Right, so insead of smartphones you want a PDA with cellphone capabilities then.
It wouldve been a lot easier for both of us if you would have just said so from the start.
Why are you thinking that these are different things...? We are not talking mutually exclusive featuresets here.
A smartphone is a converged device, with both PDA and telephony capabilities...
Try syncing a 9300 or a 9500 with a Mac. Ain't happening.
As a quick aside, does anyone else think Lotus Notes is devilware? I shudder to think about it now.
No but you clearly dissed the NGage as something claimed to be a smartphone, yet by the definition of the vast majority of people there and certainly Microsofts definition of what a smartphone is the NGage IS a smartphone with moderate capabilities.
Its a capable phone that can run a lot of third party apps(some of which have been requested by MS smartphone users for years and are still not available likeAvantgo) and which by definition is a Smartphone.
I would be interested to know how many P900/P910s or Nokia 9500/9700s they sold - that would be a reasonable comparison against WM and POS devices. I'm bettting the number is substantially lower. Anyone got the numbers?
No, but you are exactly right. Saying Nokia sold 6M phones is a meaningless number when talking about smartphones. The vast majority are the freebies or sub $50 phones after rebates, not the high powered phones with bluetooth, cameras, email support, the ability to install third party apps, a non-WAP-only browser, etc.
No they are not, Nokia in Europe ships around 2 million cellphones per quarter, around half those ship with series 60 or higher, series 60 is a FULL SMARTPHONE OS.
Its a cluttered mess compared with PPCs and a small mess compared to win mobile smartphones but it still is a full smartphone OS.
Uhhh, I don't think that many people here know how many cell phones are shipped. In Q1 2005 alone, Nokia alone shipped well over 50M cell phones, nearly all (95%+) being Series 40 or greater.
And that wasn't even a good quarter for them...
While S40 might not sound like any big shakes around here, what do you actually think is killing Palm sales? PPC? Don't make me laugh...
PalmOS was successful because it was cheap, portable, could do PIM well, and could do a few other things decently, like play games.
S40 devices (and other phones at that level) can do all that "good enough" while also being more portable, a cell phone, and free after contract.
If S40 can put a big hurt on PalmOS, you'd be very unwise to think that S60 couldn't do the same to WM. Q1 2005, Nokia sold about 5.5M S60+ phones, and is on target to sell 4X as many S60 phones this year compared to all WM devices put together sold this year.
However that's small peanuts compared to Nokia's real plans. Because they control both the OS & hardware production, their plan is to force the cost of production down to the point where a S60 phone can be given away for free with contract. At that point (less than 3 years down the road), all the cell phones they make would be S60+.
That would be, at that time, roughly 250M some S60+ cell phones sold by Nokia per year. (That's not counting all the others selling Symbian phones.)
(Moto/Samsung/HP/Dell/etc don't have even close to that same kind of incentive to push WM.)
Despite that huge number, many analysts still feel that Symbian will end up in 2nd place to Linux, because of the huge number of Chinese companies that are looking to flood the market with Linux phones.
I think everyone is missing my point. These are first and foremost mobile telephones. Not PDAs. Not "smartphones". The vast majority of those 250 million "smartphones" will not be used as such, because they are not designed to be...no SIPs, numeric keyboard only etc etc etc please read my prior posts.
And free-with-contract devices are not, what I as a "power user" am remotely interested in, nor would I wager, are the vast majority of this site's readers and the million Treo users, or the XDA/Jam/hw6xxx users.
I bought an XDA. I bought a P900. I bought a Treo. My colleagues use Nokia 9500/9700s, or the Jam. These are all smartphones in my book. My mate's little Nokia, while a nice phone is not a smartphone.
I would say that there is a significant and growing number of business and power users who want more than what Nokia's slightly kinky design department churns out in the millions. Their corporate survival is based on selling as many phones to service providers as possible, in bulk. They have little to no interest in providing a device to end-users. This is where we as customers will suffer, because the service providers as we have already seen will insist that the phones are locked, bound and otherwise restricted to their networks and related services - that means restricted multimedia, limited third party software and who knows? These things are all revenue streams for the providers. It's good business.
And going back to POS, this is why I was originally saying that the move to a Linux kernel is good news...as long as they bring their third-party app developers along with them and stay PDA-centric. Because if they try and produce plain-jane phones the market, and the likes of Nokia for the very reasons that you have given, will murder them.
Get a diff browser. You can do this on xiino w/o having to reload fyi... Like I said, typical post around here...
I agree with you that most tasks on Windows Mobile can also be done on Palm. However, to do more advanced tasks on Palm you often have to jump through more hoops and its less convenient than on Windows Mobile because of the way the OS was structured for simple tasks (which I agree it is better at). More often you'll have to buy 3rd party software or possible have fewer options (e.g. streaming wifi files)
Quote:
Originally Posted by twalk
Because they control both the OS & hardware production, their plan is to force the cost of production down to the point where a S60 phone can be given away for free with contract. At that point (less than 3 years down the road), all the cell phones they make would be S60+.
Well actually most series 60 that are a year or older are free after 1yr contract. The new 3230 might even be free with contract, it was meant to be low cost. I think one of the problems with s60 is that its very slow to update the OS, because it has to go throught the carriers. S60 doesn't have as many applications as WM, syncing isn't very good. Also non-nokia s60 phones usually just aren't very good (my x800 looks good at least), and nokia doesn't offer a wide variety of form factors for s60. On the other hand, with windows mobile, many devices never reach many carriers and reach market quickly, but at high prices (imate ijam/whatever the rebranded versions are called).
Quote:
Originally Posted by palm guy, forgot his name
In addtion PalmSource has its Feature phone product to compete with the likes of Nokia's Series 40 etc which btw will be a HUGE market, much larger than high end smartphones.
That is the death of Palm as it is today, because its not even close to the full power of palm or its original purpose. And why would people buy those phones when they come out (1 year or 2 down the line), when Nokia (and almost all other phone manufacturers) have been doing the same thing for years?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jereboam
This is where we as customers will suffer, because the service providers as we have already seen will insist that the phones are locked, bound and otherwise restricted to their networks and related services - that means restricted multimedia, limited third party software and who knows? These things are all revenue streams for the providers. It's good business.
Actually, you've pointed out a problem that is (currently) larger for windows mobile/palm than for S60. To my knowledge, there's never been multimedia/third-party software locks on a series 60 phone, I expect the capabilities exist though (nokia does block using IR/BT to send certain files, like midi but many other channels exist, most phones don't even accept OBEX file transfers). However, it is not different for WM, there are several WM Smartphones (depends on carrier) with application locks. Palm has bluetooth locks on the Treo 650 for Sprint i believe, but its hacked i think.
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StyleTap Inc.
Disclaimer: StyleTap Inc. and StyleTap™ software are not affiliated with, or authorized, endorsed or licensed in any way by PalmSource Inc., palmOne Inc. or any of their affiliates or subsidiaries. Palm OS is a registered trademark of PalmSource Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Mobile and the Windows logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
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