Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president and general manager of Multimedia, Nokia, introduced a room full of press and online attendees (including yours truly) to the event by announcing that it has been one year ago since Nseries was launched and that to date, some 5 million Nokia Nseries have been sold to date since they began shipping in 3rd quarter of 2005. Today, the Nokia N71, N80, and N91 are now being delivered in some 50 countries. Smart mobile devices is fastest growing segment in consumer market… powerful app processors… being driven by the Nokia Nseries. Analysts say the market this year is for 100 million units... by 2008 should be 250 million units… reshaping the personal devices that people are carrying with them.

We heard the history of computing, as it matured from large, room-filled, mammoth devices to now the Nokia Nseries… small ,slim, powerful, enabling us to connect to our passions, anytime, anywhere… the Nseries are in fact multi-media computers.. share your life, enjoy music, manage your productive lifestyle, makes your life richer, fuller, and easier… combining the functions into one device, with one UI, one window to the World.. one UI for everything!

Enter Web 2.0… look at Wikipedia, competing with Britannica and winning and evolving online. Flickr… also user generated, mySpace with 50 million people sharing their profiles, YouTube enabling the sharing of video… skype enabling millions to communicate online… “Technology is becoming usable and user friendly”... a new Internet industry is evolving involving communication and content… enter the new shape of computing with the expansion of the Nokia Nseries portfolio.

We heard the history of computing, as it matured from large, room-filled, mammoth devices to now the Nokia Nseries… small ,slim, powerful, enabling us to connect to our passions, anytime, anywhere… the N-series are in fact multi-media computers.. share your life, enjoy music, manage your productive lifestyle, makes your life richer, fuller, and easier… combining the functions into one device, with one UI, one window to the World.. one UI for everything!

The target consumers for the Nseries… roughly 200 million strong with many people now using their mobile device for many functions in addition to calling their friends and family.  For many, the phone is also their main watch, clock, alarm clock, camera, video player, and MP3 player. N-series makes it easy for the user to switch to that device…. Objective is to shorten the time-line for users to switch to the Nseries UI (Symbian OS 3rd edition) and be comfortable with it immediately. Making it easy for people to capture a picture and share it with someone else… making it 10x easier for the user. Designing for social media where the user captures and simply shares the device screen with another person… small group communications (5 +-1)… enter flickr where people send their photo to a service in order to share with others (10 seconds to send, 30 seconds to have it online and viewed, 1 minute later comments are added, etc… Nokia announced today that a partnership with flickr has been struck making it easier for Nseries device users to quickly upload and share their images via the flickr web service. Look for flickr to be accessible directly from the image gallery and other embedded applications found on the Nseries device.

About the new devices…

Recall, more than 10 million Nokia 7610 have been sold to date… now enter the Nokia N72 optimized for multi-media, music, much more. Inspired by the piano (complex inside, simple outside), the Nokia N72 has been designed for the style-conscious person, mostly in Asia. Music is a key application – FM radio, MP3. It’s all about music, anywhere, anytime! Music part of the core promise with the Nseries of devices. 2 GB memory via expandable memory is the norm with 4 GB to be coming later this year. All the Nseries devices support music as music is in the core of the device suite… but there’s more… like photography. Mobile photography is about sharing with others. Digital camera sales are now declining, now the fastest growing segment is computers with cameras, like the Nseries… now 500 million camera equipped phones are in use.

Nokia N72

Nokia N73 – Carl Zeiss optics, 3.2 Megapixel resolution camera. Stereo speakers, 20x digital zoom… redefining mobile photography. Easy to use, based on S60 UI. View your photos in a new way, using the Ken Burns effect with 3D music. Ansi then showed us a simple image gallery slide show that combined his photos with music into a fun, enjoyable video collage. NEW… integrated Flickr experience on the Nokia N73… officially announced by Stewart Butterfield, founder of Flickr. He described photography as a memory presentation and announced that flickr application will in the future be embedded onto the device for quick access.

Nokia N93 – the next story in video… record your world. 3.2 mega-pixel camera, hinged case with large video display. Supports 30 frame per second, DVD quality playback, 20x electronic zoom, Bluetooth, WLAN… truly optimized for video capture and sharing. Connect to PC via cable, or connect to TV. Bundled with software for editing, also included, Adobe elements software to facilitate professional video editing and fast burning of video to DVD.

Nokia see the PR here

Enter Nokia Nseries studio (described by actor Gary Oldman) inspired by people’s desire to shoot and share. This online application has been designed to enable users to share video, download and even upload their video clips. Coming soon, a short film published and shot entirely with an N93 starring Oldman to be made available via studio to users. More on this can be found at http://www.nokia.com/nseries/studio