HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finnish internet company Sulake, the operator of Habbo Hotel teen networking sites, hopes to reignite its stalled growth by launching a long-awaited iPhone app next month and inviting external developers to its site.

Habbo Hotel was one of the front-runners of the social networking boom, and its use of avatars instead of profile pictures gained a strong teenage following after its launch ten years ago.

But its strict monitoring policy, while reassuring parents, has turned off many teenagers who prefer the freedom of sites like Facebook (FB.O: Quote, Profile, Research).

Its layout, reminiscent of classic videogames, hasn’t helped growth either, and the number of monthly active users has been unchanged at around 8 million for the last five years.

U.S. research firm Business Insider last year valued the company at $300 million, compared with the $1.25 billion valuation it gave the firm three years earlier.

Sulake Chief Executive Paul LaFontaine said an iPhone app was due within a month, and a version for Google’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) Android would follow.

LaFontaine, who joined the company last year, also said Habbo’s first game d eveloped by an external gaming firm was due to be launched by British studio Remode in July.

HELSINKI, May 16 (Reuters) – Global sales of mobile phones fell 2 percent in January-March after ten straight quarters of growth, as Chinese buyers held back in anticipation of new models and economic uncertainties weighed on developed markets, research firm Gartner said.

The data, published on Wednesday, confirmed South Korea’s Samsung became the world’s largest cellphone maker in the quarter, ending Finnish group Nokia’s 14-year reign after years of losing ground, particularly in smartphones.

“The economic environment is challenging in Western Europe and North America,” Gartner analyst Anshul Gupta said.

Handset sales in China, the largest single cellphone market, dropped more than 6 percent from a year ago as consumers waited for new, more advanced models coming to the market this quarter or next, he said.

Gupta said Nokia was hurt the most by the slowdown in demand. Its overall market share shrank to 19.8 percent from 25.1 percent a year ago, while its smartphone share dropped to just 9 percent in the quarter.

“Most of the losses of Nokia in smartphones are picked up by Samsung and Apple,” Gupta said.

Samsung saw its market share rise to 20.7 percent, while Apple – No. 3 in global cellphone sales volumes – saw its share more than double to 7.9 percent.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia patched up its ailing basic phones offering on Tuesday with two models offering access to games, applications and the Internet, hoping to regain its footing in emerging markets.

After precipitously losing its position in the smartphone market to Apple’s iPhone and models running Google’s Android software, Nokia has also been losing its shine in the basic phone market, which had been a reliable generator of profits.

Nokia’s basic phone sales fell 16 percent in the first three months of 2012, and have fallen in four of the last five quarters, while rivals like China’s ZTE and Huawei have been growing fast.

China’s largest search engine Baidu Inc is also planning to enter the cellphone market with a cheap smartphone.

The new Nokia 110 model will be sold for 35 euros ($45) and will start shipping in the second quarter, while the 112 model will be sold for 38 euros from the third quarter, with both using Nokia’s Series 40 software, the Finnish phone maker said.

Nokia said new models would come with a license to download 40 games by Electronic Arts and offer Internet access with the a new browser built upon its 2010 acquisition of U.S. firm Novarra.

“These products are critical for Nokia to maintain traction in the face of mounting competition from Samsung and the Chinese rivals,” said Geoff Blaber, analyst at CCS Insight.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Google’s Android smartphone software stretched its market lead in early 2012, helped by new models from handset makers like Samsung and HTC and piling the pressure on rivals like Research In Motion and Nokia.

Research from Kantar WorldPanel on Tuesday showed Android gaining share strongly in most of seven major markets – Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United States – in the 12 weeks to mid April.

In Spain and Italy, its market share more than doubled year-on-year to 72 percent and 49 percent respectively, while it almost doubled to 62 percent in Germany.

Strong demand for the iPhone 4S helped market No.2 Apple narrow the gap with Android in the United States and Britain, but its share slipped in continental Europe.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone began to show some signs of growth thanks to Nokia’s decision to swap its legacy Symbian platform for Windows.

Windows’ share in Germany more than doubled to 6 percent over the past year, and climbed to 3-4 percent in Britain, France, Italy and the United States.

These gains came at the expense of Nokia’s Symbian platform and Canadian BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, the biggest market share losers. RIM’s share in the U.S. market dropped to just 3 percent from 9 percent a year earlier.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Desperate for cash to tide it over until sales ramp up of new products, Nokia Oyj NOKIV.HE is stepping up its quest for royalties from rivals using its designs as the basis of their technology.

Nokia already earns 500 million euros ($647 million) a year from its patent royalties in key areas of mobile telephony and some analysts say a more determined application of its patent rights could boost its income by hundreds more millions of euros a year. Alternatively, a sale could generate billions of euros.

Either way, at a time when its future is being threatened by falling sales and a loss of market share, Nokia’s patents have emerged as the struggling company’s most valuable and stable assets. Their full exploitation could be crucial for its longer-term survival.

“They should be doing this. The only questions is: why did they wait so long?” said Alexander Poltorak, chief executive of patent consultancy General Patent Corp.

Nokia has already served warning to newcomers in the mobile industry with whom it doesn’t yet have licensing agreements, saying it aimed to boost its royalty revenue. Last week it took action against two makers of devices based on Google Inc’s (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) Android software.

Nokia sued HTC (2498.TW: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and ViewSonic for infringing its mobile technology and software patents, and others using Android are likely to be among the next targeted. Analysts say it’s likely soon to go after top Chinese and Indian vendors, as well as Kindle-maker Amazon.Com Inc (AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

“I would expect its next targets to include ZTE 000063.SZ, Huawei HWT.UL and Micromax,” said analyst Tero Kuittinen at Finnish mobile firm Alekstra.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Angry Birds maker Rovio Entertainment said sales jumped tenfold to $100 million last year as gamers flocked to download its titles, adding business was now strong enough for a stock market listing.

