Apple’s strong brand value will not come as a surprise to many people. Us media types are usually found walking through Central London clutching on to iPhones, or if we are feeling especially important that day, an iPad. These two products have been Apple’s major successes in recent years, allowing the brand to appeal to a consumer market and an enterprise market simultaneously. They have essentially done this by making their products really cool and really useful at the same time – or at least giving us enough of an argument to convince our IT managers that we simply can’t live without an iPhone, other PR agencies would surely mock us if we turned up with a, god forbid, Nokia.

Google on the other hand have had a year of crisis after crisis. The campaigners for data privacy always seem to end up at the door of Google and have such hurt their brand image. They now appear to be the evil company that they are, having managed to keep the ‘funky start-up’ image going for far longer than deserved. However, a 2% drop isn’t exactly crisis times. They are still seen as a company pushing technological innovation – their work with Twitter during the Egypt crisis was a massive coup for the brand name in that respect.

The other interesting mover in the index is Facebook, which made its debut in the top 100 at 35; achieving the highest increase in brand value at 246 percent. I am sure that next year we will see Facebook sore into the top 20, if not the top 10, as Google, Facebook and Apple continue to be the technology brands making the most noise. I am sare that Microsoft and IBM will forever be a permanent fixture in the top 10 but it these three that dominate our consciousness.

Image via Wikipedia

While one Plan B was busy winning a Brit award, another was going off the rails. The Nokia Plan B shareholder revolt has been called off. It burned brightly with the fires of conviction for two days before fizzling out.

The shareholders were objecting to the decision to jump into bed with Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 – turning Nokia into an OEM hardware producer rather than the most innovative mobile phone company on the planet. There has been some debate on whether or not this will be a good move for Nokia, but the company is certainly paying the price for falling behind the rest of the market on its mobile operating system, Symbian.

Despite the support that many shareholders had apparently pledged (Plan B claim a large number – though not precise), the project has been derailed by institutional investors. These investors are mammoth organisations wielding a lot of power in companies as shareholders, but with a legal obligation not to take big gambles with their clients’ money they could not possibly support the plan. Without their support there was nothing that Plan B could realistically achieve.

There is also the small matter that the Plan B group would not be able to take charge until May, by which time Nokia should already have started paring down its software teams and many wheels would already be in motion.

If somebody wanted to save the Symbian OS, they would be better off inventing a time machine.

Before the alliance was announced Google vice-president Vic Gundotra poured scorn on the deal by tweeting “two turkeys do not make an eagle”. Investors were also less than impressed and Nokia’s shares finished Friday 14 per cent down on the basis that it was a far better deal for Microsoft than Nokia.

What’s puzzling is why Nokia decided to nail its colours to just one (unproven) platform. HTC and Samsung both have a mixed portfolio of Android and Windows Phone 7 devices and according to analyst firm IDC achieved smartphone unit device growth of 258 per cent and 438 per cent respectively in the last quarter of 2010. Samsung also sells its own apps through both platforms so it’s not as if Nokia would have to have killed off its Ovi store had it taken the Android route.

Either way it will be a fascinating battle to watch. At the moment it’s difficult to see how Nokia can re-gain its former hold on the mobile market but by finally ditching Symbian it has at least taken a step in the right direction.

It’s not the first time Nokia has shunned MWC, but in all seriousness; has the show just become too big? The press list might be enormous but so is the price tag. It seems to me that the show has become a parody of itself and certainly not in a good way. With the big guns making announcements this week, what are we left to look forward to at the actual show? Some demos? Some girls in bikinis doing the can-can?

In my humble opinion, MWC has lost its way and is out of touch with how news is both reported and consumed. Everyone who is anyone might be heading to Barcelona, but it’s a bit like going to your in-laws – do you actually want to go or are you going because you feel you should?

In terms of brand attention, it is Nokia that is grabbing most of the interest. Despite talk at the Open Mobile Summit around Nokia’s uphill battle to halt a decline in its market share, it has also courted attention around its Ovi maps navigation system by offering free cab rides and that of its N8 Smartphone.

However, Nokia and Google didn’t grab all the headlines, it was the National Literacy Trust’s survey on Kids More Likely to Own a Cellphone Than a Book that ranked as the most popular news story on Twitter.

While Nokia and Qualcomm were generating a good buzz in the online communities, it was Peggy Anne Salz’s blog post that attracted the most attention. Providing a sneak preview of the key points of Alisa Bowen’s speech, no doubt the community outside of the #Open Mobile Summit were attracted to the insight.

With use of the open mobile summit hashtag peaking at 9am, we followed the conversations of more than 200 influncers from mobile operators, app developers, vendors, journalists to bloggers.

There was certainly no shortage of online discussions about next week’s arrival of the iPad. From digital design agency Fjord discussing the iPad’s target market…

chetansharma: RT @peggyanne: RT @DanWinterbottom: Fjord: Expect two spikes of adoption for iPad; 15 year olds and 45 year olds

…..to a Nokia blogger posing questions about its revolutionary position….

JayMontano: #openmobile ipad – game changer or niche thing?

