Nokia has brush with toothbrush business

THREE SENIOR chaps from the telecoms sector had their chance of glory at the Etre conference here in Barcelona, today.

The panel included Nokia CTO Tero Ojanpera; John Meyer, president of Lucent Alcatel; and Francois Barrault of BT. Chief inquisitor was Alex Vieux again.

BT, said Barrault is glad it doesn't have a mobile phone company any more, because many mobile operators want to go fixed.

Lucent Alcatel has 26,000 engineers and is experimenting with the services business, said Meyer - it has just conducted an experiment in New York City where your shopping list comes up when you get to the supermarket using location services. Meyer said his firm had realised that hardware was getting commoditised, and the software and servers would be the differentiator.

Lucent Alcatel may become a Chinese company. The Chinese government cares about hiring people, he said, so he's not too worried about his business being eaten by Chinese competitors. It has a JV in Shanghai which is 50 per cent owned by the People's Republic of China.

But Tero Ojanpero, chief technology officer of Nokia, had an interesting take on what's going to happen in the next few years. He said that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft will be part of the mobile scheme, but beyond the basic services are others like navigation and maps.

Plus, Ojanpera said, the 8800 stainless steel phone is a fashion statement. He's just come back from India, which is adding 5.9 million subscribers a month. "This is something we need to pay attention to," he said.

But the finest moment of the roundtable was certainly Tero's off the cuff remark. Four billion people in the world use toothbrushes and "we're heading for the same thing with mobile phones".

Does he mean a mobile phone with an electric toothbrush attachment? If not, why not add a razor too, seeing as battery life is getting so much better.