You could argue that 2011 was the year of Android, given that the number of Android devices activated daily doubled from 350,000 to 700,000 between April and December 2011. Or perhaps it was the year of the mobile operating system war, with Nokia’s strategic shift to Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Windows Phone OS. So what are the trends that will shape the mobile landscape in 2012? Let’s look at them in four categories: business, ecosystem, consumer expectations, and technology.

Mobile Is A Key Business Enabler

Professionals who hope to increase the sophistication of their mobile strategies will need to:

»  Develop a scalable approach to delivering mobile services. Organizations will need a strategic approach to building and spreading institutional knowledge as well as governance for the development of mobile services. It will be increasingly important to define key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of mobile initiatives.

»  Craft a mobile strategy that extends beyond phones. The emergence of tablets in particular will require a different approach than smartphones.

»  Differentiate on the delivery rather than the content of mobile services. In 2012, “how” mobile services are delivered will differentiate them—not what they offer.
 
Success In The Mobile Ecosystems Will Elude Incumbents And Embrace Newcomers

Expect incumbents across a range of industries to look to hold or gain share as mobile revolutionizes their business. Key 2012 mobile ecosystem trends include:

»  The emergence of mobile digital wallets and their ability to go beyond payment. New technologies are converting mobile handsets into digital wallets that combine not just payments but also receipts, vouchers, and loyalty schemes. As well as gaining the convenience of using the phone for payment, consumers will benefit from post-transaction elements such as location-based coupons and enhanced product information at the point of sale.

»  The continuation of the smartphone OS bloodbath. If you need a native application, iOS and Android are “must-haves.” However, there is still room for a third major OS platform. Windows Phone is a good candidate, but Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Microsoft will have to execute perfectly to stay in the game longer term, even with a larger portfolio of devices in 2012.

»  Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Facebook becoming disruptive distribution forces. We don’t expect Amazon to succeed in replicating its Kindle approach in the crowded smartphone space—nor do we expect Facebook to invest in hardware. While their respective roles in the mobile space are still unclear, they could become disruptive forces that enable the distribution of products and services in new ways. Think about the use of social recommendations and personalization tools to facilitate the discovery of mobile services.
 
Consumer Expectations Will Be Both High And Conflicted

Professionals developing mobile services should take the following into account:

»  Consumers will expect more contextual experiences. Phones will have the ability to collect a phenomenal amount of information about a consumer. They will offer new product and service opportunities, both on their own and when combined with others. Mobile phones will be the hub of consumer interaction—not only with other people but also with other services and machines, such as TVs, cars, and even medical devices like heart monitors. Physical products will increasingly ship with companion mobile services.

»  But they will also worry about privacy and security. When the press realized that several players were tracking user location to improve services, there was a public outcry. Location is the least of it. The mobile phone will know everything about an individual. Consumer concerns here will center on: 1) the commercial use of this information, and 2) security issues, given the increased use of mobile devices for banking and buying.

Emerging Technologies Need Standards And Scale To Succeed

New native technologies will enable new services, products, and navigation techniques that are unimaginable on the PC. Professionals excited by these new technologies should note that:

»  HTML5 has made phenomenal progress, but it is not a panacea. Adobe’s abandonment of Flash at the end of last year and support for HTML5 from heavyweights like Apple, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Amazon, and Microsoft are elevating HTML5’s potential as a solution. Two key things continue to hold back this potential cure-all: 1) the experience and performance differences between native and web applications are noticeable, and 2) realizing the full benefits of HTML5 requires device- and OS-specific optimization.

»  Near Field Communications (NFC) will fail to live up to the hype. We expect dozens of millions of NFC devices to ship from a wide variety of device makers — including, eventually, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). We expect events like the 2012 Olympic Games in London to serve as marketing catalysts and help showcase the numerous potential uses of the technology. However, a poor out-of-the-box experience, minimal consumer education, and the lack of NFC infrastructure will inhibit growth.

»  The cloud is still too congested or too thin. The consumerization of the enterprise IT notion of cloud computing is already a reality, with services such as Dropbox, Spotify, and Apple’s iCloud. The cloud will grow in importance, enabling cross-device services, but will be inhibited by limited network capacity and congestion.

Thomas Husson is a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research serving Consumer Product Strategy professionals. Follow him on Twitter at @Thomas_Husson

Related

• Product Strategists Should See NFC As Much More Than Contactless Payments
• How Mobile Location Services Will Fade Into The Background
• A Sensor In Your Pocket: The Future Of Mobile Is User Context
• How Mobile Can Bridge The Digital And Physical Worlds In New Ways
• Why The Mobile Web Versus App Debate Is Irrelevant
• The Mobile-Payments Business Is Heating Up

The plants will remain operational now for “smartphone product customization.” The news comes amidst unconfirmed reports that the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the release of the next model.

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) says that the transfer will result in the loss of 4,000 jobs in total, and the reductions will take place through the end of 2012.

Nokia does not outline how much the move to Asia will mean in terms of money saved, but this is a decision that has been some time in the making: these were plants that were spared in the last round of cuts under CEO Stephen Elop.

Since then, Nokia has reported yet more declines in its smartphone shipments, mainly around its legacy Symbian platform. The company is now gradually moving to making more of its smartphone portfolio based on Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform.

Now, Nokia says that the move is being made to put the manufacturing bases closer to where the different components are being made for those smartphones. That is a move we have seen from many other companies—and was the subject of a series of stories recently concerning Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) in China and the role of Foxconn in that business.

The move to make these plants focused on customization, meanwhile, points to some focus that Nokia does seem to maintain on its software and services for its devices—a crucial part of the company’s differentiation as it moves more and more to a platform being used by its competitors as well. Others that make Windows Phone devices include Samsung and HTC.

The news comes amidst other reports about Nokia that claim the company is planning to curtail its Symbian lineup after the next model comes out.

Symbian is gradually being phased out for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform, but Nokia had originally said it would support the OS until 2016, and that could still be the case even if it stopped making devices based on it. Nokia transferred the operation of Symbian to Accenture last year.

A spokesperson from Nokia told paidContent that the article was “speculative at best” and would not comment on device rumor or speculation:

“As we have previously said Symbian continues to be an important part of our portfolio and going forward it will play a more focused role as we accelerate our transition to Windows Phone,” he said. “We remain fully committed to the platform through 2016, which means on-going software support as we go forward.”

The company is currently rolling out an update to Symbian, Belle, and the devices remain popular in the Middle East, Russia and India, even as they have lost out to Android-based devices, Apple’s iPhone and even RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) in other markets.

