Sales of Symbian phones do not reflect the popularity of the OS - not by a long shot.
In the US, the concept of "smartphones" is still in its infancy - or maybe it's a toddler by now. Just talk to the average cell phone user - not geeks like us, but your sister, your Mom or Dad; the person who sits next to you at your office. To most of them, cell phones (in the United States anyway) have always been, well, just cell phones. The ability to make and receive telephone calls anywhere is a tremendous convenience. But they are not actually computers, are they? "Well, yes, they can hold all of my contacts, and oh, that's true: I can now download and read my e-mail on my cell phone. And, OK, yes I CAN play some pretty neat games on it. But they are still not computers, right? I mean, a computer is a computer, but a cell phone is just a cell phone. Isn't it?"
Smartphones are what the wireless companies portray them as to their average customers; they are only as "smart" as the wireless companies allow people to perceive them to be.
Portable computers and cell phones are not even considered in the same family at all, by most US consumers. The majority of users of handheld devices in the US use Palm or Pocket PC devices. Smartphones have really just starting to catch on here. However the smartphone platforms that are catching on are MS Smartphone and Palm. Symbian devices are just starting to be “discovered” here. Symbian fans may not like hearing this, but there are some valid reasons why Symbian has yet to become a popular platform in the US.
Less than 10% of the phones offered by the US wireless companies that use GSM were Symbian phones, according to 2004 data. (Nothing later is available). Employees of those companies give me a totally blank stare when I ask them what devices they sell are running the Symbian OS. It's like I suddenly started speaking a foreign language to them! Why is this? How can Nokia NOT promote their Symbian OS devices to the US market? When I inquire about smartphones, every employee I spoke with could rattle off all of the features offered by Microsoft. But each and every one of them did not know that Nokia sold a smartphone! Even though they are authorized Nokia dealers! They would all explain the nice camera and all of the neat ringtones the phone could play. A search of the Cingular Wireless web site for the term "smartphone" that I performed while researching an article in late 2005 yielded the following result: "http://www.cingular.com/smartphone, a Motorola MPx 220 - a smartphone running microsoft's Windows Mobile OS and software". Yet they sell several Symbian OS smartphones! Neither Cingular nor Nokia see fit to promote the Nokia Symbian phones as "smart".
As for Symbian's sales volume in the US, they flooded the market here with "giveaways"; the phones that have been offered as "free" by Cingular and T-Mobile for the last two years, are usually not even supplied with a data cable - just a charger and a case. 20 to 30 million Symbian "smart" phones flooding the market in the last few years as free offerings to wireless users can certainly inflate the sales volume numbers in the marketing game. But it doesn't make it a more successful platform - not even close.
The biggest segment in the US - I'm not counting us geeks - is the business segment. But they are using almost exclusively Blackberry phones. How many business in the US are offering Symbian phones as the primary mobile device? But many are turning to MS Smartphones and PPC phones recently.
Of course by refusing to allow access to API's, Symbian is hampering its own market. While the Symbian platform is possibly the most stable OS purely for phone features, the extraordinary lack of robust 3rd party applications will continue to stifle the use of Symbian phones as smart mobile devices in the US marketplace. The main problem is that Nokia refuses to share any of their potential revenue with 3rd party software developers - they want it all! And as long as they continue like that, they will produce "smartphones" that are, well, not quite as smart as they would like to think!
(Parts of this post is paraphrased from an article I wrote for an online magazine in 2005).
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Jim McGowanCingular 8125, Axim X50v, X30, X3, X5,& Asus 716 (I test a lot!)
In the US, the concept of "smartphones" is still in its infancy - or maybe it's a toddler by now.
The development of the mobile phone market in the US has been hampered by the incompatible networks and lack of even nationwide roaming. In contrast Europe and most of the civilised world had chosen to adopt the GSM standard and hence gained enormous advantages in the choice of handsets, competition between networks and international roaming (though consumers are still shafted by the cost of roaming).
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Just talk to the average cell phone user - not geeks like us, but your sister, your Mom or Dad; ...
