Symbian To Be Market Leader Until 2010

[Mike Temporale]

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040426005546&newsLang=en

"Despite inroads by Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS, which has demonstrated success with Motorola among other handset vendors recently, ABI Research believes that Symbian will continue to lead the market for cell phone standardized operating systems. In a market that is still driven by proprietary OS, on the order of 98% this year, Symbian, Microsoft and Linux are fighting over a small portion of the total handset market. But 2% of handsets shipped - essentially all handsets defined as "Smartphones" -- still amount to about 10 million handsets a year. And ABI Research predicts that Smartphones and connected PDAs will represent nearly a quarter of all handsets shipped by 2009."

I remember reading a report that said OS will overtake Windows by such and such a time. Or that Palm will remain the dominate PDA platform. And here we go again... ABI Research is claiming they can see the future and even with the inroads made by Microsoft over the last year, the market will be dominated by Symbian for another 6 years. :roll:

[Mike Temporale]

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040426005546&newsLang=en

"Despite inroads by Microsoft's Windows Mobile OS, which has demonstrated success with Motorola among other handset vendors recently, ABI Research believes that Symbian will continue to lead the market for cell phone standardized operating systems. In a market that is still driven by proprietary OS, on the order of 98% this year, Symbian, Microsoft and Linux are fighting over a small portion of the total handset market. But 2% of handsets shipped - essentially all handsets defined as "Smartphones" -- still amount to about 10 million handsets a year. And ABI Research predicts that Smartphones and connected PDAs will represent nearly a quarter of all handsets shipped by 2009."

I remember reading a report that said OS will overtake Windows by such and such a time. Or that Palm will remain the dominate PDA platform. And here we go again... ABI Research is claiming they can see the future and even with the inroads made by Microsoft over the last year, the market will be dominated by Symbian for another 6 years. :roll:

[TANKERx]

I dare say that if Palm had maintained its R&D and continued to push the envelope, it may well have remained as the market leader. As far as OS/2 is concerned, I suspect that had Microsoft acted ethically and legally, OS/2 may have nearly caught up and that the market would have been split not only between Windows and OS/2 but also BeOS and maybe even Linspire (previously known as 'LinDash', but that sounds too much like 'Lindows' so it had to change).

Anyway, with Symbian being an innovative company that is always pushing new ground, and Microsoft not able to use bullyboy tactics (yet), it will take time for Microsoft to catch up. Heck, it looks like Microsoft may actually have to play this game fairly!

The inroads made by Microsoft have only been made among geeks and some enerprise users and hard as it may be for Microsoft to accept this, out there in the mundane world of rainy days and cans of budget cola, geeks and enterprise users are in a minority.

As a technology user, I'm more concerned about quality than I am about market share - but anyway, isn't this the kind of news that's supposed to keep Microsoft innovating?

[Jason Dunn]

2010? A lot can change in six years, but it's quite likely that it will take that long. Let's not forget that Symbian is every bit as much of a monopoly in the mobile phone space as Microsoft is in the desktop space, and I'd say they're even more ruthless in terms of keeping Microsoft out of this space. It's a long-term, pitched battle with two very powerful combatants.

[possmann]

6 years eh?

Pretty impressive statement given the amout of growth MS ahs had in just about - what - 1 year's time? I don't know about the claim, but it is a tough market and Symbian does have their claws in tight - MS is going to have to work for it...

BTW - how is ABI at predicting lottery numbers? :lol:

[TANKERx]

Maybe Symbian should sue Microsoft because, after all, "Windows Mobile" does bear an auditory resemblance to "Symbian" :lol: :wink:

[Kevin Daly]

What frightens me is the thought that serious business decisions are made on the basis of predictions like this: do companies actually dispose of large sums of money based on some organisation's tea-leaf reading?
Is that why the stock market is a refuge for hysterics and fools?

I think I will now go and sit in a corner and be glum. :cry:

[NYC567user]

I don't think the fault here has to do with the Smartphone OS, as much as the underlying basic phone software such as radio, SMS, and the ability to work over long periods of time with our current battery limitations.

I love Smartphones, but on the corporate world Smartphones are not even making a dent. This is due to their faulty radio (GSM/GPRS/etc..) and battery life.

If microsoft concetrated on making these basic phone issues a priority instead of the OS looking pretty it would have faster adoption rate.

Yes they are making marketing campaigns for developers to create applications....but the radio still has issues..and battery life still has issues...this applies to most smartphones today.

Symbian has managed to stay on top, the same way Palm stayed on top in the early days...they concetrated on the basic functionalty of their devices.
However, Palm did fall asleep on their laurels and slowly lost market share to MS..... ;-)

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by NYC567user

I love Smartphones, but on the corporate world Smartphones are not even making a dent. This is due to their faulty radio (GSM/GPRS/etc..) and battery life.

No arguments on battery life (though I think they're similar to other Smartphones), but a "faulty" radio? That's a pretty serious issue - can you provide more information on that?

[NYC567user]

That's easy...

Take for example the AT&T smartphone, or the E200 Orange....
Many of these devices were created on abundant GSM cell tower areas such as Europe.......however, here in the US GSM is not as abundant (yet)...thus radio is not tested on fringe areas

By fringe.... I mean areas where regular phones work with few bars..such as some building basements....or even some elevators....or outside of city areas...

....examples are..

If you do a lengthy GPRS connection..and then drop the call...many times they GPRS radio will not reflect GPRS reception till you do a on/off of the device. Its as if it cannot tell there was a GPRS drop and cannot do a reset..

If you go underground/plane/tunnel for a lengthy period of time....once you come above ground...randomly the GPRS will not pickup the signal...till you do an on/off....

To be fair I've manged to carry a few devices to measure the air wave reception...the simplest is carrying a Nokia or ericsson phone, or a blackberry... this is how some of these issues were discovered...

We can get into details and what radio software versions...and to tell you the truth blackberry is sometimes buggy as well...but at least their reception in fringe areas is better...

I find CDMA to be more consistent...but we've all seen their wireless data prices that many corps fail to buy in....

MS can say, that is the fault of the carrier or the company that develops the phone hardware....but people do not look at phones like PCs...

If you make the phone..then own it as a unit..not just the OS....
I think that is what so far has made the symbian sucessful....they made the reception work (eventually)....they did have problems early in their days as well...

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by NYC567user

If you do a lengthy GPRS connection..and then drop the call...many times they GPRS radio will not reflect GPRS reception till you do a on/off of the device. Its as if it cannot tell there was a GPRS drop and cannot do a reset..

Interesting - thanks for the info. I've seen some of those same problems myself, but I didn't know they were related to the radio. I thought it was just a random glitch, but I've never used other GPRS-enabled devices (other than a T68i) so I didn't have much to compare it to.