Related

• Your iPhone Has To Be Made In China, And Apple Can't Absolve Your Guilt
• Nokia Design Chief: We're Developing A Windows Phone With NFC Technology
• Nokia Q4: Scrambling For A Grip, But Still Falling; 1M+ Lumia Phones Sold
• Kantar: Apple Back On Top As Bestselling Smartphone In The U.S.
• Symbian Now Officially No Longer Under The Wing Of Nokia, 2,300 Jobs Go

StatCounter’s figure, which does not include tablet usage, is still nearly double the mobile figure from 2010, when mobile devices accounted for 4.3 percent of internet usage. In 2009, mobiles accounted for only 1.6 percent of visits. It also comes as internet access via desktop PCs appears to be on the wane:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile vs. Desktop Market Share

Yet even given the growth in mobile, these still-low figures also go some way to explaining why certain businesses, like mobile advertising, are still not the money spinners you would expect them to be: the usage volumes are just simply not there yet.

StatCounter also provided some numbers on which handset makers are bringing in the most internet usage country-by-country. Nokia (NYSE: NOK)—which, despite its many declines over several quarters, has managed to remain the world’s biggest smartphone maker—is the global leader in terms of internet access via mobile devices. That is partly because it is strong in those countries where users may be opting for phones instead of PCs to go online, such as China and India.

It will be interesting to see whether Nokia can hold on to that lead, both in internet usage and in smartphone leadership given its switch to Windows Phone for its smartphones—especially if you believe reports that Nokia is planning to discontinue Symbian after the development of one more device. Symbian is currently the company’s best-selling platform and although it has now been outsourced to Accenture, Nokia has said it would remain committed to it until 2016.

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), which NPD earlier today noted is the most popular vendor in terms of smartphone sales in the U.S., is also leading in mobile internet usage in the U.S., as well as the UK, markets where it has also performed very strongly in terms of sales. Worldwide, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) appears to be taking a nosedive at the moment. You can see other country-specific vendor rankings in the embedded table here:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Mobile Vendor (Beta) Market Share

Related

• NPD: Apple Takes Top Three Slots For Smartphone Best-Sellers In U.S.
• Study iPad Owners Drive 88 Percent Of Worldwide Web Traffic From Tablets
• BlackBerry Users Now Consume More Mobile Data Than iPhone And Android Users
• Upsetting The Apple Cart: Is iPhone Really Losing Ground?

Apple took 43 percent of all smartphone sales in the U.S. in Q4, according to the analysts, with its newest model, the iPhone 4S, ranking first—but with equally impressive showings from devices that are now over a year old, the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3GS. Together, the three accounted for 43 percent of all sales in the U.S.

Tellingly, the two devices rounding out the top-five are Android handsets from Samsung, underscoring the close competition between the two companies and platforms at the moment.

While NPD does not give out total unit figures, it does offer some pretty stark sales proportions to spell out just how well the devices sold comparatively. Ross Rubin, executive director at NPD, noted in a statement that the iPhone 4S outsold the iPhone 4 by 75 percent, and it also outsold the iPhone 3GS by five to one.

Together, Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms accounted for 90 percent of all smartphone sales in the U.S., pointing to the immense and continuing challenge for companies like RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) to find a look in to what is currently the world’s largest smartphone market.

How does this compare to sales worldwide? We have contacted NPD to get an idea of that as a point of comparison and will update this post as we learn more.

In terms of what it is that is driving users to the iPhone 4S above all others, NPD says that one feature appears to be the dulcet tones of Siri, the voice-controlled “personal assistant” as well as the fact that, with the addition of Sprint (NYSE: S) as a carrier, the iPhone 4S became the most widely-available of Apple’s phones.

Android, despite Apple’s huge gains over the quarter, is still the most-common smartphone platform, however, accounting for 48 percent of all devices. Given that those devices cover a huge range of price points they will continue to give Apple a run for its money. Indeed, when looking only at sales patterns with first-time smartphone buyers, 57 percent of them opted for Android handsets, versus 34 percent picking up iPhones. That may have also had somewhat of an impact on the average sale price for smartphones, which now stands at $143, compared to $148 a year ago.

Together, smartphones accounted for 68 percent of all sales in Q4, a huge rise on Q4 2010, when they covered 50 percent of all sales.

According to Q4 figures out from IDC, Apple is now the third-largest handset maker in the world, jumping two places from its number-five position in Q3. The reason for the rise, note the analysts, was not so much because it’s now selling cheaper, older iPhones—it is—but because of strong sales of its newest (and therefore premium-priced) iPhone 4S handset.

But it’s not just Apple that is a smartphone force, of course. The other three in the top-five rankings also make feature phones, but they are all also part of the huge push that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has made into smartphones via its Android platform. Having a feature phone and smartphone strategy is a double-threat to Nokia.

Apple’s rise still puts it at 8.7 market share—some 14 percent behind the Nokia and Samsung bracket—but it is an example of how a much the market has turned around in the last few years, that a handset maker can even be in spitting distance of the lead on the strength of a smartphone-only portfolio.

Apple saw astounding growth in Q4 and 2011 overall—128 percent and 96 percent respectively. However, it will be worth watching whether that trend will continue in the quarters ahead amidst bigger economic factors:

IDC notes that the mobile phone market grew less in the last quarter than it has in the past two years, with vendors shipping 427.4 million units. “The mobile phone market exhibited unusually low growth last quarter, which shows it is not immune to weaker macroeconomic conditions worldwide,” writes analyst Ramon Llamas.

Ironically, that seemed to translate to a bigger-than-expected decline in cheaper feature phones than a slowdown in pricier smartphones. Despite that, IDC says that feature phone sales still accounted for the majority of handset sales in the last quarter.

Nokia—which actually saw sales of feature phones rise in the last quarter as it continued its decline in smartphones—seems catching only part of the wave that IDC describes. It is still holding on to the number-one slot, but given that its biggest driver right now is still feature phones, that leadership may well continue on its fast decline.

But if IDC’s forecast is a wave, then it is really Samsung that is the big Kahuna at the moment, with both strong feature phone and smartphone stories and reaching record levels of 90 million units overall for the quarter and more than 300 million for the year. IDC notes that fewer than 20 million units separated it from Nokia in the last quarter. Samsung earlier in 2011 already surpassed Nokia as the world’s biggest smartphone vendor, according to IDC figures.

Apple and Samsung are not the only ones benefiting from a strong smartphone offering in the top-five.

ZTE, which started to introduce smartphones into its portfolio last year and has huge ambitions in this space both on its own brand and partnering with carriers, took a big leap, the second-biggest after Apple for the year, in fact.

In contrast, LG (SEO: 066570), which has been somewhat rudderless in its smartphone strategy and equally less exciting in its feature phone offerings, saw very big declines, much bigger than Nokia’s: over 24 percent over the year compared to Nokia’s eight percent.

With ZTE just behind LG at the moment, it looks like those two might be swapping places in the quarters ahead if LG doesn’t manage to turn things around. So which should it concentrate on fixing first: smartphones or feature devices?

Related

• Nokia Design Chief: We're Developing A Windows Phone With NFC Technology
• Nokia Tottering At The Top Of Mobile Rankings; Apple Leading Smartphones
• Nokia Q4: Scrambling For A Grip, But Still Falling; 1M+ Lumia Phones Sold
• @ CES: Available Now - Android OEM. WLTM Caring, Ambitious, Strong Partner

Instead, Samsung will be presenting it at its own-branded event, with less of a gap between the product launch and actual roll-out.