I think the same observation is true of most places, only the sophisticated users, the early adopters, the geeks, the technophiles would care about the underlying OS. Your everyday user wouldn't even know what an OS is.
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20 to 30 million Symbian "smart" phones flooding the market in the last few years as free offerings to wireless users can certainly inflate the sales volume numbers in the marketing game. But it doesn't make it a more successful platform - not even close.
MS has been playing that game for decades, with their MSDOS and Windows tax.
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Of course by refusing to allow access to API's, Symbian is hampering its own market.
Could you please elaborate? You mean the SDKs that Symbian provides are incomplete and like MS, Symbian (and by your assertion I take it you mean Nokia as they are the major shareholder) are withholding secret API calls that makes Symbian produced phones more powerful than non-Symbian produced phones - doesn't make sense to me, Symbian don't make phones.
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While the Symbian platform is possibly the most stable OS purely for phone features,
True
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the extraordinary lack of robust 3rd party applications will continue to stifle the use of Symbian phones as smart mobile devices in the US marketplace.
This is completely unscientific and most likely inaccurate (but at least it provides some figures - unlike your assertion), I had a look at handango's site, chose the Windows Mobile Smartphone (what an oxymoron!) category then chose Motorola MPx220 (as that was mentioned in your post) and result was "1799 software titles available for download". When I chose Symbian OS there was "6457 software titles available for download". <shrug>
I'm not even going to bother getting into a tit-for-tat "mine is bigger than yours" discussion with you (though mine IS bigger! :lol: :wink: ). OK - kidding there.
All that I will comment on is that having been involved in development of Symbian software, it is beyind any shadow of a doubt a dead-end career. There are reasons why there is no Pocket Informant or other power PIM for the Symbian platform. And it is definitely not that their native PIM is good enough, because it is far from adequate. Agendus tried, and their attempt is truly sad. Agendus for Palm is super - for Symbian it is about as weak a PIM as I have seen. There just is not anything to hook there - Nokia will not make it available. Papyrus is about as robust as will ever be seen for the Symbian platform, and that is never going to show a profit - especially since it is so limited by Series differentiation.
And yes - Symbian does make phones... Nokia = Symbian. Nokia founded the platform and still holds a majority - and controlling - share.
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Jim McGowanCingular 8125, Axim X50v, X30, X3, X5,& Asus 716 (I test a lot!)
This is completely unscientific and most likely inaccurate (but at least it provides some figures - unlike your assertion), I had a look at handango's site, chose the Windows Mobile Smartphone (what an oxymoron!) category then chose Motorola MPx220 (as that was mentioned in your post) and result was "1799 software titles available for download". When I chose Symbian OS there was "6457 software titles available for download". <shrug>
Windows Mobile phones come in two varieties: "Smartphones" and "Pocket PC Phones" (like my XV6600). For the latter, you would specify "Pocket PC" as the category on Handango. This yields a total of 13174 software titles available for download.
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Jeff NeelyXV6600 + 2GB MiniSDh4150 + 512MB SD
Windows Mobile phones come in two varieties: "Smartphones" and "Pocket PC Phones" (like my XV6600). For the latter, you would specify "Pocket PC" as the category on Handango. This yields a total of 13174 software titles available for download.
I was using the pendantic and uninformed comment that someone made earlier saying that Symbian phones are merely feature phones and not smartphones (whatever definitions anyone may attach to the two). That is why I specifically chose the WM smartphone category.
That aside, do you mean to say that all software for "WM PPC" would run on the "WM smartphone" platform? (this is not a rhetorical question )
It would be very interesting to see how many (both absolute and as a percentage) of those programs (for all platforms) that are really useful. By really useful I mean (broadly) that it does not include trivial stuff like "make the close button really close instead of hide" (yes it is useful but that's something that should be in the bloody OS) and stuff like "yet another bloody battery monitor". And I'm pretty sure that a lot of the apps are counted multiple times (appearing in different categories, different versions etc).
All that I will comment on is that having been involved in development of Symbian software, it is beyind any shadow of a doubt a dead-end career.
...
And yes - Symbian does make phones... Nokia = Symbian. Nokia founded the platform and still holds a majority - and controlling - share.
