LG EXTENDS FORMULA 1™ REACH TO VIRGIN RACING Tweet

SEOUL: LG Electronics (LG), a global leader and technology innovator in consumer electronics, has extended its reach within Formula One™ to include the Virgin Racing team.

In addition to LG being a Global Partner and a Technological Partner of Formula 1™ since the start of the 2009 season, the electronics company is now an official supplier to Virgin Racing, as well as Lotus Racing and engine manufacturer Cosworth.

LG adds Virgin Racing to its support programme through the supply of products at track and at the team’s factory. Virgin Racing entered the FIA Formula One World Championship™ this season as one of three new teams, bringing one of the world’s best known multi-service brands to the sport.

Graeme Lowdon, CEO of Virgin Racing, commented: “We are delighted to have teamed up with LG. Not only do they have an incredible range of products in their portfolio, but they are pioneers of cutting edge technology, making Virgin Racing a perfect partner for them. Virgin Racing is already utilising LG products, not only at Grands Prix but back at our factory in Dinnington as well, making this a fully integrated partnership and one which we hope will continue for many years to come.”

This latest move by LG continues its interest in supporting the smaller, younger teams as they find their feet at the pinnacle of motorsport.

Andrew Barrett, VP Global Sponsorship for LG Electronics, added: “We are delighted to announce this new partnership. Virgin Racing represents a strong brand in Formula 1 and at LG we are happy to support the team’s efforts in its first year of competing at the very top of motorsport. Virgin Racing is working hard to harness the highest level of performance, which is why LG is keen to help, true to our belief that Life’s Good through technology.”

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Motorola Introduces Unique, Cost-Effective Single RAN Solution for WiMAX Evolution Tweet

Solution enables WiMAX 802.16e network’s co-existence with and migration to 802.16e Enhanced, 802.16m and LTE.

WIMAX FORUM GLOBAL CONGRESS – AMSTERDAM – The Networks business of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) introduced its WiMAX Evolution solution for operators to upgrade existing WiMAX 802.16e / 802.16e Enhanced networks to 802.16m or TD-LTE or to add LTE to their existing WiMAX networks. Customized for rapidly spreading 4G networks, Motorola’s enhanced WiMAX offering is based on a single RAN (Radio Access Network) solution that supports existing technology and provides operators with a cost-effective way to upgrade their network offerings, preserving capital and protecting investments.

“As consumer demand for mobile data continues its explosive growth, WiMAX operators around the world are facing 10GB to 30GB average subscriber data usage per month,” said Fred Gabbard, vice president of product management, Motorola Networks. “Motorola is working closely with these operators to plan capacity for the next five years. Our WiMAX Evolution – Single RAN solution allows operators to migrate to WiMAX 802.16m or LTE, thus reducing cost and offering the best path for 4G growth.”

Motorola’s WiMAX Evolution – Single RAN solution makes operators’ 4G choice easy by reusing most of a base station for various migration scenarios and reusing of up to 100 percent of other major network components such as IP/MPLS core, backhaul and device management. Motorola WiMAX access points are easily upgradable to 802.16m (WiMAX 2), TD-LTE, FDD LTE or LTE-Advanced, meeting the needs of and providing significant cost benefits to all operators.

No matter where they are in the 4G deployment or expansion phase, Motorola’s WiMAX Evolution – Single RAN solution enables operators to safely increase network capacity, allowing them to offer services with more data usage per month at a lower price compared to other existing technologies which can give them a competitive advantage. For subscribers, this means up to four times higher data rates, two to four times more monthly data usage at lower rates, and when the operator migrates to a newer technology, there will be no impact on their services.

Benefits of the WiMAX Evolution – Single RAN solution include:

· Equipment reuse: leverages tower top RF heads and antenna as well as existing ancillary cabling

· Cost avoidance: requires no expensive crane lifts or tower climbs to implement

· Capital savings: preserves antenna tower or other site mount costs, site development costs, site acquisition costs, costly battery backup, concrete base, existing electrical and existing backhaul

Motorola’s WiMAX Evolution – Single RAN solution is available in existing field proven commercial and reliable products such as the Motorola WiMAX WAP 450 and WAP 650 access points. Motorola’s 40+ WiMAX networks around the world are expanding at a rapid pace, and the hardware solution for Motorola’s 27 LTE engagements worldwide is based on this same WiMAX solution.