“Samsung is looking forward to introducing and demonstrating exciting new mobile products at Mobile World Congress 2012. The successor to the Galaxy S II smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product. Samsung stays committed to providing the best possible mobile experiences for customers around the world,” a spokesperson told paidContent, via email today.

The Android-based S II (pictured here with its best enemy, the iPhone 4S) has been one of Samsung’s best sellers since launching last year—although Samsung hasn’t given exact sales figures—and many have been anticipating the upgrade, which will apparently feature a faster processor, better camera and other enhancements.

One of the big issues with the S II, however, was that while Samsung unveiled the device at the 2011 MWC event, it didn’t launch in Europe until summer, and the U.S. several months later, in September.

Did that possibly steal some thunder from the launch? As smartphone competition hots up—including leaks of the first BlackBerry 10 “London” devices and even a new iPhone coming this year—that’s a variable that Samsung probably doesn’t want to explore again.

But while Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has pulled out of CES, and Apple has been running its own launch events for years, Samsung doesn’t seem to be bowing out of the trade show peep show altogether. There have been rumors of Samsung unveiling its first Tizen handsets—that is, the new linux OS that it is developing with Intel (NSDQ: INTC) from the ashes of MeeGo—which could point to a new direction altogether for the Korean handset maker. There are also reports of further tablets on the cards.

Related

• Samsung: Smartphones Up 30 Percent But You Have To Guess How Many We Sold
• Samsung Galaxy S II Hits U.S., Will Cost $199 At Sprint
• Update: Patent Plot Thickens: Apple Sues Samsung; ITC Pushes For Nokia, HTC

The report, from the English-language China Daily, says that China Telecom released a statement this week that said it was beginning “preparatory work” to launch the iPhone 4S—the first time that China Telecom would offer one of Apple’s smartphones.

China Telecom has been talking of an iPhone launch for some time now, touting Apple’s work on a CDMA-based device even before the company launched its first non-UMTS handset with Verizon last year. It seems that the big holdup has been getting the right operating licenses for the device. There are three, and they have apparently now all been secured.

If China Telecom does indeed get the device in the next month, it will make it the third CDMA operator to carry the iPhone, after Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and Sprint (NYSE: S) in the U.S.

Pricing details for the device have not been disclosed but given how iPhone-crazy the Chinese public appear to be, this will probably kick-off a price war for the device—although the carriers’ offerings will likely still come at a premium compared to the cheap knock-offs that one can buy in the country.

The race for 3G subscribers is actually quite close in China: At the moment, the only carrier with the official right to sell the iPhone on its network is China Unicom, the second-largest operator after China Mobile; China Telecom ranks third. Among those, China Unicom is the fastest-growing, thanks in part to the success of the iPhone. Among the three of them, China Mobile still has the most 3G subscribers, with 51.2 million; China Unicom has 40 million; China Telecom has 36.3 million.

The move to add China Telecom as a carrier partner will also make a big difference to Apple’s exposure in the country. China Daily, citing figures from Gartner, notes that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) currently is the fourth-largest smartphone vendor in the country, trailing behind Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Samsung and Huawei. 

Related

• Updated: Apple Gets Egged In Beijing, Halts iPhone 4S Sales In Its Stores

UK-based Synchronica’s main suitor is the Switzerland-based Myriad Group, which develops mobile software services that it says have been loaded into some 2.5 billion devices, including every Android device.

In a market announcement from Myriad, it outlines the main reasons why it believes Synchronica needs to sell itself:

Essentially, Synchronica owes Nokia $20.2 million by December 31, 2015. However, “the Myriad Board does not believe that Synchronica, given its current financial position and future prospects, will be able to repay the Nokia Debt and would also question Synchronica’s ability to meet the current repayment schedule in the short term.”

Myriad says it has had confirmation from Nokia that were Synchronica to be sold, the buyer would not need to pay the outstanding debt immediately.

A Synchronica spokesperson, meanwhile, would not confirm whether Myriad’s assertion over the inability to make Nokia payments was true or not.

Earlier this month, Synchronica issued a statement that said it expects to report full year 2011 revenues of approximately $23 million, “marginally ahead of market expectations”, and an increase of 111 percent compared to 2010. However it also posted increasing losses over the course of last year.

Synchronica purchase of Nokia’s messaging gateway business in June 2011 promised a big step up for business. It’s not clear, however, whether that messaging business was actually profitable to run when it was bought by Synchronica—and if Myriad’s assertions are true, Synchronica may not have been able to make a go of it in any case.

Before the Nokia buy, Synchronica focused on messaging services for emerging and developing markets. The Nokia deal, at the time worth more than the market value of Synchronica itself, gave the company entry to more mature mobile markets: it included the transfer of 10 carrier customers—including AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint (NYSE: S)—which used Nokia’s technology in their own-branded messaging and email services, covering some six million users. The revenues from those deals were never disclosed by Synchronica but they worked on a per-user, per-month basis and were recurring.

The original deal also included a payment from Nokia to preload those messaging services into its own devices for a further 18 months, worth $18.2 million; a long-term relationship for further development of the messaging gateway and client software; the transfer of 250 employees; and 10 patents with royalty-free licensing for a further eight still owned by Nokia.

Myriad is offering £20.63 million ($32.5 million) for Synchronia, or 13 pence per share, according to the statement. This is the second time that Myriad has made an offer for Synchronia; the first, back in November, was rejected by Synchronica’s board, and the two sides have been negotiating since then. Today’s offer represents a premium of 70.49 percent on the company’s trading price on November 10, the day before Myriad’s first offer.

Myriad, which itself has a market capitalization of approximately 197.05 million Swiss francs ($214 million), develops linux-based and java-based software solutions—for example a piece of software that unifies all a users’ contacts from different social networks into a single screen—as well as services for other consumer electronics devices such as connected TVs.

Related

• Nokia's Asset Offload Continues: Messaging Biz Goes To Synchronica For $25M
• Nokia Q4: Scrambling For A Grip, But Still Falling; 1M+ Lumia Phones Sold
• Nokia To Chop 1,300 People From Its Navteq Mapping/Commerce Division
• Symbian Now Officially No Longer Under The Wing Of Nokia, 2,300 Jobs Go
• Nokia Delists From Frankfurt Stock Exchange As Trading In Its Stock Shrinks
• Mobile Lowdown 6-30-11: Oracle/Google; Nokia; iOS Users; Skype
• UK's Synchronica Buys iseemedia For Mobile E-mail Platform
• Synchronica Buys AxisMobile For $5 Million; Raises $10 Million In New Funding

The company is also working closely with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), which is providing the software for its new top-end smartphones, to co-ordinate software details such as tile colours to match its hardware accessories, Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia’s head of design, told the Guardian.

New versions of the Lumia design, introduced to showcase Windows Phone in November, will also remove the flip-up plastic tab that presently covers the micro-USB charger for the phone – one of just two moving parts on the Lumia 800 phone.

