Nokia Now Threatened by Rumored
LG 8 Megapixel Touch Flagship?!

Lately, the threat of LiMo and Android had turned the Symbian partners into the epitome of cooperation.

Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola, and others saw the Symbian platform's vulnerability within the market, and promptly rejoined forces by agreeing to establish the Symbian Foundation, which will control the platform through open source development and distribution.

In one big splash, major competitors wisely threw their competitive natures aside for the better of Symbian and the smartphone industry.

Well, that truce must already be over! One by one, the new Symbian Foundation members seem happy to take pot shots at Nokia, whose next generation devices are still under development. First, Motorola threw it's first 5 megapixel camera sporting a now must-have xenon flash into the ring.

The Motorola Motozine Kodak ZN5 won't supplant Nokia, but could poach more than a few casual-usage customers. Then, Sony Ericsson announced the 8 megapixel C905 Cybershot, dethroning Nokia in the cameraphone megapixel category. Obviously LG was licking its chops, preparing a cheapshot of it's own. Turns out, LG took the best swing so far!

Rumor are now swirling that LG will announce a new model, the KC910. Supposedly slated for an October release, the KC910 should be packing some serious hardware and software functions. They plan to fall in line with the latest industry trend, giving it an 8 megapixel camera with xenon flash.

But the fun doesn't stop there. LG is alleged to also include face recognition, 720x480 video capture at 30 fps, Divx encoded video recording at a maximum 120 fps, video image stabilization, and a WVGA touchscreen!

Motorola and SE took jabs at Nokia's top-of-the-line smartphones by including, and even improving upon, some of Nokia's segment leading features in a dumbphone platform. Even though analysts predict smartphone growth to be even greater this year, Motorola and SE put together good dumbphone mass market items that pack a punch, and it should be attractive for those uninitiated with smartphones.

But LG is obviously looking to challenge Nokia's leadership position a little differently. Instead of being satisfied with just including certain hardware features usually reserved for high end smartphones, they're rumored to also have smartened up it's popular dumbphone platform. They supposedly will include a function to somewhat multitask, enabling the user to launch multiple applications, and send inactive apps to the background. The inactive apps won't continuously run in the background, so it's not a full smartphone, however.

I wonder if creating smarter dumbphone platforms will become a bigger trend? In my opinion, this is what Apple has done with the iPhone, and LG, as well, with it's KF750 series models. Even though smartphones are being adopted by users at a feverish pace, the uninitiated will be intimidated by some smartphone interfaces and features. Devices like these may bridge the gap until the average casual mobile users' sophistication and technical prowess improves enough for normal intuitive smartphone use, and will have a niche in the market for some time.

Nokia looks to have it's hands full for a couple years. The smartphone platform battle is enough, and already, a hardware war is brewing as well. Even a smartphone versus a smarter dumbphone battle may have begun. Something I've greatly overlooked is all these devices' threat to Symbian's S40 dumbphone platform. Where does this leave the S40? In danger? Or will it, again, become older and wiser? Nokia finally has somewhat worthy competition. How worthy will it's counterattack be, and exactly how long must we wait before it surfaces.