For more information about Motorola’s WiMAX solutions, please visit www.motorola.com/wimax.

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AMATEUR CHEFS GET COOKING FOR LG LIFE TASTES GOOD CHAMPIONSHIP 2010 Tweet

SEOUL – LG Electronics (LG) once again kicks-off the LG Life Tastes Good Championship, its popular international cooking contest now in its third year. With preliminary rounds taking place in Korea and France on June 3, the championship featured about 50 amateur chefs from 21 countries competing to create the perfect dish using LG cooking appliances. The global event will conclude in Korea on September 29 with 25 teams participating for the world title.

LG Life Tastes Good Championship this year will bring together more than 20,000 contestants in national, regional and global “cook-offs”. In the months leading up to the global final, countries across North America, South America, Europe, CIS and Asia will hold their own national and regional competitions.

In Korea, the first of two preliminary rounds took place on a restaurant on the banks of the Han River. Under the watchful eye of expert judges – including Korea’s “Home Cooking Majesty” Hae-jung Lee – 10 Korean “blogger-chefs” showed off their culinary skills in a tight competition with Youngmi Park and Youngjun Lee, taking the crown.

In France, another preliminary round took place on the same day at the famous Atelier Guy Martin in Paris. Working closely with LG, the Federation Francaise de Cuisine Amateur (French Amateur Cooking Committee) selected Caroline Boutoille as the French representative chef from more than 2,000 participants.

“Food is such an important part of almost every culture,” said Dan Koh, Vice President of LG’s Home Appliance Company. “With Life Tastes Good Championship, LG is celebrating the diversity of food and cultures with help from our popular appliances.”

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LG TO SUPPORT DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS’ CAMPAIGN TO FIGHT MALNUTRITION Tweet

NEW YORK – LG Electronics (LG) announced its sponsorship of “Starved for Attention,” a new campaign by Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to raise awareness for and fight childhood malnutrition, a crisis affecting 195 million children worldwide. The LG Home Entertainment Company will contribute $500,000 toward the campaign and MSF’s treatment programs along with dozens of its flagship INFINIA televisions for use in multimedia exhibits as part of the campaign.

“LG’s support for MSF’s Starved for Attention campaign reflects our shared goal of helping people across cultural and geographic borders and underscores LG’s belief that no child should have to suffer from malnutrition,” said Simon Kang, president and CEO of LG Home Entertainment Company.

Dr. Matthew Spitzer, President of MSF in the United States added, “LG’s sponsorship of the Starved for Attention campaign is an important contribution to our medical teams’ efforts to respond to this crisis and provides us with the latest technology to speak out about this unacceptable situation that requires a sustained response.” In 2009, MSF treated 250,000 malnourished children in 34 countries.

The campaign will feature a series of multimedia documentaries, spotlighting the childhood malnutrition crisis, in “Starved for Attention” exhibitions across the world. The documentaries, produced by MSF in conjunction with VII Photo, will be displayed at the exhibitions using LG INFINIA televisions as canvases. The first exhibition will launch at the New York Times Center in New York City on June 2, followed by Milan, Toronto and other venues (for a complete list, please visit www.starvedforattention.org).

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Nokia Eseries… 10 things you need to know Tweet

LONDON, England - The Nokia Eseries is all about business. These are not mere phones, folks, they are the nerve centres of corporate communications. They are offices away from the office. They track the pulse of the Stock Exchange and the current of commerce. And ermm… they need to be good at making phone calls, too. Business devices are all about messaging, flexible communications and reliability. We’ve picked out 10 of the Eseries’ myriad talents we think you should know about.

Twiddling Thumbs Eseries is all about business communications. When you’re trying to prepare an RFP for the MD ASAP, what you want is QWERTY. All bar three of the Eseries range come with full keyboards to make flexing your thumbs to create email on the move fast and accurate.

