried Nokia Music+ already? Let us know in the comment below.

It’s late February and once again time to pack our bags for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

It’s where, each year, manufacturers, service providers, app developers and what seems like everyone else in the mobile space, meet up and begin to share details for the months ahead.

App up for the show

If you’re going to Barcelona, there are some great Lumia apps to be aware of.

First of all, there’s the official Nokia MWC 2013 app. This will guide you around the show (with some maps powered by HERE), remind you of the conference times, put you in touch with all the exhibitors, help you plan your agenda, and even keep you entertained with Spanish music from Nokia Mix Radio.

Second, there’s an official app from the GSMA itself, which gives details of all the speakers, sessions and exhibitors.

Third, get with this season’s style. Cardboard badges on a lanyard are soooo 2012. This year, for the first time, you can turn your phone into an NFC badge, and swipe it on the turnstiles for fast access to the venue.

Bottom line

Of course, you can stay plugged into the show all week by reading the latest here on Conversations.

Nokia’s press conference starts at 8:30 a.m. CET sharp on Monday. You will be able to view the live webcast here.

image credit: angelocesare

New York’s one of the world’s most diverse cites. What better place then to showcase New American Noise, Nokia Music’s documentary on the US’s incredibly diverse underground music scene. Today, as part of Social Media Week, not only will this fascinating documentary get a screening, but the filmmakers and artists featured will be also talking about their experiences.

Sounds from the underground

New American Noise shines a light on the underground music scene in six American cities. By detailing the incredible diversity of musical subcultures, it gives an unprecedented insight into the lives and passions of today’s music fans. This concept has been so well received that Nokia Music has now teamed up with Sundance London (2013) to expand the concept globally.

In New American Noise, we got a unique insight into the strip clubs of Atlanta, the indie scene in Portland, genre mixing soul music from Detroit, the sensation of New Orleans’ sissy bounce, underground alternative rap culture in New York City, and electro music created in LA’s valley. Now we want to see what’s happening in your city.

Make mobile movie magic  

The brief is simple: To showcase the amazing, the unusual and the unknown music happening underground around the world. Filmmakers need to simply upload a short video trailer (15 to 60 secs) visualizing the underground music scene in their chosen city. Think of this trailer as an audition, which showcases your concept. If your idea is chosen, you’ll receive two Nokia Lumia 920s and a $5,000 budget to shoot your film. What’s more, both films are guaranteed a special screening at the Sundance London Film & Music Festival (2013) in April, and one lucky grand prizewinner will walk away with $5,000 and a Nokia Lumia 920.

The world’s best smartphone camera

Why do we want you to use the Nokia Lumia 920? Well, for a start we believe smartphone technology has the power to democratize film making like never before and we want you to be at the vanguard. What’s more, smartphones challenge you to think differently about filmmaking and give you a unique opportunity to try something different.

Nonetheless, to get the best possible result, you need the best possible smartphone camera, and time after time the Nokia Lumia 920 has been awarded that accolade. It’s not just the PureView technology, Optical Image Stabilization and Carl Zeiss lens that make it such an amazing imaging smartphone, but its incredible versatility too. To showcase that to its best effect, we want you to work your movie making magic.

So what are you waiting for? Join us making short film history by entering the Nokia Music Short Film Competition today.

The Oscars have come a long way since they were first held at a private brunch in 1929. Then there were just 270 guests and tickets were five dollars a pop. Fast forward eighty-five years and an estimated 39 million people, including us, will watch this weekend’s extravaganza. Of course, it’s not just the movie-makers being honoured. It’s the music makers too. To see why, we’ve taken a closer look at the amazing composers nominated this year, all of whom you can listen to on Nokia Music.

John Williams – Lincoln

Who better to start with than the amazing John Williams? With 48 nominations Williams currently holds the record for the most Oscar nominations for a living person (Walt Disney had 59), and is the most nominated musician of all time. He has won Best Original Score awards for “Jaws”, “Star Wars”, “E.T”. and “Schindler’s List” (I can hear some of you humming the themes now). Now in his 80^th year, Williams is still going strong. “Lincoln” marks his 25^th collaboration with director Stephen Spielberg.

