Nokia goes to Hollywood - and increases US push
Published: 21 November, 2008
In the past week, Nokia has lit a new fire under its efforts to conquer the US, where it has failed to achieve even double-digit share, and has talked up increasingly close collaborations with the carriers. But the company believes its chance to make a major impact on the US consumer market lies in its mobile web and multimedia efforts, and so its newest development facility in the region is based in Hollywood.
Nokia hopes to raise the profile of its advanced multimedia and web services activities in the US, positioning itself to build a direct-to-consumer channel and to take advantage of the nascent shift towards open access and new devices, rather than carrier controlled handsets. As it builds on its early moves into multimedia in 2009 - video/film and gaming versions of its Comes With Music unlimited download offering are planned - relationships with content owners are becoming as criticial as those with carriers.
So the Finnish giant has supplemented its San Diego handset R&D lab, which is geared specifically to closer collaboration with operators, with a new facility in Hollywood. The Nokia Research Center (NRC) Hollywood will focus on many technologies surrounding the media industry, including movies, music, games, web and TV, said the phone giant, and will have a strong emphasis on enhancing consumer entertainment with techniques like mixed reality, new content creation tools and advanced user interfaces, among others.
"Hollywood has an enormous variety of academic institutions, innovative media businesses and unique creative talent. It offers exactly the right ingredients for research into topics that will be vital for Nokia's business in the future. The link with the movie industry is naturally strong, however the entertainment concepts we will be working on at the NRC Hollywood laboratory are even more diverse," said Rebecca Allen, director of the new laboratory. She added: Our research work will focus on mixed reality experiences, with a strong community flavor. We will develop new user interfaces that fully explore the role of the human body and human motion for more natural forms of interaction."
Nokia Research Center is a worldwide initiative with existing laboratories in the US, Finland, the UK, Switzerland and China. These work with academic institutions and content industries, hiring researchers and developers from beyond the handset sector. Among its university partners are MIT and Stanford in the US, the UK's University of Cambridge, and Tsinghua University, China.
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