As an ex-Symbian developer (however briefly), I would have thought that you knew at least some basic history of the Symbian platform (and you would've known had you read some of the earlier posts). The Symbian platform was created by Psion (bless them) and is an evolution of their earlier Epoc platform (an incredibly stable, compact and powerful OS). The Symbian company began life with Psion as the largest shareholder with (can't remember) 3 or 4 phone makers each having an equal share of the rest. Psion then decided to pull out of Symbian to concentrate on their original core business of "industrial instruments" and sold their share to Nokia making them the largest shareholder.
As for Symbian (in your view, Nokia) withholding the APIs for the PIM stuff, logically, there is no reason for them to do so because they don't make any competing products (eg there is no Symbian-Outlook ). However (note I'm not a Symbian developer) I had a quick search and found this:
Quotes from it:
"This document explains how to utilize the calendar facilities on a Series 60 Platform device"
"For the developer, several different APIs are available for interaction with the agenda model. Combined, these APIs provide the full range of functionality required to use all of the model’s features."
Again, I'm not a Symbian developer so I've no idea whether the documented APIs are enough for your needs. Do you have any links which deal with the subject of "Symbian with holding APIs"? googling for "symbian withholding api" shows nothing interesting. NB links to your blog don't count (although they may make interesting reading) - we want some unbiased 3rd party's info here .
...Again, I'm not a Symbian developer so I've no idea whether the documented APIs are enough for your needs. Do you have any links which deal with the subject of "Symbian with holding APIs"? googling for "symbian withholding api" shows nothing interesting. NB links to your blog don't count (although they may make interesting reading) - we want some unbiased 3rd party's info here .
To start, here are some links on this subject from Miake Raento's Blog. Mike is a professor at the University of Helsinki, and a Symbian software developer:
And here is a news article from Feb 2004 regarding Nokia's ownership of Symbian. This was when Nokia purchased Psion's last ownership shares, giving them 63.3% ownership of Symbian. The other "minority owners" balked loudly and later that year, in July 2004, Nokia agreed to give up 13.5% in order to maintain a "just-under-50%" share. But maybe that really doesn't count as a majority in that part of the world. It sure does where I am.
Oh, BTW, Siemens is giving up their share in Symbian, and And Panasonic and BenQ will shortly be giving up their shares also as they move into Linux (Panasonic) and Windows Mobile development (BenQ). So the remaining shareholders are now scrambling, as Nokia stands to possibly gain even more.
This is a quote from this article at technewsworld.com: "The Symbian operating system lacks the programming tools and development environment needed so third parties can write applications."
I could go on...
...but I won't. This is getting silly. Go play with your Symbian device, and I'll go enjoy my WM device.
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Jim McGowanCingular 8125, Axim X50v, X30, X3, X5,& Asus 716 (I test a lot!)
I was using the pendantic and uninformed comment that someone made earlier saying that Symbian phones are merely feature phones and not smartphones (whatever definitions anyone may attach to the two).
To start, here are some links on this subject from Miake Raento's Blog. Mike is a professor at the University of Helsinki, and a Symbian software developer:
Interesting, however I've done my research and the kind of apps that I would be running are available on the Symbian platform. And for heavy lifting I've got my Zaurus.
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... But maybe that really doesn't count as a majority in that part of the world. It sure does where I am.
Not sure why you're bringing this up. I have said on the outset that Nokia does have the majority share of Symbian, and because of this I have already surmised (and stated so) that when you say Symbian you are implying Nokia. However just because Nokia "owns" Symbian, again: Symbian does not make phones. Saying Symbian makes phones is like saying Saab (owned by GM) makes Cadillacs.
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This is a quote from this article at technewsworld.com: "The Symbian operating system lacks the programming tools and development environment needed so third parties can write applications."
That statement is absurd BS, so where do the Symbian 3rd party apps come from? Someone's back orifice? Insufficiently good tools (use whatever standard you want) does not imply no tools.
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...but I won't. This is getting silly. Go play with your Symbian device,
Haven't actually got one yet, but will most likely be getting a Nokia N93 soon.
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