MNB RG: New Nokia HERE interview – and what is Nokia Guru, really?

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Janne’s been putting pieces of a puzzle together looking into Nokia’s future focused on Location Services, which although might not include smartphones may still see Nokia devices.

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Continuing the topic of what will Nokia do once D&S sale is completed. A new interview with Nokia HERE manager:

This may be completely out of someones imagination, but a comment here says Nokia Guru has navigation with voice guidance and thus would fit Michael Halbherr’s comments on future Nokia devices after phones (http://www.iltasanomat.fi/digi/art-1288612538617.html). The comment also claims Nokia Guru had NFC payments – plus of course the music player.Now, I consider this anonymous comment too far-fetched to really be accurate. Most likely it is complete bullcrap. But it is at least an interesting mindgame as to what Michael Halbherr said and what we considered last weekend (http://mynokiablog.com/2013/10/19/mnb-rg-will-cars-soon-be-tracked-by-nokia-black-boxes-jorma-ollila-heads-a-car-tracking-taskforce/).

Could Nokia see a future in devices like these? Could Nokia enter the smartglasses game too?

Related to this, the same “tip” (aka anonymous trolling on the interwebs) also claims Nokia Treasure Tag won’t transfer to Microsoft. This could of course be true or not true irrespective of the Nokia Guru claims made. If so, I wonder if they will rebrand the Treasure Tag as HERE Treasure Tag, because it includes a location element. Or will Nokia actually continue pushing some kind of a Nokia consumer brand, even while Microsoft uses the same brand for basic devices.Be the claims as they may, at least it is notable that these two expected products were not announced yesterday. If that sets them apart somehow, or if it is just an unrelated co-incidence, of course we don’t know. The imagery leaked suggested that Treasure Tag was probably a part of the Lumia 1520 announcement, but was removed. Is that because Nokia now wants to announce or perhaps even re-brand it separately to avoid confusion with the Microsoft deal? Or is it just delayed or perhaps waiting for another launch date to keep the message coherent and not too convoluted. (Theoretically we could even see the Guru and Treasure Tag today, the Nokia World was marked as extending to the 23rd.)

In the end, with Michael Halbherr’s claims, the discussed car tracking/car industry stuff, and an increasing buzz in the media about certain consumer product elements remaining at Nokia after the D&S sale, it will be interesting to see if there actually remains some consumer-oriented side of the new Nokia once the D&S sale is finalized – or whether it will be just infrastructure stuff and materials research/licensing. Could Nokia even continue being active as a consumer cloud-service provider beyond HERE Maps, or will all of such current efforts simply merge with Microsoft and/or go away.

If Nokia keeps “Guru” and Treasure Tag to itself, I’d expect it to align their marketing to all smartphone users much more so than their gear efforts have been before (although often they have at least mentioned some compatibility with other brands as well).

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Cheers Janne!

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