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'Nokia Point and Find' to arrive in India by 2011
By siliconindia
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Helsinki (Finland): Imagine that you spot a killer ad of a product that you instantly wish to buy. But you don't know where to go and are clueless about product specifics. With a Nokia smartphone, you can change this situation.
You can do this by pointing your smartphone camera towards the product and clicking. Within seconds, you'll have every product detail - its price, the nearest retail outlet, its location and distance from where you are standing.
No science fiction this is. It'll soon be a reality when Nokia commercially launches its latest service, 'Nokia Point and Find,' across Europe and the U.S. in the first quarter of 2010 and in India the following year. This particular service will enable people on the move to access all relevant information and services on the Net by simply pointing their cellphone camera at real life objects. But this is just one of the so-called 'mixed reality' applications that Nokia is developing at its research centre in Tampere, Finland. And India will be a priority market where such applications will be rolled out.
"Mixed reality is all about combining digital information with physical location. This is one of the most important future focus areas for Nokia as it will enable the development of the next generation of devices and services," Nokia Research Center Tampere Director, Jyri Huopaniemi said on the sidelines of 'The Way We Live Next 3.0 conference' at Nokia's worldwide headquarters near Helsinki.
"What we intend doing is using the various sensors in the handsets, like its microphone, camera, GPS, accelerometer, light sensors, etc, to bring more targeted and personalized services and information to the user. Currently, several such applications are under development at Tampere. In fact, we also plan to tap our global R&D network and even the Bangalore facility will play a critical role," added Huopaniemi.
A trial is already running in San Francisco which will enable real-time flow of traffic data collected from all handsets using GPS. This will provide a person the latest traffic data. Nokia is also working with UK's Cambridge University on cognitive user interface for mobile phones.
As per the business model, Nokia plans to create an eco-system for such applications which will be built on the open source model. "We are much more an open company now. If in 2000 there was 15 percent outside influence on research, it's nearly 50 percent now. In fact, within Nokia, there has been a 30-40 percent shift in competency base towards developing such software competency," said Henri Tirri, Global Head of Nokia Research Center.