“If you can take away a moving part and make it [the phone] more beautiful in the placement of the components, we’ll do it, so that’s something where we can certainly keep improving,” Ahtisaari told the Guardian. “Take it to the extreme, and why are there any connectors?”

Ahtisaari is extremely influential within Nokia (NYSE: NOK), having been appointed last week to its leadership team, reporting directly to chief executive Stephen Elop.The removal of the USB connector would imply the use of wireless charging – a system that has already been demonstrated by products such as HP’s TouchPad, which had a wireless charging system. A Nokia spokesman said the company declined to comment on future product features.

Speaking in Nokia’s headquarters in Espoo, Finland, earlier this month, Ahtisaari said that new elements will “ship with the product that we will ship in the future”. Nokia already has “open NFC” incorporated into a number of its smartphones to enable rapid, password-free setup of Bluetooth pairing between phones and accessories such as speakers and headsets.

Although current versions of Windows Phone do not include NFC elements, Microsoft has indicated that it could be included in versions shipping by October 2012. And Elop also said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that although the current Windows Phone Lumia models – the 800 and 900 – do not have NFC, “it is growing in importance, and I personally believe in it”.

NFC “open” allows Bluetooth pairing without the use of password by tapping the devices to be paired together: an exchange of electronic tokens takes place, so that Bluetooth connection – for a hi-fi, speakers or headset – can occur within seconds with virtually no other interaction. Current secure Bluetooth pairing otherwise requires the user to enter a password of up to eight digits.

Nokia has shipped more than a million Lumia phones since introducing them in November. The company decided to abandon its Symbian platform for high-end smartphones in January 2011 after Elop decided it could not compete against Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android mobile operating systems.

He also suggested that touchscreen interaction is in its very early days, comparing it to the early days of the automobile: “In the 1880s in the car industry cars had tillers – it took 15 years to agree on the steering wheel controlling the front wheels. We’re in the middle of that part of the evolution of interaction.”

Charles Arthur’s trip to Finland was paid for by Finnfacts, an independent media service organisation that provides contacts between international media and Finnish business.

Related

• Nokia Tottering At The Top Of Mobile Rankings; Apple Leading Smartphones
• Nokia Q4: Scrambling For A Grip, But Still Falling; 1M+ Lumia Phones Sold
• At $99, Nokia And AT&T Hoping To Spark Interest In Lumia 900
• Analysts: Nokia Shipped Around 1.3 Million Lumias In Two Months

New figures from Strategy Analytics show that Nokia, with shipments (which Nokia terms “sales”: more on that below) of 113.5 million, has continued to hold on to its position as the number-one phone maker in Q4. Its lead has narrowed by quite some way over last year: it was at 26.9 percent for the quarter and 25.5 percent for the year, compared to 30.9 percent and 33.3 percent for the quarter and year in 2010.

Samsung, shipping 95 million units, made smaller gains than Nokia lost: 1.1 percent on the quarter and 0.5 percent on the year to claim the number two-slot.

What stood in its way to overtaking Nokia? Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). On the strength of its smartphone-only portfolio, it made the biggest gain in market share of the top-three, picking up 4.3 percentage points for the quarter on shipments (like Nokia, Apple calls them “sales”) of 37 million units, to take an 8.3 percent share of the market for the quarter, and 6 percent for the year.

That’s sort of comparing apples with oranges, though. When comparing like-for-like: Apple has edged past Samsung for the quarter with a 0.4 percent lead in market share in smartphones, while over the whole of 2011, Samsung just about still leads Apple, with a 0.9 percent lead.

Nokia trailed the two by nearly twelve percentage points for the quarter, a big reversal from a year ago when it was well in the lead as the biggest-single smartphone maker.

Figures out today from IHS iSuppli, meanwhile, add in two more handset makers to the mix. It says that Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson (NSDQ: ERIC) took the number-four slot after the first three (ranking them in the same order as Strategy Analytics); with Motorola (NYSE: MMI) just behind, with six million and five million devices shipped, respectively. IHS did not include RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), HTC or LG (SEO: 066570)—other notable vendors—in its rankings; they have not reported quarterly figures this week.

In both smartphones and mobile devices overall, “Others” grew numbers in unit terms and made an annual gain on market share to become the biggest group for 2011 market share in Strategy Analytics’ figures. That means still a lot of competition out there from many handset makers, with none of them having a significant enough share to merit placement in the top-three.

On a services level, that speaks to a continuing and strong amount of device fragmentation. That will continue to slow down revenue growth in other areas like mobile content and advertising—areas where it pays for there to be scale to charge the biggest prices. (Case in point: can you imagine what TV advertising or content production would be like if distributors and media buyers had to format ads for different TV set models?)

On shipments versus sales. While these numbers can be instructive, they can also be confusing: If you look at Strategy Analytics’ “shipments” numbers, they are the same as the “sales” numbers that companies like Apple and Nokia reported this week. Neil Mawston, executive director for Strategy Analytics’ global wireless practice, says vendors “tend to use those words interchangeably” even though one refers to actual devices in people’s hands, while the other is for devices that have been shipped to distributors, but not necessarily sold. “They can be open to interpretation,” he admitted. “A lot of companies use smoke and mirrors,” so Strategy Analytics uses other measures such as “channel checks” to measure shipments.

On RIM. It’s notable that RIM didn’t appear in the top-three smartphone makers, so I asked Mawston about their prospects: He says they are “not too far behind number-three” at the moment in overall rankings and smartphones, “and if they had a good quarter or two they could get close.” But the trend so far has been that RIM’s been slowing down and “not providing too much competition” globally. He didn’t mention Motorola or Sony Ericsson, which made iSuppli’s global ranking.

On Samsung. Mawston believes Samsung will stay ahead in smartphones, even with Apple’s strong Q4: “It just has more price points, appeals to both post and prepaid customers, and has a bigger distribution network among carriers,” he said, adding that Apple may well give it a run for its money. “They may trade places for a few quarters.”

He notes that Apple has a massive retail presence in some countries like the U.S. but ultimately it’s the carrier network that really gives device makers that extra leg up in worldwide sales—a key pillar of Nokia‘s fightback strategy, too. “The key thing with carriers is that they can subsidize the iPhone [or another device]. Without operator subsidies, [smartphones] would be nowhere near as large right now.”

Related

• Samsung: Smartphones Up 30 Percent But You Have To Guess How Many We Sold
• Nokia Q4: Scrambling For A Grip, But Still Falling; 1M+ Lumia Phones Sold
• At $99, Nokia And AT&T Hoping To Spark Interest In Lumia 900
• Kantar: Apple Back On Top As Bestselling Smartphone In The U.S.
• Motorola Lost $285 Million In 2011 Selling Phones
• Tablets: Apple's Lead Narrows Among Widening Field Of Android Makers
• AT&T: The iPhone Was Good, But Not Good Enough To Hold Off A Q4 Loss

Nokia currently has two models Windows Phone devices in the market, the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, both 3G models, and is planning to launch a new 4G version in the U.S. in March of this year.

