Unfortunately, this week had none of the previous week's excitements (earnings, Flagship store, etc). Nokia's stock opened the week at a somewhat disappointing $19.74, only to close Thursday at $19.46. Sadly, the more recent developments for the #1 handset maker did little to boost the share price.

Monday brought about 2 new cell phones from the likes of Motorola: the KRZR and the RIZR. The KRZR is a high-end flip phone aimed at customers who felt that their RAZR was just a tad too big. Like the RAZR, the KRZR will be available in GSM and CDMA versions. Meanwhile, the RIZR is a thin slider phone with a 2 megapixel camera. Basically a sliding version of the SLVR. Motorola also announced updated versions for their ever-popular RAZR and SLVR. My take? Motorola should release a new paper-thin phone called KRZY.

Texas Instruments, the largest manufacturer of chips available in many cell phones (Nokia is their biggest customer), also reported a great 2nd quarter riding on the heels of the cell phone manufacturers. Of course, Nokia and Motorola both expect mobile phone demand to grow 15% in the next year.

After some exhausting research that consisted of me reading one article, I found that Vertu's best seller is the Ascent, pink leather edition. Cost? A cool $5,700. Vertu is Nokia's high-end luxury division, with gleaming 24 carat, gem-encrusted cell phones that are less functional than my old Nokia 6800.

Anyway, back to the news. Nokia began public trials of its UMA (unlicensed mobile access) technology using the 6136 handset. UMA, as you may remember, allows a cell phone to operate not only under GSM, but also through WLAN, w-fi, voice over IP style. The transition from GSM to WLAN and vice versa is supposed to be seamless, and 50 lucky families in Oulu, Finalnd get to try it out. Damn it! Depending on the success of the trial, UMA technology could provide one of the biggest breakthroughs in cell phone technollogy since Crazy Frog.

And speaking of Crazy Frog, you can purchase "his" music CD titled "Crazy Frog Presents Crazy Hits" from numerous retailers. What is this world coming to?

Tune in next week for another edition of the Nokia Week in Review.

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