The Finnish startup making Angry Birds games — in which players use a slingshot to attack pigs who steal the birds’ eggs — has been valued by analysts at up to $9 billion, just short of that of struggling world No.2 phonemaker Nokia.

Rovio said on Monday its finances were good enough for a listing after revealing a highly profitable 2011 in its first public disclosure of business results and forecast a bumper year ahead.

Rovio, originally founded in 2003, became a global phenomenon after it launched Angry Birds for Apple’s iPhone in late 2009.

Since then it has remained at top of the gaming charts with more than 800 million downloads and it had 200 million monthly users at the end of 2011, just short of U.S.-based Zynga’s 240 million.

“Rovio has fended off all rivals so far,” said analyst Tero Kuittinen from Finnish mobile firm Alekstra. “Rovio is still the king of the mountain, despite stiff recent challenges by OMGPOP and Disney’s ‘Where’s My Water?’”

Rovio plans to launch several more titles in 2012, which include a non-Angry Birds title, Chief Executive Mikael Hed told Reuters in an interview.

HELSINKI, May 7 (Reuters) – Rovio Entertainment, creator of Angry Birds games, said its finances were good enough for a listing after revealing a strongly profitable 2011 in its first public disclosure of business results.

The company forecast a strong year ahead, and said it was now preparing for an offering by ensuring it meets corporate governance requirements.

“This company is preparing itself and getting ready,” Anders Lindeberg, Rovio’s head of investor relations, told Reuters.

Rovio reported 2011 sales of 75.4 million euros ($99 million) and profit before taxes of 48 million. The company did not provide historic data, but has said 2010 revenues were around $10 million. It also reported a 64 percent profit margin for the year.

Rovio, originally founded in 2003, has been valued at up to $9 billion just over two years since it launched its first hit, Angry Birds for Apple’s iPhone.

Since then the games – in which players use a slingshot to attack pigs who steal the birds’ eggs – have been downloaded more than 800 million times and had 200 million monthly users are end-2011, just short of Zynga’s 240 million.

Rovio plans to launch several more titles in 2012, which include also a non-Angry Birds title, Chief Executive Mikael Hed said.

LONDON/HELSINKI, May 3 (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics unveiled a new top-of-the-range Galaxy smartphone in London on Thursday, updating the most direct rival to Apple’s iPhone with a larger touch screen and more powerful processor.

The South Korean technology group, which overtook Finnish company Nokia as the world’s biggest cellphone maker earlier this year, said the new Galaxy SIII model would go on sale in some markets in late May and around the world from June.

Last week, Samsung reported a record $5.2 billion quarterly profit, boosted by Galaxy smartphone range whose sales outstripped the iPhone.

Samsung sold around 45 million smartphones in the first quarter and contributed most of its operating profit.

The new Galaxy SIII model will have a 4.8 inch touch screen, 8 megapixel camera and will use the latest version of Google’s Android software.

Analysts said the expected massive marketing campaign and features of the handset – billed as the official smartphone of the London 2012 Olympics – were likely enough to generate strong sales, but the launch left many of them unexcited.

“It is not an eye-catching device that will overwhelm consumers,” said IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo.

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Nokia’s chairman-designate Risto Siilasmaa defended its turnaround strategy on Thursday before meeting shareholders who are losing patience with the company’s efforts to catch up in the smartphone market.

Nokia lost out to Apple Inc and Google Inc in the first wave of smartphone business and is now pinning hopes of a turnaround on Lumia, a new range which uses Microsoft software.

“I am confident that Nokia has the right team, right strategy and now increasingly also the right products on the market to get us through this transition period,” Siilasmaa told reporters as he headed into the meeting.

Sales of Nokia’s new smartphone range have so far been slow and are yet to compensate for diving sales of previous products. Nokia also lost its position as the largest volume cellphone maker to Samsung Electronics last quarter.

Investors have seen the value of their Nokia holding fall 90 percent in less than five years — two-thirds of that since its new chief executive Stephen Elop unveiled the company’s strategy shift to Microsoft in February 2011.

“The situation of Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks is close to catastrophic,” shareholder Pekka Jaakkola told the meeting in Helsinki. “Nokia is fighting against time.”

Siilasmaa’s predecessor Jorma Ollila also promised a range of new products in an interview published on Thursday, amid growing doubts the company had the right products to compete with rivals such as Apple Inc.

HELSINKI, May 2 (Reuters) – Wounded cellphone maker Nokia has turned on one of its former allies in the patent protection battlefield by filing lawsuits against rival smartphone maker HTC as it steps up its efforts to raise funds.

Nokia filed several lawsuits covering 45 hardware and software patents, ranging from power management to data encryption technologies in Germany against HTC, Canadian counterpart Research In Motion and tablet-maker ViewSonic.

In the United States it filed against HTC and ViewSonic, including a complaint to U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against HTC.

The moves follow Nokia’s comments last month that it will seek to raise more revenues from its patent portfolio.

It is also a departure from its alliance with HTC when it had for years fought alongside the Taiwanese company in patent battles against German patent firm IPCom.

Nokia’s announcement comes on the same day a court in Germany ruled that Microsoft had infringed Motorola Mobility’s patents ordering the world’s largest software maker to remove its popular Xbox 360 gaming consoles and Windows 7 operating system software from the German market.

Last week, ratings agencies Fitch and Standard & Poor’s cut Nokia’s credit rating to “junk” status, as the company battles falling sales as well as doubts over its product strategy.