The day before Nokia’s results, a trio of news items released by the company—combined with the “leak” that it would be offering its first 4G phone, the Lumia 900, at a massive discount to the rest of the 4G offerings out there—looked a little like padding for worse news to come today, and that’s more or less what we got:

Handset unit sales were down eight percent to 113.5 million.

Feature phones actually held up in their unit sales: 93.9 million for the quarter, down by only one percent.

Smartphones, however, did significantly worse: 19.6 million devices, down 31 percent.

Device revenues overall were €6 billion, down 29 percent. Again, the biggest weakness was in smartphones, which had sales of €2.74 billion, down 38 percent.

Not surprisingly, Nokia is very much trying to draw a line under last year, one of profound transformation for the company, and look ahead to what 2012 will hold.

It’s taking a very aggressive strategy to pick up much-needed market share for its devices in key markets like the U.S. and UK, offering its handsets at massive discounts—and in the case of the UK, even free under certain contracts. That tactic will come at a big price though: unless Nokia has worked out a way to make high-end devices for less money than its competitors, it will continue to see erosion of its margins and device average selling price. In other words, it might win business, but at what cost?

In the quarter just ended, those margins continued their decline. In this quarter Nokia reported gross margins of 23.7 percent on smart devices, compared to 30.8 percent for the same quarter a year ago. ASP for smartphones was down by only three percent to €140—a figure that was helped by sales of more expensive models such as the N9 and the Lumia 800, according to Nokia. Feature phones saw a decline of 10 percent in ASP to €35, their lowest price yet.

Windows Phone sales. Nokia reached a milestone—or a “beachhead” as it calls it—by selling more than 1 million Lumia handsets. But this number is still a far, far cry from the 20.8 million smart devices that Nokia sold in Q4 of 2009, let alone the 37 million iPhones sold by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) sold in Q4 2011.

The Windows Phone platform, according to figures from Kantar out this week, accounted for less than two percent of sales in any of the nine countries it surveys as a barometer of smartphone demand. That points to a very long road ahead for both companies to bring those numbers into a more credibly competing realm.

Nokia says that it will introduce its first WP7 devices into China and Latin America in the first half of 2012. This is important for a number of reasons: Greater China is currently Nokia’s second-largest market after Europe (€5 billion in device sales for China compared to €7 billion for Europe), but it is declining, seeing an 18 percent drop in revenues over last year and 20 percent in volumes. Meanwhile, LatAm is Nokia’s second-smallest market after North America but it’s one of the only ones that is growing (Middle East being the other growth region.) In LatAm, Nokia had sales of €2.5 billion on volumes of 46 million units.

LatAm and China are also both markets where Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) has yet to introduce Windows Phone, and where there is still a lot of room for smartphone growth—something that Apple, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) and Android makers have not overlooked, either. Still, that means a population of consumers with less preconceptions about Android and iOS being “the” smartphone platforms of the future—getting through to those consumers is crucial if Microsoft truly hopes to makes its OS a truly global smartphone player.

Design front and center. In one more move to shore up confidence for the year ahead, Nokia today, separately, also announced that Marko Ahtisaari has been promoted to the position of EVP of design, and has also joined the company’s leadership team. Ahtisaari is a Nokia veteran who left the company and then returned after it acquired his social networking startup Dopplr. The emphasis on design is a significant one, considering that this is where Nokia will have to differentiate and excel in the years ahead as it makes phones on a platform—Windows Phone—that is also being used by its competitors.

During the earnings analyst call, Nokia executives gave a bit more color to the results:

CEO Stephen Elop acknowledged some of the big issues facing declining sales for the Symbian platform but still said the company would continue to remain committed to supporting the OS through 2016. Nokia earlier this year struck an outsourcing deal with Accenture to take over the management of the platform as part of its gradual winding down of operations. In the last year, Nokia has rolled out several new devices based on Symbian, and has a roadmap for updates to the software for the year ahead.

Nokia also highlighted the platform support payments and licensing fees that Microsoft and Nokia are paying each other. It was described by the company’s CFO Timo Ihamuotila as a “competitive” structure that will run in the billions of dollars between the two companies—although no indication of which party benefits more financially from those. This last quarter, Nokia recorded a payment of $250 million from Microsoft as a result of this arrangement and did not specify whether it paid out money to Microsoft as well. Consider that without that quarter-billion dollar payment those bottom-line results would have been even more gloomy.

The company will be offering a dividend of 20 euro cents per share and has no plans for stock repurchases in the year ahead.

Elop also highlighted something we have heard many times already—from carriers and Nokia itself: “The third ecosystem” argument is “very strong” with carriers. One wonders what that might mean between the lines. More big discounts, subsidized by operators, in the pipeline? More large orders ahead? Preferential treatment for Nokia over other platforms and handset makers?

Related

• Nokia Clears The Decks Of Its Burning Platform Ahead Of Results Tomorrow
• At $99, Nokia And AT&T Hoping To Spark Interest In Lumia 900
• Why Apple Just Pulled Off The Company's First True Post-PC Quarter
• 2012 Mobile Ad Spend Revised Up To $2.6 Billion, Google Fueling The Machine
• The Year Of The Dumb And Dumber, Sub-$100 Smartphone - 500 Million Of Them
• Nokia: Three New Symbian Belle Devices Launched Today, One Costing $260
• Kantar: Apple Back On Top As Bestselling Smartphone In The U.S.

BGR first reported the pricing strategy, which was also confirmed by CNET. AT&T is eyeing a March 18th launch date for the Windows Phone Lumia 900, which joins the Lumia 710 on T-Mobile’s network as engine of Nokia’s comeback hopes for the U.S. market, where it has historically struggled.

AT&T offers three LTE Android phones at the moment: the HTC Vivid, the Samsung Galaxy S II, and the LG (SEO: 066570) Nitro, all of which cost $199 with a two-year contract (although the HTC Vivid is currently available for $99 online). Verizon’s LTE phones, which include the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Motorola (NYSE: MMI) Razr, are priced anywhere from $299 for the Galaxy Nexus to free for the HTC Thunderbolt.

So the Lumia 900 may not be the cheapest LTE phone on the market when it arrives in March but it will definitely fall into a competitive pricing band that includes Android phones that are starting to get a little old by the hyper-quick standards of this market. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) also seems determined to help its partner revive Microsoft’s mobile division, which is believed to make more money from Android licensing deals than it does from software.

Related

• Nokia Clears The Decks Of Its Burning Platform Ahead Of Results Tomorrow
• Analysts: Nokia Shipped Around 1.3 Million Lumias In Two Months
• Microsoft Nabs Another Android Patent Licensee With LG Deal
• @ CES: Nokia Determined To Battle In America With Lumia 900
• Nokia's First Windows Phone For The U.S., The Lumia 710 With T-Mobile

In the U.S. in the last 12 weeks, Apple’s iOS platform accounted for 44.9 percent of all smartphone sales, just edging out the collective power of Android, which took 44.8 percent of sales. In the UK, Android managed to hold on to its lead at 43.9 percent of all sales, while Apple took 34 percent of sales. In the rest of the markets surveyed by Kantar Worldpanel, Android also remained in the lead (see full table below).