Alexandre Desplat – Argo

Desplat must surely be one of the busiest composers in Hollywood at the moment, with 7 major movie releases in 2011 and another 6 in 2012 (as well as a short film for Roman Polanski). He’s previously been nominated 5 times but has yet to win, however, his subtle and affecting score to “Argo” may change that. It blends Desplat’s trademark orchestral themes with Middle Eastern instruments and the vocals of Persian pop star Sussan Deyhim.

Dario Marianelli – Anna Karenina

This is the Italian’s 3^rd Best Original Score nomination and his first since winning in 2007 for the wonderful “Atonement” (notable for typewriter keys being used as a key percussive effect). Now back working with “Atonement’s” director, Joe Wright, Marianelli has crafted a lush score that is dramatic and unapologetically romantic, with a little Tchaikovsky and gypsy influence thrown in for good measure.

Thomas Newman – Skyfall

For “Skyfall” Newman took over 007 scoring duties from long time Bond composer David Arnold. Newman had worked with Sam Mendes on all 4 of Mendes’s previous movies and was a natural choice for the director, but could he handle Bond? Luckily, Newman showed he could write the necessary action music and still give the score his personal voice. Was it classic Bond, though? The jury’s still out on that one. This is Newman’s 11^th nomination and the fourth for a Bond film.

Mychael Danna – Life of Pi

Mychael Danna has long specialised in subtly combining ethnic instruments with orchestral and electronic textures, so was a perfect choice to score Ang Lee’s amazing version of the apparently un-filmable Life of Pi. Danna’s “Life of Pi” has already won the Golden Globe for Best Score so should be considered a frontrunner in this year’s Oscar race.  

So then, now’s the time to let us know what you think. How many of these guys deserve to be there? Should there have been nods for Tom Tykwer and his colleagues for Cloud Atlas? What about Danny Elfman’s lo-fi contributions to Silver Linings Playbook?

Od jutra do oferty podstawowej Play wprowadzamy smartfona Sony Xperia Z Szczegóły jak zawsze w cenniku.

Od jutra do oferty podstawowej Play wprowadzamy smartfona Sony Xperia Z Szczegóły jak zawsze w cenniku.

Snowboarding’s not only one of the world’s most creative sports, it’s also one of the youngest. The average Burton pro rider, for example, started snowboarding at nine years old and turned pro at twenty. Some, though, are much, much younger.

Young guns

The history of snowboarding is full of truly inspiring stories of these young, little known riders who beat the odds to make it to the semifinals and on special occasion, stand proud on the podium. To recognize these up and coming stars of the future, last year at the US Open, Nokia introduced the Rookie Award. This cash prize was to reward people that might not make the top three but impressed the US Open judges with their skills and attitude. Last year’s winners were Ayumu Hirano and Arielle Gold.

Going for gold

Ayumu Hirano from Niigata in Japan is just fourteen. He started boarding when he was four. Since the award last year he’s been stunning crowds with his big air moves. Arielle Gold, from Steamboat Springs in the US, has also been wooing the slopes, and now both of them have gone from rookies to gold medalists in less than a year.

To see more fantastic moves like these, be sure to check out the Burton webcast of the US Open. Here’s a list of days and times when boarders like Ayuma and Arielle will be going large.

Wednesday, Feb 27: Women’s and Men’s  SS semi finals

8:30am – 3:15pmMT 

Thursday, Feb 28:  Women’s and Men’s HP semi  finals

8:30am – 3:15pm MT

Friday, Mar 1:  Men’s and Women’s SS finals

10:00am – 2:45pm MT  

Saturday, Mar 2:  Men’s and Women’s HP finals

10:00am – 2:45pm MT 

The podium pair

Just last week, at the Burton European Open,  Ayumu Hirano and Arielle Gold showed the skills that made them Rookie Award winners. Their halfpipe final runs were full of flying aerobatics, earning both a place on top of the podium. If it’s difficult to believe that you can be so good yet so young, check out this video of Roope Tonteri. He recently won double gold at the 2013 FIS Snowboarding World Championships, proving that to be the best, you have to start early.

