Nokia executives used the company's annual Nokia World conference today in Stuttgart, Germany, to reveal more details on the firm's highly anticipated Booklet launch as well as debut three new devices. The company also announced a link-up with Facebook and provided some interesting data on some of its services such as the Ovi store and Comes with Music.

During a keynote address, Nokia's executive vice president for markets, Anssi Vanjoki, said the Nokia Booklet 3G netbook will have an unsubsidized price of $810 (570 euros) and will feature the Windows 7 operating system, a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom processor and 12 hours of battery life. The netbook also will sport HSPA and WiFi connectivity.

Vanjoki also discussed three new devices that the company debuted at the conference. The first, the N97 Mini, will be the first device that supports Nokia's lifecasting with Ovi, enabling users to publish their location and status updates directly to their Facebook account from the homescreen of their device. The phone will ship in October for an unsubsidized retail price of $639 (450 euros).

Two other devices that will be available in fourth quarter are the Nokia X6, which will retail for around $639 (450 euros) and features Nokia's Comes with Music service and 36 GB of memory, and the X3, a less expensive music phone that will retail for around $163  (115 euros).

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo said that the company is focused on creating a personalized solution for devices that is as unique as a consumer's fingerprint. The company's services solution business (announced last week) will be heading up that effort. In total, the company has more than 55 million users of its services globally and has a target of growing that to 300 million by 2012.

In a conference call from Germany with reporters, Kai Oistamo, Nokia's executive vice president of devices, said the new solutions unit will "allow us to better and more quickly integrate devices and services to create an intuitive user experience."

Oistamo said the Booklet 3G and Nokia's new Linux-based smartphone, the N900, would eventually come to the U.S. market, but he declined to discuss pricing, availability or whether the devices would be subsidized by wireless carriers. He also said the company's newly announced X6 device ships exclusively with Nokia's Comes With Music service, and would not be available in countries that do not have the service. Yesterday, a Forbes report said Nokia would delay the U.S. launch of the music service until 2010. Oistamo said that the company had made no announcement of its plans for the service in the United States, and that if and when the service did make its U.S. debut, the X6 could possibly be released in the U.S.

Kallasvuo said that Nokia's Comes With Music service is available in 10 countries on a dozen different devices. In addition, he lauded Nokia's Ovi app store, saying that the offering is gaining momentum and now is accessible from 100 Nokia devices. In addition, 27 operators in eight countries are providing integrated billing to Ovi. "Developers from 65 countries have loaded products into the Ovi store. This is more proof of the global scope," Kallasvuo said.

The Nokia CEO also offered specific sales figures on the company's high-end devices. He said the N97 and the 5800 have exceeded 10 million in sales in 10 months, and one-half of those sales happened in the past three months.

In other Nokia news, the company introduced the Mural, a new flip phone that will be offered via AT&T. The phone illuminates when it is opened or closed, or when there is an incoming call or message. The Mural will support AT&T's 3G network and features a 2-megapixel camera.

For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this Bloomberg article
- see this video of the Nokia 3G Booklet
- see this slideshow of the N97 Mini, the X6 and the X3
- see this Phone Scoop article

Related Articles:
Nokia confirms interest in netbooks
Nokia to use Windows in forthcoming Booklet 3G

Phil Goldstein contributed to this report.

AT&T said it would open a new lab designed specifically to test and certify embedded wireless and machine-to-machine devices for the company's network, further evidence that wireless carriers are going to continue to invest in the space. The announcement comes a day after Sprint Nextel announced a multi-year deal with M2M provider DataSmart to help get more M2M devices running on its network.

AT&T's lab, located in Austin, Texas, will test the network compatibility, data performance and audio quality of devices, including netbooks, ereaders, portable navigation devices, utility products and health care-related tracking devices, among others. AT&T said the lab also will manage field tests, and give consumer electronics vendors and M2M device makers a clear certification path for the company's network.

In recent months, AT&T has accelerated its push into the M2M and embedded wireless space. The carrier will power the connections for Sony's new Daily Edition ereader and Plastic Logic's forthcoming ereader device. And In May, AT&T signed an exclusive deal with M2M firm Jasper Wireless for Jasper to provide the activation, billing and connectivity support for all the embedded wireless devices on the carrier's network.

For more:
- see this release

Related Articles:
AT&T to power Sony's new 3G ereader
Sprint inks M2M partnership with DataSmart
AT&T moves closer to embedded wireless vision
Verizon, Qualcomm forming M2M joint venture
Verizon's Seidenberg: 500 percent penetration achievable

WASHINGTON--In crafting a national broadband plan, the FCC is looking to create a framework that will speed up the cycle of broadband deployment and adoption, an FCC official said Wednesday.

Blair Levin, who heads the commission's broadband program, said the plan's logical course will be one that "unleashes forces that quicken that cycle or removes forces that slow down that cycle." Levin was speaking to telecom executives and lobbyists at a meeting of the Udwin Breakfast Group in Washington, D.C.