But even with Android still at the top, Apple seems to be the one showing more momentum in the top markets, and Kantar’s analyst Dominic Sunnebo notes that iOS overall grew more on average across all the nine markets that it pinpoints as a sales barometer than Android did.

The UK now has a smartphone penetration of 48.9 percent, says Kantar Worldpanel. A corresponding figure was not provided for other markets surveyed.

Drilling down, Apple’s iOS grew its market share more than any other platform maker in both the U.S. and UK, with growth of 22.6 percent and 12 percent respectively. Android, however, continues to show the strongest momentum in other European markets like Germany, Italy and Spain. It also grew the most in Australia, a hotly contested market where Apple is currently battling it out against Samsung over patents and device injunctions.

In what might be worrying news ahead of Nokia’s quarterly results tomorrow, Windows Phone, Microsoft’s OS that is used in Nokia’s new range of smartphone devices, has not managed to break the two percent mark for sales in any single market surveyed by Kantar Worldpanel. The most popular countries for WP7 devices, says Kantar Worldpanel, were the U.S., where it took 1.9 percent of sales; and the UK where it accounted or 1.7 percent of sales. 

In some markets, in fact, Microsoft’s old mobile OS, Windows Mobile, is still selling better than the new one. Such is the case in Germany, France and Spain.

BlackBerry: Interestingly, Sunnebo notes that RIM’s smartphone brand remains the “gifting” brand of choice, with 57 percent of all BlackBerry devices purchased in the quarter as gifts, with that number going up to 76 percent in December, with some 55 percent of recipients under the age of 16. That’s an interesting signal of how BlackBerry is already considered something of an entry-level smartphone (and perhaps a confirmation of new CEO Thorsten Heins’ contention that RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) does not have to ‘dumb down’ its line of devices to pick up new users.)

And while we’ve seen some attention in the last couple of days to what is happening in the Latin American and Brazil mobile markets—Apple hiring a new GM for the region, and Nokia (NYSE: NOK) claiming some kind of feature phone supremacy there with the sale of its 1.5 billionth feature phone in the region—Android, too, can lay claim to a strong position there: it took a 28 percent share in Brazil and a 20 percent share in Mexico. In Brazil, Symbian remained the strongest platform, while in Mexico, RIM overtook Symbian as the most popular platform, as Nokia’s older smartphone platform saw big declines in both countries.

Related

• Android: 700,000 Activations Per Day, WiFi Not Included?
• Surprise! Apple Forecasts Raised On Big Demand For iPhone 4S, But Not iPad
• Nielsen: Android Grew Its Smartphone Marketshare; iPhone Stayed Flat
• Kantar: Android Was The Only OS Whose Sales Grew In All Markets It Surveys
• Nokia Clears The Decks Of Its Burning Platform Ahead Of Results Tomorrow
• Chart: Apple iPhone Sales Through The Years
• Updated: Still Apple's World: 37 Million iPhones, 15 Million iPads

Considering it is unlikely that Nokia will have arrested the declines it has been posting in revenues and market share for the past several quarters, the first two news items are more likely being released now to get investors in a good mood before breaking them the less good news tomorrow.

It is also another signal to the public that Nokia is moving swiftly along in its strategy to change up, in the wake of the famous “burning platform” memo sent out by CEO Stephen Elop (pictured) almost a year ago today.

Series 40. Nokia today announced that it had sold its 1.5 billionth Series 40 feature phone. The sale, appropriately enough, was made in Brazil—which, with the rest of the BRIC block, is a market that all big handset makers are sizing up as the next big target for mobile growth.

It was only yesterday that news emerged that Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) had hired a person (a Brazilian) to oversee Latin America. The Series 40 operating system is a proprietary OS of Nokia’s that is worth watching: earlier this month the company bought Smarterphone to enhance its feature phones, and these devices are being seen by Nokia, Samsung and others as a key ramping-up route to eventual smartphone users.

So much so that RIM’s new CEO had to face a question from an analyst on his first day in the job about whether BlackBerry would be considering a similar route to be able to pick up more users in emerging markets. (For the record, Thorsten Heins didn’t seem to warm to the idea.)

Nokia definitely wants to highlight its activity in the region of Latin America: in the last quarter (Q3) the company reported that revenues had declined by seven percent to $531 million and unit sales by six percent to 10.9 million devices.

Romania. Meanwhile, another step was completed in Nokia’s downsizing strategy, as the company found a buyer for its plant in Romania, closed down in November 2011 as part of its cost-cutting program. The plant had been used to make feature phones, but now it will be used to make home appliances for De’Longhi, the Italian home appliances maker. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, and it’s not clear whether any of Nokia’s former employees were included as part of the transfer deal.

Lastly, the re-stated results. As Nokia said that it would, the company has also now published a recast list of figures for financial quarters covering the previous two years. It says that it has done this mainly to account for how it has regrouped its mapping assets, NAVTEQ (NYSE: NVT) with its social location services, which used to be part of Nokia’s Devices & Services segment but are now together form a new division, Location & Commerce.

Important to note that these are not re-reported results: for example, Nokia’s operating loss for Q3 was still €71 million, no matter how you cut it.

Looking ahead to Thursday. Mobile people will be watching tomorrow’s results eagerly, not least because they want to see if Nokia includes some meaningful numbers about early sales of its new Windows Phone 7 smartphones. There has been a lot of dispute about how well these have been going: a report earlier this week indicated that Nokia had shipped 1.3 million Lumia devices, although some back-of-the-napkin analysis from Benedict Evans gave a far lower number for the number of phones that Nokia may have actually sold: between 300,000 and 400,000.

One operator claimed that their stock of Lumia devices, while figures from one retailer in the UK provided to paidContent indicated that Nokia’s Lumia 800—its first WP device in the UK—accounted for only 0.17 percent of sales in its first weeks on sale in the UK.

All of these are problematic in their own way, so hopefully Nokia will put a full stop to some of these question marks tomorrow.

Related

• To Buy Or Not To Buy: Nokia Struggles To Manage Lumia 800 Sales Message
• Nokia Sees 'New Dawn' With 'The First Real Windows Phone'
• Report: Nokia Lumia Accounted For Only 0.17 Percent Of UK Sales In November
• Nokia To Chop 1,300 People From Its Navteq Mapping/Commerce Division
• The Year Of The Dumb And Dumber, Sub-$100 Smartphone - 500 Million Of Them
• Nokia Buys Norway's Smarterphone To Spruce Up Its Feature Phone OS
• RIM's New CEO Thorsten Heins On Past Mistakes, Sell-Offs And Marketing
• Stephen Elop: Android's Success Is Apple's Fault, And Beware The Boxes
• Who Will Put The Fire Out On Nokia's Burning Platform?

