Since its establishment in 1998, Nokia Research Center Beijing (NRC Beijing) has been an organic part of Nokia’s global research network. The lab has provided a great platform inspiring our devoted and passionate researchers for innovations that improves quality of people’s lives.
The following is a short list of NRC Beijing’s accomplishments:
• NRC Beijing built the world first nation-wide IPv6 research network in CERNET (1999 – 2002) and became the well-known IPv6 research leader in China.
• Pioneer of multinational companies in setting up Postdoctoral Program in China, in 2004 by attracting the top notch Chinese scholars
• Key contributor to the industry’s first HSUPA demo in the world.
• Work closely with our colleagues in Finland on the research and development of Voice UI technologies. 1999, Nokia’s first speaker-dependent name dialing came to market on the Nokia 8850.
• In year 2003, the speaker-independent name dialing was first launched on the Nokia 6600 in China.
• All the Asian language packages such as Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Thai, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, etc. were developed by NRC Beijing team.
• Our latest breakthrough technology was on continuous speech recognition for Nokia phones in 2008 provides a more convenient solution for text input in mobile devices.
• Active participation in Chinese national high-tech programs like 863 and 973, together with our research partners, as well as European Union projects like SpeeCon, LC-STAR, TC-STAR, EMIME, etc.
Research breakthroughs on visual interaction since 1998:
• Crucial OCR (optical character recognition) applications such as a business card reader, shoot-to-translate language translation and a mobile document scanner.
• Continuous handwriting recognition and human face detection and tracking have achieved world-class recognition accuracy and fantastic recognition speed.
Achievements in Education:
• In 2005-2006, NRC Beijing and Nokia Venture Organization (NVO) co-developed and productized MobileEdu, a mobile learning solution.
• NRC Beijing and Beijing Normal University co-authored and published a book on mobile learning, which was the first one in the mobile learning arena in China.
• Nokia and Tsinghua University established a joint Research Facility, aiming at long-term co-creation of cutting-edge technologies.
• Nokia and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications established a joint Research Facility, aiming at driving the technology development in the Asia market and even the global markets through long-term co-research projects
Open Innovation:
• NRC Beijing is committed to open innovation through joint research facility, joint research projects, university donation, internship program, post-doc program, Campus knowledge sharing program, etc.
• We have established extensive cooperation with over 20 key universities and research institutions in Asia, including Tsinghua University, Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications, Chinese University of Science and Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhejiang University, Beijing University of Aeronautics & Astronautics, University of Electronic Science & Technology of China, etc. The joint research cover areas like user interface technologies, user experiences, rich context modeling, mobile sensor network, mobile and internet services, hardware research, IPv6, radio and network technologies etc.
• In the past 5 years, NRC Beijing’s knowledge sharing program in over 40 local universities has trained over 100,000 students, built a huge developer pool for mobile software platform: Symbian & Linux Maemo, produced high quality R&D talents for the mobile industry.
Social Achievements:
• During the Beijing Olympics 2008, NRC Beijing has created new and modified existing solutions enabling exciting and easy to use service system for Nokia’s VIP guests for the Olympics. The VIP service packages included innovations from NRC such as Menu Reader and Sports Tracker, together with tailored solutions such as Share on Ovi, Nokia Maps 2.0 and WeatherBug.
All of these remarkable achievements could not have happened without the hard work of the NRC Beijing team. People are our key asset. Our staff has a good track record of academic excellence. They are devoted, eager to learn and growing fast.
NRC Beijing is an integral part of NRC global research network. We firmly believe that the effective execution of “local relevance, global excellence” is an important factor leading to our success in China. NRC Beijing leverages the heritage and best practices of Nokia research network globally.
Nokia Research Center Beijing Future
NRC Beijing drives long-term research and the development of breakthrough technologies in key areas that are critical to the future success of Nokia. In particular, NRC Beijing, which includes teams located in Nairobi, Africa and Bangalore, India, drives research of cutting-edge technologies aimed at accelerating market growth in these rapidly expanding markets.
The mobile handset market is booming, especially in China and India, where the majority of the next billion mobile users are expected to originate. The rich variety of cultures in these regions will be strong influences in shaping the next generation of the mobile Internet and the surrounding ecosystem. As the only lab with the mission to serve growth markets, NRC Beijing will play an integral role in translating the dreams and aspirations of local users into reality.
NRC Beijing focuses on the areas of New User Interface and Rich Context Modeling. Future user interfaces will be more intelligent, context-aware, and need to integrate the personalization and adaptive aspects of the device with the data sharing enabled by powerful back-end infrastructure. The end result is a more engaging and satisfying user experience.
Rich Context Modeling is a central research area for Nokia. In the context of the mobile Internet, context goes well beyond people and places. It is the intersection between people, their surroundings, location, time, presence, device, and social communities, as well as their psychological and social environment. These factors and their analyses form the backbone for a new class of services in areas like weather, traffic, wellness, and entertainment, and enable a vast array of new business models as well. Our key research topics include context computing architectures, context data modeling and management, and mobile social networks. These are characterized by the use of a wide range of sensor information, and associated data aggregation and dissemination middleware, to construct a coherent model that provides adaptive context-aware solutions that ultimately empower and enrich the lives of end users.
"Nokia established its Beijing mobile phone manufacturing facility in Beijing in 1995. With more than 8,000 people working there, the factory is one of the largest manufacturing bases for Nokia in the world.
Scale – one of the world’s largest and most eco-friendly mobile phone industrial chains
The Nokia Beijing factory and its 20 supply chain partners are located in the Xing Wang Industrial Park, Beijing Economic and Technology Development Zone.
Xiangwang Industrial Park is also where the Nokia China headquarters are located in.
The Xing Wang Industrial Park is one of the world’s largest mobile phone industry chains, combining Nokia’s manufacturing, R&D, logistics, distribution, marketing and sales, services, and management functions – all within a one kilometer area.
The establishment of the Xing Wang Industrial Park has allowed Nokia to significantly improve efficiency within its communication and operations, and save on shipping and transportation costs. In addition, the Xing Wang Industrial Park allows Nokia to slash its CO2 transport emissions and decrease the use of packaging materials.