Nokia for the new decade

The setting was sultry Bangkok. As a DJ mashed up party-starting tunes by Lupe Fiasco, Justice and LMFAO, guests busied themselves with beetroot and pineapple juice mocktails and impressive front-row views of the Chao Phraya river. The heat was a nice counterpoint to the cool things in store for us that evening. After all, this was Showcase Nokia 2010.

Over pad Thai rolls and caviar-covered baby potatoes, I saw — and heard — firsthand how the Finnish communications giant has maintained its enviable position in the industry. After Shumit Kapoor, general manager of Nokia Thailand, gave an overview of their suite of solution offerings, it was Chris Carr’s turn to welcome over 150 media and guests from the Southeast Asian region.

Fast Fun Facts

“Today, we are ‘Connecting People’ on a scale unimaginable back when the mobile industry started,” said the vice president for sales of Nokia South East Asia Pacific. “Our recipe for success has some pretty simple ingredients: delighting consumers.”

True enough, a clip of fast and fun facts about Nokia, basically a show-and-tell done in a language visual learners like me can fully grasp, made me smile like a lucky kid on Christmas morning. For instance, did you know that the number of people making calls with Nokia devices right this minute is greater than the population of Sweden — or equal to the population of London calling the population of Paris? Or that the number of hours of driving time saved via GPS on Nokia devices each year are enough to build the Great Pyramid — 10 times?

Being aware of these things would probably make me the king of quiz night at my local pub, but what’s more awesome is that these gadgets are actually allowing people around the world to live better and more efficient lives. Mind blown. Take Nokia’s wildly popular Ovi Maps.

Maps, Mail, And More

Launched in late January, the new Ovi Maps features drive and walk navigation in 74 countries and 46 languages, as well as traffic information in many. All new Nokia GPS-enabled smartphones from here on out will include this great service, at no extra cost.

As Jukka Hosio, director services marketing, Location, Nokia Global, beamed, “Our next-generation Ovi Maps comes in handy, especially in these days of location-aware social networking. At only 200KB, it’s less bulky and more energy-efficient compared to Google Maps, which is 2MB.” Translated to English, all this means that Ovi Maps hardly takes up any space in your phone’s memory and they also load faster.

Acquired by Nokia in 2008, Navteq is the company that collects and verifies essential info about a city, like street names and points of interest, and turns these into easy-to-use maps. A map of Manila has been available since late last year, which makes getting lost in our city a less daunting prospect.         

And I was glad to hear that Ovi Mail, a free e-mail service especially designed for emerging markets, has likewise been well-received. There are now more than six million Ovi Mail accounts created globally in just over a year after its launch. Our neck of the woods makes up more than 30 percent of the Ovi Mail users worldwide, with Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Vietnam among the top markets.

‘An Exciting Time For Designers’

Of course, aside from meeting the execs who handle the business side of Nokia, I was lucky enough to chat with some of the company’s artsier, right-brains. Nikki Barton, head of digital design at Nokia Global, explained how today’s touch-screen technology makes everything simpler and more personal. “You now have a stronger emotional bond with your phone. It’s really an exciting time for designers.”    

Robert Williams, design manager at the Nokia design studio in London, meanwhile, touched on the company’s rich heritage, including the challenges of creating iconography for a billion Nokia users in 150 countries.

“I’m proud to say that our message icon has been consistent through the years,” he said about the highly recognizable envelope symbol Nokia users regularly see on their phones. “An icon is successful when it becomes ‘invisible’ or so instinctive that it becomes an integral part of everyday life.”

Last to take the stage was Jung Younghee, research leader at the Nokia Research Center in Bangalore, India. Making quite the impression in a black and white outfit that could’ve been whipped up by Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo, the South Korean shared anecdotes about her nomadic life. “I have lived in Korea, the US, Finland, Japan, and now in the UK and travel often. My friends are from all over the world; so are the art and design works I get exposed to.”

Her job takes her to places such as Ghana and Brazil, where she observes everyday gestures and the ways in which people from different cultures interact with their mobile devices. “As an easy example, if you are designing a cup, you will consider how it will be shopped, used, washed, and stored as a singular item or in a group of other cups. It gets substantially more complicated when the product is used for many purposes, like mobile phones are.”

Not Just For Geeks

I’ve been to quite a few of these tech-related events, but I can tell you this much: Showcase Nokia 2010 is the only one that has bothered to balance corporate presentations with media design workshops. It’s tricky to make a machine seem soulful as gadgetspeak normally gets in the way. Becoming familiar with the human component that goes into creating a mobile phone, however, changes all that.

As Nikki Barton puts it, “I try to focus on making sure that digital design and interactivity don’t only appeal to the technology geeks. I want it to be able to be helpful and delightful, and improve everyone’s lives.”

Kids, this is Nokia for the new decade.

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Special thanks to Nikka Abes of Nokia Philippines, Rico Mossesgeld of Technogra.ph and Pauline Juan of Preview.

Connect with me at ginobambino.tumblr.com.