Bloomberg surveyed 22 financial analysts who follow the company and determined that the average projection for Lumia shipments was 1.3 million units, which is a pretty good total in just the two months the device was on sale and before it made its debut in the U.S. The usual caveat about looking at device totals in terms of “shipments” rather than “sales” certainly applies, as Bloomberg’s analysis doesn’t take into account whether or not wireless carriers and retail outlets ordered a lot of devices from Nokia only to be stuck with excess inventory.

But it does show that at least in Europe, Nokia’s first Windows Phone 7 models carried enough of a buzz to make retailers want to stock them during the holiday season. Nokia reports earnings later this week and might have official details to share about shipment totals, but is unlikely to share sell-through data for such a new product this early in the game, in keeping with the practices of many mobile industry companies.

Related

• @ CES: Nokia Determined To Battle In America With Lumia 900
• Report: Nokia Lumia Accounted For Only 0.17 Percent Of UK Sales In November
• Nokia's First Windows Phone For The U.S., The Lumia 710 With T-Mobile
• Nokia Sees 'New Dawn' With 'The First Real Windows Phone'

Polar also today released some numbers that attests to the growth of the apps economy—and to its own business. It says that it currently works with some 380 media brands in 12 countries. It has served 1.6 billion page views for some 11 million users to-date across the many apps that it has produced.

The $6 million round was led by Georgian Partners and takes the total invested in the company to $9 million, with the previous $3 million coming from private investors.

Georgian, which based in Toronto like Polar, has a portfolio that includes another app developer, Kony Solutions, as well as a number of other platform-based B2B digital media startups. (Two others include Shopify and Terapeak, which are used by retail e-commerce companies.)

Meanwhile, the new product line, branded MediaEverywhere, effectively does what it says on the label: it is HTML-5 based and is aimed at letting publishers make apps that can get used on different platforms and devices—not just mobiles and tablets but also desktop computers, and not just native apps but web browsers, too.

Working across different platforms is a trend we’ve seem among other app developers—but given the client line-up that Polar already has, this is a significant sign of how that kind of strategic view is taking shape among publishers investing in apps. Research from GfK last year showed that some 11 percent of magazine views are now digital-only—a number that is on the rise, with publishers all making sure that they will be along for the ride.

It’s worth pointing out that Polar already offered a degree of cross-platform development before today: its SmartTM product lets content be formatted for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PlayBook, Windows Phone and Nokia’s Symbian platform; however now web apps are being added into the mix.

Kunal Gupta, the CEO of Polar, tells paidContent that is has some publishers already on the platform but is not announcing any client names just yet.

Some publishers—notably the FT—are buying up/bringing in-house their third-party developers in order to have a better grip on how they develop their apps, and to make sure that they continue to have an edge on their competitors. That presents an interesting challenge for a third-party company like Polar: will it, too, eventually get swallowed up by one of its customers, or will it find it hard in the longer term to attract business from the big-name publishers who will continue to invest in having that expertise in-house?

Gupta tells paidContent that the company is more than happy to stay independent for now.

Related

• Tablets Are Prime-Time Media Devices
• Nokia's Signs Of Life: A China Deal; A Content Deal; And A Show
• Some Mileage Yet In MeeGo? Intel Adds MeeGo Tablet Apps To Its App Store
• Time Inc. Skips The CES Bins, Sort Of; Offers Free Downloads Of All Titles
• Apple's Newsstand Debuts, Grouping iOS Publications In One Folder
• 11% Of Magazine Exposures Are Digital-Only, Survey Shows

Back in October, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) sponsored “break flashes” across three Channel 5 channels, earning exposure for its Lumia handset over the channels’ idents between shows.

But Ofcom has ruled the deal broke rule 9.19 of the Broadcasting Code stipulating sponsorships must be made clear.

Channel 5 had protested that the spots were too short to include such disclosures, but Ofcom rejected the argument, saying: “If an item cannot be made compliant with the
rules, i.e. it is too brief for text or audio to convey the necessary sponsorship relationship, the item should not be used as a sponsorship vehicle.”

That will discourage Channel 5 and other broadcasters from using similar ad sells in future but Nokia will be unhurt since the campaign has now run its course.

Ofcom also found ITV2’s The Xtra Factor had breached the code for unduly promoting its presenter Olly Murs’ latest single and its judge Tulisa Contostavlos’ perfume brand.

In a new report bringing together dozens of predictions in telecoms, media and technology for the year ahead, Deloitte paints a picture of a “dumber” smartphone than the ones we know today. Largely absent will be Android, iOS, RIM (NSDQ: RIMM), Symbian and Windows Phone. In their place, closed, proprietary platforms:

“Many consumers, particularly middle majority adopters, are likely to consider phones as smart if they have touch screens or full keyboards and not what intangible OS is under the hood,” Deloitte writes.

Nor will many of them even carry 3G—instead running on slower data services like GRPS and EDGE, because chipsets for faster data will still cost too much to integrate into cheap handsets.

However, WiFi is likely to become a “standard” feature of these devices, as will email, instant messaging, a pared-down form of apps and a camera—a list of services, that, along with the touchscreens, seem to now be the smartphone bare essentials. As prices for components continue to drop, specifications for these sub-$100 phones will continue to get better (or smarter, as the case may be).

Deloitte says that a lot of these devices are aimed at developing markets, but points out that there is also an opportunity in more advanced markets where economies are “stagnant.”

With companies like Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Samsung looking drive improvements and experience in their feature phone platforms (Nokia recently buying Smarterphone, and Samsung looking to progress its bada platform by merging features with its new Tizen project), the implication here is that the boom in smartphones is even driving growth in the feature phone segment—feature phones, that is, that can now be considered slightly less-clever smartphones.

Deloitte predicts that in 2012, there will be at least 300 million of these sub-$100 handsets sold to consumers worldwide, which they have added to the 200 million they estimate were sold at this price point this year.

Related

• Samsung Is Doing Well; Now Raising $1bn, Looking To Tizen To Do Better?
• Nokia Buys Norway's Smarterphone To Spruce Up Its Feature Phone OS

The moves in the last couple of days demonstrate that the company, which is currently the Android smartphone maker to beat, and nipping at Nokia’s heels as the world’s biggest mobile handset maker generally, is progressing in its attempts to look for new business opportunities.

These five-year bonds would be the first overseas bonds that Samsung has issued since 1997, writes Bloomberg, which confirmed the bond plans with Samsung. The bonds would be issued by the company’s U.S. unit and would be aimed at expanding the company’s production facility in Austin, Texas, which makes components that it could use in its own devices but also sells to other handset makers such as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). It opened last October.

The move shows that despite some reports that Apple might turn to other component makers in the wake of legal scuffles between the two companies over mobile patents, Samsung is confident that this business will continue to remain strong in the years ahead, irrespective of that contract. At the moment, Samsung is the exclusive provider of A4 and A5 processing chips for Apple, which uses these in mobile devices such as the iPhone and iPad. It’s unclear what Apple’s business represents in terms of overall revenues for Samsung today. In Q1 2011, the figure was estimated to be around 5.8 percent of all of Samsung’s revenue.