Frequent Fliers High-powered business users need bands – and not the sort that come with a drum-kit and guitars. The Eseries has got it covered, with a minimum of tri-band and most likely quad-band communications: so you can go ahead and collect your air miles without worrying that you might ever be out of touch.

Mail Man Eseries devices run Nokia Messaging, which will give you access to all the POP and IMAP you can throw at it. It’s also happy to talk using Mobile VPN, Nokia Intellisync Mobile, Mail for Exchange and Lotus Notes Traveler, enabling you to connect to corporate, or personal, email swiftly and securely.

Management Speak Roaming Eseries users often have to hold meetings while they’re on the move and stay in touch with multiple members of the team. Eseries devices support conference calling across the range, plus group distribution of text messages. As you’d expect, they also handle call waiting, call divert and call hold without breaking a sweat.

Battery Powered The last thing you need when you’re closing the deal is a power cut. Eseries devices are built to last. The Nokia E5, for example, boasts a whopping 18h 30m of talktime – that’s more talktime than you get standby time on a lesser phone. Talking of standby, you get 705 hours on the E5. We’ve owned pets that didn’t last that long.

Safe as Houses Eseries takes security seriously. Set up the Remote Lock feature, available on most recent Eseries devices, and – if it’s lost – you can simply send your device a message to stop prying eyes unearthing your business secrets. You can take it even further, too, by setting up encrypted memory cards or using mobile VPN.

Full Capacity The latest Eseries devices might be slim enough to slide inside a suit pocket, but that doesn’t mean they can’t pack plenty of storage. The Nokia E5 will take MicroSD cards up to 32GB. Enough for you to carry more PowerPoint than your competitors. Keep the chairman’s video address to investors next to your heart. Or your complete MP3 collection.

Office to Go There’s no point having a mobile office, if you can’t look at office docs on the move. Eseries has you covered here, with QuickOffice on board enabling you to open and edit Word, PowerPoint and Excel docs and there’s Microsoft Mobile Office in the pipeline.

Out of Hours Business users are people too, sometimes. Your phone should let you relax at the end of a busy day, so you need a decent digital still and video camera, a music player and radio. The Nokia E71 is a good example of mixing business with pleasure: as well as all the corporate features above, you’ve got a 3.2 megapixel camera with LED flash and autofocus, a VGA video camera, support for six different digital music formats and an FM Radio.

E is for… You might be thinking Enterprise or Executive, and they are certainly useful memory aids for remembering what this series is all about. But no.. Nokia won’t be drawn on what the letters stand for in its model naming conventions: E just stands for E in this case.

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How would you use a dual SIM phone? (Poll results) Tweet

GLOBAL - Dual SIM phones have been a hot topic here on Conversations. You welcomed the announcement of the Nokia C2 with wide-open arms, but how would you put the two-timing phone to use? Our comments section was awash with your opinions on the announcement, and over 800 of you voted in last week’s poll. Join us after the jump to find out how most people would use a dual SIM phone.

The most popular reason people want a dual SIM phone is to use one SIM for work and one for personal use. Over 36 per cent of you voted that you’d use the phone for this purpose. With the Nokia C2, in particular, it’s easy to switch between SIMs. as they’ll both work simultaneously. Take a call from a nagging partner and appease your boss at exactly the same time. It’s multitasking made easy.

A close second comes in the shape of using both SIMs on different networks and contracts. A number of you commented on this when we announced the C2 and in the topic section on the site. Is it due to operators offering different tariffs for various points in the day? Or to make calls to contacts on the same network?

Third-up is using one SIM card abroad and one for home. For me, personally, this would be the main draw for a dual SIM phone. Being a mobile worker, I’m often abroad at an event or product launch, but I still need to be at the end of the phone. Having the option to switch one SIM card that’s dedicated to the country I’m travelling to would be a great addition – for me, and my poor bank manager.