However, despite the chatter around the #Open Mobile Summit, it was the Meffys’ finalist list that took the top slot for online conversation.

Thanks to TweetMeme, The Twitter Tim.es and Trendistic for the extra data.

Internet music service Spotify announced major new features today that integrate the service with Facebook and Twitter, and help synchronise the service with users’ music collections.

Light Reading – Google Leans on Vodafone in Europe

Google’s decision to use Vodafone Group plc’s sales channels for the European debut of the Nexus One device shows that the company is still on a learning curve in the mobile device market, according to a leading industry analyst.

BBC Tech – Nokia launches first open source Symbian phone

The first handset to use the Symbian operating system since it became open source has been announced by Nokia

ZDNet – iPads targeted by email malware

Scammers are distributing emails designed to trick iPad owners into downloading software that they think is an iTunes update, but which turns out to be malware that opens a back door on the computer.

Computer Weekly – UK Cyber Security Challenge to find next generation of security experts

The UK plans to recruit future cyber security warriors through a series of national public competitions due to start towards the end of 2010. The Cyber Security Challenge, backed by a consortium of UK commercial, academic and public sector organisations, will be run along similar lines as the US Cyber Challenge launched in 2009.



The Tories have agreed to allow government plans regarding DNA retention to become law. The plans, contained in the Crime and Security bill, restrict keeping DNA seized from suspects subsequently released or found innocent on the police national database for up to six years – except in the case of serious violent or sexual crimes where it can be retained for longer.

Computing.co.uk – Nokia set to launch iPad clone

Nokia is looking to rival Apple’s iPad with its own tablet computer, which could be in stores later this year.

BBC – Apple iPad users report Wi-Fi problems

Some owners of the newly-available iPad have reported problems with connecting their devices to Wi-Fi.

Guardian.co.uk – Bebo faces closer or sale by AOL as members log off

Social networking site bought by internet giant for $850 has seen its numbers of global users dwindle to 12.8m.

Computerworld UK – Digital Economy Bill passed along by empty House of Commons

The Digital Economy Bill has been passed to the final stage before becoming law, after a minor debate in which only a handful of the country’s 646 MPs turned up.

IT PRO -London Underground line hit by IT failure
London’s transport network took a massive hit yesterday after an IT error left travellers without the use of the Circle Line for several hours.

CBR – Facebook users slam privacy changes

New research by security firm Sophos has revealed that the vast majority of users on social networking site Facebook oppose the recently-announced privacy changes. Sophos quizzed 680 users through its website and Facebook profile, with 95 per cent of respondents claiming the new changes are a “bad thing”. Just 2 per cent said they support the changes while the rest didn’t understand what changes were being proposed by Facebook.

The Register – iPhone vulnerable to remote attack on SSL

Apple’s iPhone is vulnerable to exploits that allow an attacker to spoof web pages even when they’re protected by the SSL, or secure sockets layer, protocol, a security researcher said.

Computerworld UK – China hacking laws to get tougher

Chinese police and judicial officials are formulating new measures that govern how hacking crimes are handled by courts, the country’s latest step to strengthen its cyber laws, state media reported.

Computerworld UK – NASA brings in commercial spaceflight companies

NASA moved quickly to advance its role as commercial space entrepreneur by awarding $50 million (£30m) to five companies who could help design and build future spacecraft that could take astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Computerworld UK – Mozilla releases Firefox for Mobile

The first production version of Firefox for Mobile has been released, for Nokia’s Maemo operating system. But Mozilla already seems to be scaling back its deployment plans, and unexpectedly the mobile browser will not support Adobe Flash.

BBC – ‘Internet addiction’ linked to depression, says study

The study, reported in the journal Psychopathology, found 1.2 per cent of people surveyed were “internet addicts”, and many of these were depressed.

Computing – Social networking to replace email by 2014

The business benefits of social software platforms will lead to email being replaced as the primary means of communication by 2014, according to analyst Gartner. Increasing business use of tools such as Twitter and Facebook has resulted in more demand for such systems, says the firm, which predicts that 20 per cent of organisations will use them as their key communication medium by 2014.

The Daily Telegraph – Mobiles to replace wallets and tickets

The device is already tipped to start replacing credit cards, supermarket loyalty cards and bus passes by as early as 2011, when they will begin to be incorporated into mobiles.

The Daily Telegraph – Internet Explorer 8 becomes the most popular browser in the world

The latest version of Microsoft’s browser has finally overtaken Internet Explorer 6, now accounting for 22.3 per cent of the global browser market in January 2010, according to market share measurements carried out by NetApplications.

Instead what’s caught my attention is the shake-up in the satnav market. From being the must have gadget of a few years ago it looks like a combination of commoditisation (you can buy one for £50 in Argos) and mobile phone apps will kill satnavs as a standalone device.

Anyone with an iPhone will marvel at how easy it is to use Google Maps (and equally how it zaps your battery). And Nokia’s announcement of free, turn by turn navigation through Ovi Maps is a direct threat to Garmin, Tom Tom et al. So if these guys want to survive they need to get creative. Become application providers rather than hardware manufacturers and get your branded content into other people’s devices. Hell, maybe start with the Apple tablet……………