Roope is one of the best snowboarders of his generation and a keen filmmaker. Nokia’s now helping him prepare for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Needless to say, we’re super proud to give him a helping hand, and hope that we’ve helped Ayumu and Arielle on their path to snowboarding glory, too. 

As part of our efforts for Social Media Week here in New York City, Nokia sponsored and took part in the 1197 Photo Walk that took place on Sunday, February 17.

The 1197 Photo Conference is named after June 11, 1997, when the first mobile phone camera captured the world’s first photo, starting a movement that rages today.

During the photowalk, mobile photo warriors explored around Manhattan, armed with Lumia 920s and Nokia 808 PureViews to capture the city scenes.

The following gallery is a sample of the photos taken on Sunday. It’s fantastic to see the world through mobile photographers’ eyes!

Which one is your favorite?

Last month we launched the Nokia Lumia 820 Design Challenge. Our aim was simple: To see what the world’s best design students could do when given a Nokia Lumia 820 shell as a blank canvas for their bright ideas. Students from three of the world’s most prestigious design schools, Institute of Design and Fine Arts, Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Finland, Parsons, The New School for Design, New York, U.S.A. and Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, London, UK all dazzled us.

The Fantastic Three

The response was incredible. Hundreds of stunning designs were submitted. Fifteen of the best were shortlisted. And then, over the last two weeks, you voted for your top three. Now the votes have been counted and we can reveal the three designs that have taken the world by storm.

Cue drum roll please…

Density of Our Identity

First up, we have the amazingly precise Density of Our Identity by William Doherty.

William is a 21-year-old 3rd year student of Visual Communication and Art History in The National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Originally from a small town in the west of Ireland called Bangor Erris, he’s currently studying under the Erasmus exchange program in Lahti University of Applied sciences in Finland. He’s passionate about design, typography, photography, Letterpress and Gaelic football. He also gets a buzz out travel, experiencing new cultures and meeting new people.

Shaped

Next, please put your hands together for Aistė Jakimavičiūtė and her stunning design, Shaped.

Aiste lives and studies in Lithuania, at the Vilnius Academy of Art. Currently, she’s participating in a student exchange programme at Lahti University of Applied Sciences, Finland. In her own words, she’s a person who smiles a lot, loves life, cinema, music, design, new challenges and people who make life entertaining. She’s fascinated by aesthetics, trends and the wonders of our modern visual culture.

Urban Life

Finally, we have the fantastic Urban Life by Marisa Glick.

Marisa Glick is an MFA Candidate in Design and Technology at Parsons School of Design in New York City. In 2012, she won the Mobli API prize at the TechCrunch NY Disrupt Hackathon. At AngelHack New York, Glick and her team made it to the finals and were sent to the west coast to present to investors. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Cum Laude, from Simmons College, and her past experience includes advertising, exhibit design, and print production.

 A win for fantastic design

All worthy finalists, but alas, there can be only one winner, and that honour goes to Marisa Glick. With an incredible 12.55% of votes, her design blew our collective minds. Her reward? A prestigious paid internship with Nokia in London. Aiste, William and Marisa will also each win a Nokia Lumia 820 with their cover design on it, as well as a trip to Social Media Week in NYC. Each of their designs will also be created on fifty Nokia Lumia 820 shells to be sold to lucky Nokia Lumia lovers like you.

 A fantastic effort from everyone involved, we’re sure you agree. It showed us, and the world, that the next generation of young designers are going to be a creative force to be reckoned with. If you want to be a part of their journey to design superstardom, why not head on over to our Facebook page and buy yourself one of 150 of the coolest Nokia Lumia 820 shells on the planet.