Taking fourth place with 11 per cent of the vote is the option to use one SIM for browsing and one for basic phone functions. Again, this comes down to the networks. You may have a family member on a particulate operator, but another offers unlimited data. With a dual SIM phone you can have your browser and use it.

Ten per cent of you said that the main use of a dual SIM phone would be to save pocket space by carrying one phone instead of two; making it the fifth in our results. It’d be interesting to find out what each function the two phones you carried had? Was one for work and one for personal? Two on different networks? Let us know in the comments below.

Moving on to the bottom end of the results; scraping the bottom – with a mere 0.5 per cent of the vote – was having one phone for numerous family members. Interestingly, I believe, these poll results could change dramatically dependent on region. Here on Conversations a large number of our readers are from the developed world. In developing countries – where phones are a necessity but aren’t as easy to come by – the results maybe completely different.

As ever, the other option makes for some interesting reading. Two per cent of you voted for the other option and a couple had their own uses for a dual SIM phone. Namely, one of our reader’s comment was: one SIM for my wife and the second for my affair, and another would use a dual SIM phone to live happily in both real life and his/her fake life. There are always some, as they say.

What’s clear to see is that the introduction of a dual SIM phone for Nokia in the shape of the Nokia C2 has certainly created a buzz. But, what next? Where would you like to see the dual SIM functionality? Is there a perfect phone that you think should have space to nuzzle two cards?

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Nokia lowers Devices & Services second quarter 2010 outlook and updates the full year 2010 outlook Tweet

Espoo, Finland - Nokia commented on factors impacting its business and updated its second quarter and full year 2010 outlook for Devices & Services. During the second quarter 2010, multiple factors are negatively impacting Nokia's business to a greater extent than previously expected. These factors include: the competitive environment, particularly at the high-end of the market, and shifts in product mix towards somewhat lower gross margin products. In addition, the recent depreciation of the Euro affects Nokia's cost of goods sold, operating expenses and global pricing tactics.

Updated outlook for Devices & Services for the second quarter 2010:
- Nokia now expects Devices & Services net sales to be at the lower end of, or slightly below, its previously expected range of EUR 6.7 billion to EUR 7.2 billion for the second quarter 2010. This update is primarily due to lower than previously expected average selling prices and mobile device volumes.
- Nokia now expects Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin to be at the lower end of, or slightly below, its previously expected range of 9% to 12% for the second quarter 2010. This update is primarily due to a lower than previously expected gross margin.

Updated outlook for Devices & Services and mobile device market for the full year 2010:
- Nokia continues to expect industry mobile device volumes to be up approximately 10% in 2010, compared to 2009 (based on its revised definition of the industry mobile device market applicable beginning in 2010).
- Nokia continues to target its mobile device volume market share to be flat in 2010, compared to 2009.
- Nokia now expects its mobile device value market share to be slightly lower in 2010, compared to 2009. This update is primarily due to the competitive situation at the high-end of the market and shifts in product mix. This is an update to our previous target to increase our mobile device value market share slightly in 2010, compared to 2009.
- Nokia continues to target non-IFRS operating expenses in Devices & Services of approximately EUR 5.7 billion in 2010.
- Nokia now expects Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin to be at the lower end of, or below, its previously targeted range of 11% to 13% for the full year 2010. This update is primarily due to the currently estimated gross margin, which is lower than previously estimated. Nokia expects Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin during the fourth quarter 2010 to be higher than the currently expected full year Devices & Services non-IFRS operating margin.

Nokia will provide its second quarter results and more details on its 2010 full year outlook when it reports its Q2 2010 results on July 22, 2010.

Nokia will be hosting a conference call at 13:30 UK time (8:30 EST). The dial-in number for media (listen only - the question and answer session will be limited to financial analysts and investors only) is +1 706 634 5012. Conference ID: 82113811.

The dial-in number for financial analysts and investors is US: +1 888 636 1561. Conference ID: 82113811. UK: +44 1452 560 299. Conference ID: 82236648.

A replay of the call will be available soon after the call completion. The replay number is US: +1 800 642 1687. Conference ID: 82113811. UK: +44 1452 55 0000. Conference ID: 82236648.

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