In December 2011, Samsung reorganized its electronics business to make a stronger distinction between the division that makes components and the division that makes consumer mobile devices.

Tizen foot forward. Meanwhile, Samsung appears also to be laying out plans for what it might do next with its own devices business, specifically around the platform that it uses: it has confirmed that it is in the process of integrating its existing feature phone OS, bada, with Tizen, a new project Samsung is spearheading with Intel (NSDQ: INTC). It is partly based on MeeGo, Intel’s former stab at creating an OS with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) that was put to pasture when Nokia decided to pursue a mobile device future with Microsoft.

That should come as no surprise, given that both bada and Tizen are based on Linux and Samsung had always said that this would be the intention; however, now we have a bit more detail on how this might look in practice. According to an interview in Forbes, when the integration work is complete, developers’ bada applications will be supported in Tizen, and apps written for Tizen will still be able to work on bada devices.

Tae-Jin Kang, SVP of Samsung’s contents planning team, tells Forbes that Tizen will not become its main operating platform “anytime soon,” but that also begs the question of whether that is what Samsung ultimately hopes it can achieve. It could one day replace bada—or even, considering that it comes from the same roots as a previous smartphone OS, MeeGo, replace Android or Windows Phone in Samsung’s smartphone portfolio.

Or could it be used for both kinds of devices—say as a “lite” version for feature phones, and a heftier product for smart devices? That would potentially give Samsung greater control over its OS and, for a company spinning several plates at the moment, might point to a way of unifying its device strategy under a single platform. It would also give the company greater control, something that it does not have with Android, which is open-source but effectively developed and run by Google; (NSDQ: GOOG) and help Samsung better follow in the footsteps of Apple’s vertical-integration business model.

bada has proven to be a very popular platform where feature phones are concerned, and some analysts have taken to comparing it in the same category as smartphones. Gartner says that in Q3 2011, bada accounted for 2.2 percent (2.5 million units) of all smartphone sales, roughly double that of Windows Phone.

We should start seeing the first fruits of Samsung’s Tizen move soon: Kang says it will release two Tizen devices over the course of this year. Leaked pictures of what the OS will allegedly look like (one pictured here) emerged last week.

Related

• Samsung/HTC: Two Sides Of An Android Coin. Why's Samsung Winning The Toss?
• Nokia Buys Norway's Smarterphone To Spruce Up Its Feature Phone OS
• Tizen: Can Intel And Samsung's New OS Project Fly Where MeeGo Did Not?
• Samsung: Second Tablet Injunction? Asks 2.4 Percent Chip Royalty From Apple
• Diamonds Are Forever, But Nokia Is Reportedly Selling Luxury Brand Vertu
• Chapter Four In The Linux OS Saga: Nokia Making Meltemi For Low-End Mobiles
• Don't Count MeeGo Out Yet: Report Says Samsung, Others To Join Intel

It’s not hard to understand why Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) decided to make CES 2012 its last, although it would have been nice if they’d at least made an effort to mark the occasion. The event is impressive, overwhelming, electric, and tiring with a 50 percent markup on coffee and five times as much cigarette smoke as the modern tech office worker encounters on a daily basis.

It’s the type of event that given its sheer size (over 150,000 people picked up a badge for CES, a new high) and emphasis on glitz that one expects to be memorable. There were a few things that the mobile world will remember about CES 2012: the determination shown by Nokia (NYSE: NOK) to get America right this time and the positive feedback they and Microsoft enjoyed; the blunt realization that Android is so ubiquitous that dozens of new phones were announced at the show with hardly anyone noticing; and the five-years-too-late introduction of a real smartphone powered by Intel.

But because of that size and its awkward timing just after the holiday season, CES requires that tech companies pretend to put on a show for attendees and that those in the media who depend on tech companies to do things they can talk about to pretend that it’s some sort of huge mind-blowing experience.

The biggest story in technology during CES week had nothing to do with any display of consumer electronics. Google’s decision to pollute its search results with a half-baked social graph of Google+ users was easily the most talked-about event in technology during the week. Nothing unveiled at CES came even close to generating that kind of reaction.

The energy required to attend CES coupled with the lack of anything that fired up the crowd caused predictable blowback from those who slog through the Las Vegas Convention Center, perhaps best shown in this existential lament from Gizmodo’s Mat Honan about the meaning of it all. In a way, it’s all Apple’s fault: everyone keeps expecting every “special” event like CES to produce something as explosive as the iPhone was in January 2007 (an event that far overshadowed the CES of that year) each and every time.

It just can’t happen. Products like that, and the resulting buzz that generates page views, only come along once in a rare while. And nowadays when companies think they have a product like that, they tend to introduce it on their terms to make sure they carry the hypershort media cycle, rather than sharing it with Justin Bieber or some crazy television that etches high-definition images into your brain.

But if you put aside the gadget obsession for a while, you can start to see how companies used this CES to set themselves up for the coming year.

The 2012 bronze medal in mobile is now Microsoft’s and Nokia’s to lose, spurring a wave of “Microsoft is back!” sentiment that paired nicely with a BusinessWeek interview designed as a Steve Ballmer image-rehabilitation project. However fortuitous the timing, it showed the fiery CEO has finally come to terms with the notion that he is an underdog in the most important personal computing market of the future.

Google let its partners introduce all those slightly different Android handsets early in the week before revealing on Thursday that it wants Android developers to focus on application consistency. That may cause a problem for those Android partners who insist they have to differentiate themselves despite fragmentation problems, especially considering that Google is now requiring they make the stock Google experience available to developers on their phones in order to carry a link to the Android Market.

Intel (NSDQ: INTC) has now linked itself with Motorola (NYSE: MMI) and Google, an interesting trio given Intel CEO Paul Otellini’s presence on Google’s board and Motorola’s pending purchase by Google (NSDQ: GOOG). If Google forgets that it promised to operate Motorola as a standalone company, some interesting products could emerge from that alliance.

Samsung continued to emerge as a new powerhouse, with one of the biggest presences at CES coupled with a much more practical presentation of itself to attendees: no wolf-costumed preteens were involved with Samsung’s promotional strategy at CES this year.

And Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) sent 250 people, including head of iOS marketing Greg Joswiak, to CES in order to scout competitors and take the pulse of the industry.

CES is still relevant and necessary because of the personal interactions that it forces among tech industry professionals, and it will keep that role in 2013 after Microsoft departs the show. But we have to stop thinking about it as an event that will produce a blockbuster, and be content with the opportunity to measure the pulse of an entire industry rather than succumb to the relentless churn of minor developments.

Related

• For Google's Ice Cream Sandwich, Style Maketh The Platform
• @ CES: A Year Later, iPad Competitors Much Quieter
• @ CES: Intel Gets The Mobile Partners--Motorola and Lenovo--It Badly Needed
• @ CES: Apple Is Scouting The Competition
• @ CES: Microsoft Mails In Last Keynote Appearance, Wasting Everyone's Time
• @ CES: Nokia Determined To Battle In America With Lumia 900
• @ CES: The Smartphones, They Are Everywhere!