Nokia hooks up with Chinese firm for localized software and services

RIM's not the only manufacturer making a new play to cozy up with China this week -- now it's Nokia making an announcement that it'll partner up with local firm New Alliance to develop software and services more appropriate for the local market. In a brief press release cut loose today, the companies have revealed that they'll form a new joint venture -- the clumsily-named Nokia Alliance Internet Services Company Limited -- to push specific pieces of Ovi fine-tuned for China while helping out local content creators and developers looking to bring their goods into the platform. The venture goes live next month with about 80 staffers involved; Nokia's pretty heavily invested in China as it is, so we're thinking this is a power play to stay engaged in the face of growing competition.

[Wobbly Posted Dec 9th 2009 11:32AM]

"Nokia's pretty heavily invested in China as it is, so we're thinking this is a"

This is a what, now? A hastily written article? Sloppy...

[Chris Ziegler Posted Dec 9th 2009 12:21PM]

@Wobbly I read and re-read that snippet, not seeing the issue! What's the concern?

[Chris Ziegler Posted Dec 9th 2009 12:35PM]

@Wobbly ...aaaaand I'm a complete idiot. Fixed.

[Anthony Posted Dec 9th 2009 12:32PM]

@Chris Ziegler The ending to the sentence...

[Chris Ziegler Posted Dec 9th 2009 12:35PM]

@Anthony OH! Ha, technical issue, fixed :)

[jasonlackey Posted Dec 9th 2009 3:11PM]

Interestingly enough the device shows what appears to be some sort handwriting recognition thing running on it. What makes this interesting is that both Chinese and Japanese are said to, despite character sets of 10000+ characters, be easier to do handwriting recognition for than English - at least this is the excuse that was passed on by the Palm Graffiti folks who could not figure out how do recognize 26 real characters when the likes of Sharp had been doing 10k+ characters for years.

Nokia seems particularly interested in the low and mid-range, which from a "My First Sony" perspective makes a lot of sense. It is probably a good thing to do your best to see that the next 2 billion mobile subs get exposed to your phones first before the others get a crack at them. Hopefully they will figure out their high end strategy soon....