Look, it’s Wal-Mart were talking about here. Land of “Always Low Prices, Always.. Something tells me that we shouldn’t make judgements on the success of a device merely on this retailer’s pricing strategy. It could simply be that Wal-Mart wants to sell more phone. Let’s also consider the competitive landscape.

With the absolute glut of Android phones out there, there are quite a few devices on the market at that “free” price point. Wal-Mart has many of these devices because they fit into the demographic of their consumers: budget-conscious. The Lumia 710 is a great midrange phone, and is similar in functionality to those free devices.

Also look at Best Buy and T-Mobile: both still sell the device for $49.99 with a two-year contract. While Wal-Mart’s decision may accelerate their plans to discount the phone, they certainly are in no rush to join Wal-Mart in the race to the bottom. Nokia has only offered that these phones are selling “well”, so we really have no clue how things are going.

So take a breath, and let the market judge whether Nokia’s gamble was a smart one.

The N9 is an anomaly among smartphones based on new software. Unlike, say, the Palm Pre with WebOS or the Blackberry Playbook with QNX, the N9 isn’t supposed to be the start of something big. It’s actually the end of something small–an experimental device built on abandoned software. Earlier this year, Nokia committed to focusing on Windows Phones, phasing out Symbian and casting aside MeeGo as “an opportunity to learn.”

Accordingly, the N9 has hardly any apps. It comes with nine programs, including Twitter, Facebook and Angry Birds, and it can gain more if Symbian developers do some simple porting, but it won’t have a thriving ecosystem like iOS, Android or Windows Phone. The motivation for developers just isn’t there. For that reason, you might expect the N9 to get laughed at and cast aside.

And yet, there’s excitement in some corners of the web for Nokia’s N9. A few months ago, readers flamed me over at Techland for suggesting that this phone is doomed from the start. At TechCrunch, commenters are calling the N9 one of the coolest phones they’ve ever seen. Same goes in the comments section at Engadget.

The excitement isn’t without merit. The N9 promises easy navigation through finger swipes, letting you get back to the home screen or to other apps without using a clunky physical button. And it sports a classy design of unibody polycarbonate and curved glass. I haven’t held one of these phones myself, but I’d certainly like to.

That’s the funny thing about the N9. It’s desirable despite offering hardly any apps, going against the conventional wisdom that apps are everything. With nothing to lose, Nokia ended up releasing one of its coolest-looking phones ever. Considering MeeGo has no future with Nokia, that’s kind of a shame.

The use of the system for interrogation in Bahrain illustrates how Western-produced surveillance technology sold to one authoritarian government became an investigative tool of choice to gather information about political dissidents — and silence them.

Here’s a very Apple-style video showing it off:

It’s always a bad idea to form any firm conclusions about a gizmo based on a video demo, but…it looks pretty good! But with Nokia’s plans to emphasize Windows Phone 7 moving forward, it’s less of a sign of things to come and more of a freeze frame of an era that ended before it began.

So Apple is suing Samsung, accusing it of imitating Apple products with its Galaxy phones and tablets. The most startling thing about the news may be that the two companies weren’t already in court with each other. Over the past few years, the mobile industry has been so rife with suits and countersuits that if every complainant managed to sue every subject of its ire out of business…well, there’d hardly be a mobile industry left.

I had trouble remembering the precise details of the umpteen cases that have made headlines–as well as some related relationships, such as Microsoft’s licensing agreements with Amazon and HTC–so I decided to document them with a handy-dandy infographic, as much for my own edification as anyone else’s.

A few notes:

• This covers only patent-related suits, not ones solely over trademarks, employee poaching, and other issues.
• It only address mobile-related tussles (which is why LG’s attempt to prevent Sony from importing the PlayStation 3 into the US isn’t listed).
• It only involves great big companies, not smaller ones who are doing some of the suing.
• I’ve identified software and hardware companies that work together on devices (such as Microsoft and Samsung) but haven’t tried to indicate OEM and component relationships.
• I’ve also shown some licensing relationships I know about, but there are probably others.
• Any cases which I’ve forgotten about or didn’t know about in the first place aren’t here.

With that out of the way…

If you’ve got any corrections, additions, or thoughts about any of this, lemme know. I may update the graphic as future events warrant…although the mere thought of even more mobile legal spats cropping up is depressing me…

Bloomberg had also reported that Google was set to offer its own NFC solution, aiming to test the technology in New York City and San Francisco later this year through a partnership with Verifone. Rumors of NFC in the iPhone have persisted as well, although there has been conflicting reports over the last week or two on whether it would make it to the “iPhone 5.”

It is not clear which payment vendor Microsoft would partner up with in order to make NFC a reality, although Bloomberg surmises its partnership with Nokia could help the company bring it to the market. Nokia has been one of the leaders in the technology, and various types of mobile payment solutions have been a reality in Scandinavia for many years now.

Nokia has pledged to make NFC a standard feature on any Symbian-based smartphone it releases this year. With the company planning to transition some models to Windows Phone, it’s not out of the question to expect the technology in those devices as well.

Normally, I try to avoid writing open letters to anyone–they’re a pretty stale journalistic convention. But the two of you used an open letter to confirm that Nokia and Microsoft have agreed to a strategic partnership that will make Windows Phone the software foundation of Nokia’s smartphone strategy. So another open letter feels like an appropriate way to respond.

So here’s my initial advice, which, as with all open letters, I’m sure you’ve been eagerly awaiting…

Don’t apologize. Lots of people–such as this guy–think your partnership is destined to fail. Some compare it to famous lackluster partnerships of the past, such as commenter here who brings up Sears and Kmart. I’m not predicting success…but I also think it’s hasty to dismiss your game plan. Windows Phone isn’t a stinker–it’s a promising and distinctive mobile operating system, albeit one that needs more work. And Nokia still makes some of the nicest phone hardware in the business. I haven’t seen anyone propose an alternative strategy that sounds more logical. You’re making an intelligent gamble given the situation at hand.

Finish Windows Phone 7. I like it, but it’s like the first versions of the iPhone OS and Android–it’s at least two major upgrades away from being done. And unlike its competitors which showed up earlier, it faces daunting competition from extremely well-established, high-quality players. It needs a lot more than cut and paste: For instance, its browser is still uncompetitive. And it has to get a lot better really quickly.

Build something that feels like it came from one company. Nearly all of the best phones ever made–from early BlackBerrys and Treos to the iPhone–were produced by a company that designed its own hardware and wrote its own software. You won’t have that advantage, but you can do your darndest to compensate by working fanatically to create something so seamless that it feels like it’s the work of one team. These shouldn’t be more Windows Phone handsets that happen to come from Nokia, or Nokia phones that happen to run Windows Phone–they need to be unique.

Re-enter the US. Nokia has an extraordinarily low profile in this country–quite a change from the good old days of a decade or more again when it was nearly synonymous with “good cell phone.” It’s possible to be a very large phone company without competing stateside, but it’s harder–and it’s particularly hard to grab mindshare. The moment you’ve built a really great handset, bring it here and promote the heck out of it.

Be humble. Very, very humble. Hubris is in the DNA of both of your companies–some of it seeped into your letter. (“There are other mobile ecosystems. We will disrupt them.”) That’s okay, but if I were you guys, I’d try to reduce expectations, not raise them. I haven’t seen any commentator say that your deal is a game-changer of historic proportions–Robert Scoble is excited but guardedly so–so it doesn’t need to be change the world overnight to be judged as a success. Unless you promise everyone that it will be disruptive.

That’s it for now. Good luck, and I promise–this is the last open letter I’ll write to you.

Regards,

–Harry