Nokia Research Center

Based in Bangalore, the NRC India team focuses on emerging market services for both urban and rural India. Collaborating with the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore and the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge USA the aim of NRC India is to explore user-centric technologies to generate new business opportunities for Nokia in India and other emerging markets. User experience professionals and technologists, most of them Indian, form a multidisciplinary core team with a strong emphasis on ‘Indianness.’ The laboratory has nomadic characteristics and uses the whole of India as a stage for research.

Research Focus: New User Interface

Beijing offers an ideal location for NRC to take advantage of China's fast growing economy and the world's largest mobile market. NRC Beijing works with Tsinghua University to explore the key research topics of context computing architectures, context data modeling and management, and mobile social networks.

Research Focus Areas: Rich Context Modeling, New User Interface

Learn more about the Beijing NRC Lab: English / 中文

Located two blocks west of the UC Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California, NRC Berkeley opened in 2009. The founding of this location is inspired by both the city and university reputations of being forward-thinking and innovative, and yet maintaining a steady eye on the societal impacts of progress. The mission of NRC Berkeley is to explore holistic power management approaches to mobile devices with the goal of making dramatic leaps forward in battery life to benefit everyone from people in the world’s growth economies to those in the heart of the developed industrial world. Future directions will include developing approaches to large-scale services that span across the cloud and device, as well as those that can operate in constrained environments, such as those where data connectivity and device capabilities are limited.

Research Focus Areas: High Performance Mobile Platforms

Located about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of London, the NRC Cambridge UK laboratory is located on the campus of the University of Cambridge. Collaborating deeply with the university, NRC Cambridge UK develops nanotechnologies for mobile communication and ambient intelligence. Studying physical, chemical and biological phenomena and manipulation of matter at the nanoscale enables generation of knowledge for enhancing human capabilities.

Research Focus Areas: High Performance Mobile Platform

Located just outside of Boston, Massachusetts, NRC Cambridge USA is a cross-disciplinary research organization working closely with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). NRC Cambridge endeavors to bring new ideas into Nokia products ranging from rich content-based services to user interfaces.

Research Focus Areas: Rich Context Modeling, New User Interface

Located about two kilometers west of central Helsinki in the Rouholahti quarter, NRC Helsinki is just a few minutes from Nokia worldwide headquarters in the neighboring city of Espoo, Finland. Working in conjunction with the Helsinki University of Technology (TKK), which is also the location of the Nokia Research Lablet at Otaniemi, NRC Helsinki projects are pushing forward the fields of user experience, mobile security, power management and computing architectures, as well as intelligent context-aware radio or “cognitive radio.”

Research Focus Areas: New User Interface, High Performance Mobile Platform, Cognitive Radio

Local/Regional Activities: Helsinki Laboratory extends the NRC Call for Proposal to the end of August

Located in the greater Los Angeles, California, USA, NRC Hollywood is positioned centrally in the media industry. Working with members of the media & entertainment industry including new technology companies and creative talent, together with leading universities in the region, including the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, the laboratory will drive research activities in context aware social media, mixed reality experiences, user interaction models, and the convergence of the Internet and mobility.

Research Focus Areas:
New User Interface

NRC Lausanne is one of Nokia's newest research facilities. It is located on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland and is chartered with collaborating with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and ETH Zürich to explore the field of pervasive sensing and computing.

Research Focus Areas: Rich Context Modeling

Local/Regional Activities: Lausanne launches 2009 Students Call for Proposals

Based in Nairobi, Kenya, NRC Africa focuses on understanding the unique needs of the African mobile phone user and creates concepts and visions to fulfill these needs. NRC Africa is working with groups such as UNECA, Plan International, Slum Code, Makerere University (Uganda), University of Nairobi (Kenya), University of Cape Town (South Africa) to solve the unique African language, cultural, educational and infrastructure challenges that can all be improved through mobile technologies.

Research Focus:
New User Interface

NRC Otaniemi is located in the heart of the campus of Aalto University School of Science and Technology in the city of Espoo, Finland. The Otaniemi facility neighbors the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and is located only 3 km from Nokia’s worldwide headquarters. Collaborating deeply with the Aalto University and VTT, NRC Otaniemi focuses on the research of new radio technologies, such as Cognitive radio.

Research Focus Areas:
Cognitive Radio

Located in northern California, Palo Alto is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from San Francisco and 35 kilometers (20 miles) from San Jose, in the heart of the Silicon Valley. Collaborating deeply with both Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley (“Cal”) the work of NRC Palo Alto consists of mobile Internet services systems, mobile business solutions, context-specific content, visual computing and ubiquitous imaging and other user experience enhancing technologies.

Research Focus Areas:
Rich Context Modeling, New User Interface

Located about 175 kilometers north of Helsinki, Tampere is the third largest city in Finland and NRC Tampere is located about ten kilometers from the city center. Collaborating with the Tampere University of Technology, NRC Tampere is chartered with exploring the areas of sensing and context, media representation, social media, user experience, mixed reality solutions and 3D platforms.

Learn more about the Tampere NRC Lab

Research Focus Areas:
Rich Context Modeling, New User Interface, High Performance Mobile Platform

Local/Regional Activities:
Tampere Laboratory extends the NRC Call for Proposal to the end of August