A popular video on YouTube shows a so-called concept phone that can bend to fit a user’s wrist. The phone, the Nokia Morph, shows how the world’s largest mobile phone maker wants to change.

As more public use mobile devices for the Net, and companies like Apple and Google find more ways to embrace that move, Nokia is rewriting its product development rule book. Instead of working in secrecy, it wants to start sharing.

“For Nokia, that is probably the biggest throw of the dice since they entered the cell phone business,” said Ben Wood, research director at CCS Insight, who has followed the company since 1994.

In addition to using video-sharing sites to post futuristic ideas — like the Nokia Morph concept, which imagines a stretchable, flexible, solar-powered, self-cleaning device which plus has a sense of smell — the company has invited bloggers and tech-savvy media specialists to brainstorm on future mobile products.

“We realized in early 2005 that whether

we only focused on innovation from within, we were limiting our scope for real breakthroughs,” said Nokia’s chief technology officer, Bob Iannucci. “We want more wild ideas.”

At stake is a share of the next phase of growth in the World Wide Web. Forrester Research expects the number of mobile Net users to triple by the next five years in Western Europe alone, to 125 million, while Nokia expects its double-digit margins on handsets to shrink.

To produce its move into World Wide Web services, Nokia plans to use its large base of customers as consultants.

The market for World Wide Web services is approaching euro 100 billion, or $156 billion, and Nokia is the first big cell phone manufacturer to embrace the Web media business. Close rivals like Samsung and Sony Ericsson could follow, but they are a couple of years behind.

Change is normal for Nokia. It was founded in 1865…

Orginal post by Top Tech News