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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Mobius 2007 Amsterdam: Day Two
Here's my fairly short day two report from Mobius, as is typical in these situations, because I wasn't able to finish and publish this on the day it happened, it's taken me a few days to travel home, get settled, and try to catch up on everything that piled up - including this article. I hope you find it interesting, even if it's a few days late.
Rafe Blanford from All About Symbian.com kicked off day two by discussing Symbian � Blanford is, as you can guess by his Web site URL, a Symbian enthusiast. He stressed that he was not speaking for Symbian in any way; rather as an enthusiast he was simply giving his opinion about the current and future state of Symbian. Symbian OS is the base platform on top of which a UI (UIQ, MOAP, etc.) is placed. Symbian OS is like Windows CE with the Windows Mobile UI on top. Symbian OS 9.5 is the latest release, with a focus on demand paging (applications typically using 33% less RAM and running 25% faster) and reducing the time to market for handset manufacturers. Support for ARM Cortex A-8 was added, and SMP (multiple cores) was also added. In 2007, Symbian opened a development office in China � obviously to position their OS properly for the exploding Chinese mobile market.
Figure 1: Rafe Blanford, a fine chap.
Marketshare numbers are where you see the strength of Symbian on a world-wide scale: Blanford said there's roughly 70% marketshare world-wide, with a much stronger presence in Europe. The UK and Italy, for instance, tend to be dominated by Symbian phones, whereas the US is a mix of RIM, Windows Mobile, and Symbian devices. Interestingly, Blanford said that he believes the overall marketshare won't last � he expects the Symbian market share to dip to 50% over the next few years as the iPhone continues to roll out world-wide, Windows Mobile grows into consumer markets with lower cost offerings, and Linux phones (including Google's Android platform) hit the market.
Licensing seems similar to Windows Mobile in terms of total cost: Blanford estimates that the licensing fee for the base Symbian OS is around $5, dropping to $3 or so if over 5 million devices (licenses) are shipped. Licensing a UI layer (such as UIQ) costs an additional $5 or so � putting the total at $10 or less, which is in the ballpark of Windows Mobile.
MOAP-S is the user interface used in NTT DoCoMo FOMA handsets � there are some 59 models on the market with 20 million devices shipped in 2007. MOAP-S is completely locked down when shipping on the phone, allowing only software installs from NTT DoCoMo. S60, Nokia's UI layer, is the strongest player, is holding over 53% of the marketshare of all "smartphone" devices (which a term of much contention, making marketshare numbers fuzzy).
The S60 Touch is a forthcoming product from Nokia, offering support for both stylus and finger touch � similar to the HTC Touch. Blanford said that the S60 Touch was in development long before the iPhone came out, so it's not a matter of copying the iPhone, it's a matter of Nokia thinking some of the same things that Apple, HTC, and others have been thinking for a while now. Unfortunately because the iPhone came out first, there's a tendency to believe that the first to market means the first to have the idea. The reality is that most products take several years to develop.
Moving away from hardware, Blanford began to discuss software. Nokia's Ovi platform is a software and services platform � they want to become an Internet company, focusing on bringing MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. to Nokia phones. This is typically the realm of the wireless network carrier of course, which doubtless makes for some grumpy executives somewhere. Nokia believes, quite correctly I feel, that phone hardware is going the way of the PC: commoditized, cheap hardware that is difficult to make a profit on (unless you're Apple selling the iPhone of course). Nokia Music is one such service, available in the UK, using Windows Media DRM interestingly enough. Pricing is 79p (UK pricing remember), putting it on par with iTunes. On the photo front, Nokia Photos is a software service similar to Flickr, brought to market when Nokia purchased online photo sharing site Twango. When you factor in Nokia's $8.1 billion purchase of Navteq, you can see where Nokia is taking their company. Windows Mobile has Windows Live services, while RIM and Apple have essentially nothing beyond iTunes (does .Mac count?).
Windows Live Services
Figure 2: Jeff McKean presenting, also a fine chap.
Jeff McKean, Senior Product Manager, Mobile Services, presented on Windows Live services for mobile devices � which includes, shockingly enough, Nokia devices. McKean told a humorous story about the journey of a hardcore Windows Mobile guy coming to accept that other platforms are just as important if they want to reach the maximum number of people. 450 million people interact with either Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger, and the number continues to grow as more platforms and devices are supported.
He explained that because the team can't develop for every single platform out there they often work with third party developers who will develop clients for smaller platforms (such as the Ogo).
McKean next did a few demos sending and receiving messages, voice clips, and photos from various Windows Mobile, Symbian, and other devices. He even showed Bee Jive, a Web-based solution that allowed his iPhone to communicate with Live Messenger. How many people who are using Messenger on their PCs every day using Messenger on their phones? Something in the single digit percentage according to McKean.
Group Discussions
The remainder of our day was filled with group discussions and an NDA presentation that I can't write about. The group discussions tend to be the most interesting part of any Mobius, because it's a great opportunity to brainstorm with my peers and tackle problems in the mobile industry. This time around, we broke off into four different groups and each group (Windows Mobile, Symbian/Nokia, Android, and iPhone) took on the role of the company they were representing and came up with a plan for how we were going to address the problems with the platform.
With Windows Mobile, the team I was on, we decided that because we had ignored the consumer scenarios for so long and focused 80% of our development resources on enterprise and Exchange scenarios, we'd reverse that - we wanted to spend 80% of our development resources on making Windows Mobile a killer consumer platform with better messaging, media, and ease of use. Oh, and we also apologized to everyone in the room for ActiveSync/WMDC (boy did that get a laugh!) and vowed to scrap it all and switch to SyncML as the sync engine on the device so that other companies could develop sync solutions in case we couldn't quite manage to get it right. It was an interesting exercise, especially when people in the room started to pelt us with impertinent questions - just like I do when there's a Microsoft person presenting. ;-) The other groups were interesting - the iPhone group was quite hilarious with one member posing as Faux Steve Jobs - but it will be really interesting to do this again in about a year when Android devices are actually in the market.
Wrapping Up
After the final session, it was time to pack up and head out. I received a few more goodies on day two: a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, a copy of Office 2007 Ultimate, a SanDisk 8 GB microSD card (it's mind-boggling they can fit so much storage in such a small space), a CoPilot Live 7 software kit, and best of all, an HTC Touch Dual (the 16-key version).
Ashley and I headed out for a smoke-filled, partially funny evening at Boom Chicago. I could see glimpses of real comedic talent from the performers, but the crowd was feeding them really unfunny improv suggestions. Saturday morning we got on plane for the long trip home, and here I am trying to catch up on email and write my reviews. Check out my blog for some further thoughts on Amsterdam, and my photo site has some pictures of the trip (the ones I managed to get processed so far).
Jason Dunn owns and operates Thoughts Media Inc., a company dedicated to creating the best in online communities. He enjoys mobile devices, digital media content creation/editing, and pretty much all technology. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with his lovely wife, and his sometimes obedient dog. He will not be going back to Amsterdam...pretty much ever.
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