Are you likely to create a phone using the Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm anytime soon?
I cannot comment on that one. All I can say is that Qualcomm definitely is a potential partner going forward. The companies did fight a long time in court, and now we see them as a potential partner.
You've been acquisitive in recent years. Will you stand pat for now?
We will continue to acquire some when we need new skills and capabilities in certain markets. But I would say the major building blocks are in place.
What will happen with Palm?
Overall if you look at the mobile devices industry, and the size and complexity of it, in the past it has been difficult for a smaller company to have a sustainable position … and the amounts you need to invest are big. In addition to innovation and quality, you need scale.
Is Nokia interested in acquiring Palm?
I cannot speculate.
How is "Comes With Music" working out?
It's fair to say it had a slow start in 2008. It has been gaining speed and traction, and now we have made that global. We just launched it in Russia, and the response has been extremely good. It's quite important to understand the local element.
Making "Comes With Music" happen in Russia means you have to have the local content. This is especially true in India. It takes a lot of time and effort to go country by country to get access to that content. In India, for example, we spoke to 130 rights holders to get an adequate amount of music on board, and there are not many companies I think that can make that kind of effort.
Symbian has a reputation of being difficult to develop for, which in turn makes it less attractive to developers. Have you tried to address that?
What we have done is build a development framework on top of Symbian which allows you to develop on many platforms at the same time. … This has gotten a lot of traction.
Hesseldahl is a reporter for Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
