I took a morning flight into Amsterdam for Nokia World. The event’s big but not huge. I overheard someone mention there are about 3,000 registered attendees.

CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo opened. “Mobility and the interenet – these are the two key drivers in our industry.”

– Approximately 41% of the world’s population will own a mobile phone; almost a third will use it to access the Internet. Almost half made their first call from a mobile, in other words they never heard the dialtone.

– “We’re committed to bringing the Internet to the next billion people”. An increasing number of people access the internet for the first time on the phone.

– Nokia has had to change its estimate for when 3 BN mobile users will be reached from 2008 to 2007.

– He predicts 4BN will be reached in 2010. Half of the new growth will be from China & India.

– 850M people use nokia devices today. He claims they have the potential to connect more people to the Internet than any ther company.

– They estimate a total of 970 million mobile phones will be sold next year.

– Nokia’s WiMax handsets will come in 2008.

– He claims “Nokia is an experiences company.” They’re the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players.

* Nokia Music Recommenders (powered by LoudEye). He makes it sound like it’s about top-down recommendations by David Bowie?
* Mobile TV to come to European countries in 6 months
* Catalog: buy software
* NFC: make payments
* Connect to Flickr (Flickr WidSets widget on the screen)

– Video insert where the CEO of a Hong Kong operator says mobile penetration there is 126%!

– Experience driven services. Services are about more than just technology.

– “Nokia is creating the world’s best platform for devices and solutions.” He also claims: “S60 developers can deliver applications without compromise.” That’s complete bollocks. Nokia recently started requiring developers to submit their applications for approval before the developers can legally distribute their own software. Imagine if Bill Gates had said no one is allowed to distribute Windows software before Microsoft has checked and approved the app. Would there ever have been the kind of Windows ecosystem we have now?

– He ends, “the internet on mobile devices will continue changing people’s lives all over the world. Nokia plans to be right there.”