nokia posts

By Evan Niu, CFA
MotleyFool.com


Wow.

That's all I can say after Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN) announcements earlier today. We knew the e-tailer was set to unveil upgraded Kindle Fire tablets today, but we weren't exactly sure how many, or other pertinent details. Of all the major tech events this month hoping to steal attention from Apple's (Nasdaq: APPL) iPhone unveiling, this one is now the top contender.

"People don't want gadgets anymore. Check out our new gadgets!"

Jeff Bezos took the stage, and started off the presentation by pointing out how no one buys other Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android tablets, even though over two dozen were launched last year. He attributed this to the notion that consumers don't want gadgets anymore. No, instead they want services, ones that improve over time, in an unsubtle nod to Amazon Prime. "Kindle Fire is a service," he added.

In a sense, this aptly sums up competition among Android tablets over the past year in one succinct sentence. Other Android tablets had beefier specs, but less compelling content offerings. The first Kindle Fire was absolutely lackluster in just about every hardware spec imaginable, but was backed by Amazon's wide plethora of content services, and proceeded to outsell them by a large margin. That shows just how important the service component really is.

Coca-Cola has taken out the title of "Best Global Brand" for the 11th straight year, Interbrand's annual survey shows.

The world's largest beverage maker, which began production of its famous Coca-Cola soda in 1886, has dominated the consumer market in all reaches of the globe. And while technology companies, like No.2 ranked brand IBM, have been gaining ground in recent years, those brands still have some challenges ahead in order to topple Coca-Cola's strength, particularly in the developing world.

A key to Coca-Cola's success is its brand strategy, which revolves around the three P's: preference, pervasive penetration, and price-related value.

Apple's apps may be all the rage, but they've got some competition from mobile powerhouse Nokia.

The Finland-based cellular phone company has created its own application store, the Ovi Store, which launched in June in Canada. Currently the store sees 1.7 million downloads per day worldwide and has applications available in 30 different languages in 180 countries.

So, how do you create your own app the Finnish way? Nokia has created an application tutorial, called the Ovi App Wizard, which enables anyone to create a free or paid app without knowing anything about software programming.

The Ovi App Wizard takes seven steps, registration is free for anyone and user-created apps can be available in the Ovi Store within 24 hours.

According to tech blog GigaOM, the ease of creating an application comes from having original content that already exists on the creator's Twitter or Facebook accounts or their website RSS feed. This steady stream of information becomes the base for the application, and after uploading a link, logo and a few other basic bits of information, the app is complete.