Symbian To Be Market Leader Until 2010

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040426005546&newsLang=en' target='_blank'>http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040426005546&newsLang=en</a><br /><br /></div>"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."<br /><br />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]

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]

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.

[Kris Kumar]

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.

I agree that Microsoft Smartphones is currently popular among geeks and a few enterprise users. Microsoft devices are pricey and feature packed. Not everyone can afford them and not everyone needs the features it puts out.

MS devices are always ahead of the times when compared with the other market players. Pocket PC was ahead of its times when compared to Palm. XBox was ahead of PS2 in terms of tech. In the devices arena, Microsoft is good at is gauging the future market and positioning their devices for future growth. I feel that MS instead of toning down their devices for the market, takes the non-traditional route of raising the customer/user requirements :-)

Palm and Symbian devices focus more on the current market needs, (and Symbian has been around for quite some time, so agreed it will be tough for Microsoft).

I feel that Symbian has to correct its act, if it wants to keep the share. What Microsoft has going in its favor is the concept of standardizing the phone platform (mobile platform). In the soon to be connected world, users would wants apps to run the same way on multiple devices. Also the users would be more demanding about specialized apps. Symbian with customized OS for each manufacturer means multiple SDKs and hell for developers. MS devices standardizes the hardware peripherals also.

Microsoft devices are on a higher ground in terms of features, the reason why they are not being adopted en-masse is because of the price. Which will come down once we get more players and hardware manufacturers. Just like Pocket PCs were $400+ when launched. And now you can get them for half the price. Also soon the customer expectations from a phone will also rise, everyone would want to carry a PDA, MP3 player, access the internet on their phones, when that happens MS will be there. And Symbian will be busy re-structuring its organization and OS.

Kris

[possmann]

Interesting Kris - I agree with your comments but unlike Palm Symbian is still aggressively innovating. Palm seemed to stop and rest on its laurals for several years allowing MS to pass it by - My gut says that Symbian won't allow that to happen so the battle should be pretty interesting in the next couple of years.

I do hope the MS starts to focus more on price dropping to get a deeper into the market. Still, it is early in the process....

[Kris Kumar]

Well even IDC is now talking about Symbian taking a piece of the action...but this time they are not talking about Cellphones but Client operating systems!!

http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;940707233;fp;2;fpid;1

Apparently according to IDC, Microsoft Windows market share will drop to 58 percent by 2007 8O Why ? IDC is including the Cellphone OS (communications OS) in the Client OS segment. Here's an interesting quote from the article.


By 2007, Windows on PCs will account for 58 percent of the client operating system market, with the Symbian OS for communication devices taking 17 percent, according to IDC figures. Only smart mobile phones with the ability to run applications are considered to have true operating systems, in IDC's definition. Windows for communication devices will account for 6 percent of the market and Linux for digital video recorders will account for 5 percent, Saxena said.

Windows for Communication Devices (I am guess thats Windows Mobile Pocket PC & Smarphones) will be 6 percent, compared to 17 percent of Symbian :?