One key area will be access to spectrum, and Levin conceded that there is not a lot to dole out. "There's not enough of it," he acknowledged. At broadband policy workshops in August, several Tier 1 carriers, including T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, argued for more licensed spectrum to keep pace with customers' bandwidth demands, especially for mobile broadband.

When asked whether the FCC would be working with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the White House to find ways of more efficiently using or reallocating spectrum used by federal agencies, Levin said that there was a distinct possibility that could happen.

"To do an intellectually credible job, you have to put everything on the table," he said.

The FCC has been charged by Congress to present a national broadband plan by February. Levin said the plan will not be "self-executing," and that Congress and state and local governments likely will have to get involved to execute it.

Levin said current spectrum holders should be prepared to justify their ongoing use of the airwaves.

"I think to a certain extent I want you to be worried," Levin said in response to a question about whether the broadband plan could put pressure on spectrum holders to defend their use of the spectrum. "You should be worried. I wake up at 5 in the morning worried about something, and my way of coping with it is to make other people worried. That's actually the intellectual process we should go through."

Related Articles:
Levin tapped to run FCC's broadband program
FCC opens debate on national broadband plan
Broadband stimulus applications stretch from 700 MHz to 3.65 GHz
No surprise: Country's largest network operators not applying for stimulus money

Sony Ericsson said it has no interest in acquiring Nortel Networks' stake in LG-Nortel, its venture with LG Electronics, according to Reuters. South Korean online publication eDaily initially reported the handset maker and Alcatel-Lucent were among those interested in purchasing the stake.

"It's definitely not us. There must be some kind of confusion," Aldo Liguori, Sony Ericsson's corporate vice president of global communications, told Reuters."I'm sure if it's something of that importance, I would know about it." 

A representative from Alcatel-Lucent declined to comment, citing a company policy against commenting on rumors and speculation.

The eDaily report, citing an unnamed banking source, said that the two industry players, along with JP Morgan's One Equity Partners and Korean investment firm SkyLake Incuvest, were on a short list of firms with interest in the Nortel stake.

Meanwhile, LG reiterated its committment to LG-Nortel. LG-Nortel was formed in 2005 and had revenues last year of around $1 billion.

For more:
- see this Reuters article
- see this Reuters update

Related Articles:
Nortel confirms desire to exit LG joint venture
Report: Nortel wants to exit LG joint venture

CTIA is throwing its support behind an effort to a repeal a 20-year-old law that taxes personal use of work-issued cell phones, according to comments the group filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

The wireless industry's trade group said that, while Congress reviews the tax, the IRS should "consider suspending all audit activity on the taxation of the personal use of employer-provided cellphones."

"Unfortunately, the alternatives proposed by the IRS are either incomplete or inadequate solutions that would continue to subject employees and employers to onerous call log requirements," CTIA President Steve Largent said in a statement.

Thus, CTIA is pushing for the passage of the MOBILE Act--sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) in the Senate and Reps. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.) in the House--which would remove mobile devices from the listed property rule, thereby exempting them from the tax. The 1989 law mandated that workers who use company-provided cell phones for personal calls count the value of those calls--i.e. that portion of the bill--as income, and then pay taxes on that income. However, employers and their employees have long ignored the rule.

The issue flared up in June after the IRS--in one proposal--said that employers would have to declare 25 percent of an employee's annual cell phone expenses as a taxable benefit, something wireless carriers vehemently opposed. The IRS subsequently backed away from proposals to more strictly enforce the law, and said it was going to ask Congress to repeal the law altogether. In announcing the tax collector's decision to reverse its position, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman called the law "obsolete," bringing the IRS into agreement with the likes of Sprint Nextel and Verizon Wireless.       

For more:
- see this WSJ article (sub. req.)
- see this CTIA statement

Related Articles:
IRS backs away from tax on work-issued cell phones
IRS defends tax proposals for work cell phones
IRS may tax work cell phones as a 'fringe benefit'
Cell tax bill debated at House hearing

Alcatel-Lucent said it plans to raise as much as $1.4 billion by issuing convertible bonds, which will help finance its debt. The company, which reported a quarterly profit (mainly on asset sales) in the second quarter for the first time since the company was formed in 2006,  is in the middle of a restructuring plan. The move has been viewed by some as a positive step, since it will put the firm in a better financial position. Alcatel-Lucent has around $5.69 billion in long-term debt. Article

> AT&T Mobility said it would provide free WiFi to Windows Mobile phones running on its network. Article

> ST-Ericsson appointed former Texas Instruments executive Gilles Delfassy as its new CEO. He will replace Alain Dutheil. Article

> HTC unveiled its first Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, the Touch 2. Release

> Clearwire will use WiChorus' SmartCore platform in its mobile WiMAX network. Release

> Alvarion named Eran Gorev as its new CEO. Article

> ZTE is not interested in buying a stake in Alcatel-Lucent, according to ZTE Chairman Hou Weigu. Article

And finally... A Pennsylvania man said he robbed a bank in order to get away from his wife. Article

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