The Wolfman Cometh

Phandroid has posted a noteworthy story on Huawei’s plan to launch a mobile based on Google’s Android Operating System in early 2009.

Huawei is well known locally as China’s Wolf in the Network Hardware business and in recent years has gobbled up Ericsson/Nortel/Lucent/Alcatel’s customers in this sector, supplying kit to British Telecom, Vodafone and France Telecom amongst others.

Huawei’s adoption of Android comes as no surprise. Firstly, I do not know one single mobile developer in Beijing who does not want to work on a Linux-based mobile platform. Secondly, whilst Symbian and Microsoft continue to sell OS licenses at between GBP 5 and GBP 10 per unit, who wouldn’t want to choose a ‘free’ OS?

The Missionary Position

As smartphones are getting smarter, it’s good to see not-so-clever phones being blessed with a little more intelligence too.

Planning to build on the incredible success of the 1100 Ultra Low-Cost Handset (ULCH) Nokia has announced an upgrade to its ULCH range, introducing seven new low cost devices, each one packed with more features than ever before.

Pricing the mobiles from Euro 25 through to Euro 80, Nokia aims to capture the next billion unconnected consumers in the emerging markets and with missionary zeal, build that Brand.

Converting the masses to the Nokia experience is very much in evidence in the feature-set across new the ULCH range. Nokia’s Life Tools and Ovi Mail service offerings are as prominently promoted in the press kit as I am sure they will be in the packaging. Read the Nokia mantra.

And perhaps packaging is one of the key issues: many of these ULCHs will ship  to sales channel as subsidised and bundled with a Network Operator prepaid SIM. How many will be ‘box-broken’ for the mobile and SIM to be sold separately? In the prepaid segment, how much greater is the consumer’s loyalty to the hardware than the Network bitpipe?

Network Operators should perhaps be watchful of Nokia pulling off an ‘iPhone’ in the emerging markets.

Amen to that.