Submitted by Time. Coming. Long. Put these in the appropriate order, and you’ll get my reaction to this news. Nokia has announced that it is planning a major overhaul of the user interface to the Symbian operating system, still the most popular smartphone platform in the world.
During the company’s annual Capital Markets Day event, Nokia made a number of forward-looking statements about the company, which were actually quite rosy. They expect their own market share to be flat next year compared to 2009, while the industry as a whole will grow by 10%. However, the average selling prices of its devices may erode less in 2010 than they did in 2009.
More interesting, though, are Nokia’s promises concerning a revamp of the Symbian user interface. In the face of competition from especially the iPhone, Symbian has turned into something of an ugly duckling, interface-wise. This is all going to change in 2010, according to Nokia.
“In 2010, we will drive user experience improvements, and the progress we make will take the Symbian user interface to a new level,” said Nokia CEO, Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, “As an operating system, Symbian has reach and flexibility like no other platform, and we have measures in place to push smartphones down to new price points globally, while growing margins. I see great opportunity for Nokia to capture new growth in our industry, by creating what we expect to be the world’s biggest platform for services on the mobile.”
Two major product milestones, planned for the first and second halves of next year, are supposed to carry these improvements. From experience I know that Symbian in and of itself appears to be a fine platform, capable of fluent multitasking at very little battery expense (that was my experience with the E71, at least) – it’s just that the interface was about as comfortable as sleeping on a bed made out of broken glass and rose thorns, especially compared to the iPhone, webOS, and Android.
I’m already hearing some of you say – what about Maemo? Well, Maemo was reduced to a single bullet point in the press release, which for the rest was mostly about Symbian. “Deliver our first Maemo 6-powered mobile computer, with an iconic user experience, in the second half of 2010.”
In the end though, promises are cheap. Deliver, then we’ll talk.
Coming long time…?
[EDIT]
Shoulda checked your link first. Boy, do I feel foolish.
Edited 2009-12-02 23:51 UTC
Has-been OS.
On the wrong hardware (N75, I’m looking at you) Symbian stinks. It’s slow and buggy and not the right fit for most of Nokia’s phones. What I’ve seen of it on more powerful handsets though, really impressed me. It’s not quite up there with Android or the iPhone in terms of usability, but it makes my BlackBerry seem like an icon of the 90’s PDA era.
I’m not holding my breath though; I think they have a good thing with Maemo, unfortunately it requires a phone nearly as powerful as my laptop and just as expensive. If they can get the price of the N900 and its successors down to a manageable number (say, $150 subsidized, $300 unlocked) they will have an unbeatable phone.
I do wish Nokia pushed Maemo out even a bit more aggressively. It looks impressive and I see it as a better alternative than trying to hold onto Symbian.
Yup. I’m hoping to get my hands on an N900 once they hit the high streets here in the UK, I’m very excited about being able to have almost the same Linux power on my phone that I have on my desktop
However, the N900 is a very powerful piece of kit, capable of supporting the fairly heavyweight Maemo OS. I don’t know much about Symbian, is it more lightweight and so more viable on cheaper, less powerful devices? Is that why they’re hanging on to it?
Hey, maybe Nokia is hanging onto Symbian because it’s a good little OS that a lot of people use and love! I have it on my Smart-phone and it’s extremely solid, simple to use. Perhaps the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” might apply?
But that’s the funny part: they are actually fixing it
Though in my opinion, it’s more like beating a dead horse. It’s horrendous to program for and it just does not measure up to Maemo. Which would be alright, if they were talking about the low-end versions. But smartphones?
That (programming) is what they are fixing with Qt… I read some comments on Qt 4.6 release from symbian developers and they look positive.
That’s exactly why they’re holding onto it. Basically, the Maemo device will become their premier, “iconesque” (more expensive) iPhone/Droid/whathaveyou competitor, while Symbian will usher in a new era of “smartphones for the masses”.
Not everyone is ready for Maemo.
It’s the classic case of grandma not adopting Linux either. People just get Symbian devices cos they grew old using it. My mom has a e61i that she doesnt change for anything in the world and when asked what would she do if it would break, she would buy another e61i or the closest thing to it.
So IMHO Nokia should ditch Symbian for N-series devices and use Maemo instead. Symbian, as stated, has a wonderful battery life, I had a brand new e72. With my new n900 battery seems to die in 2 days.
Also for lower end devices Symbian is a bless. There are still people out there (yep, not everyone are geeks like us) that just want a simple phone for calling, known interface and good battery life… Symbian for them
For all of the multimedia, multitasking, internet related stuff Maemo is the answer.
ps. I love my n900. I also had a iPod touch and its just incredible how much better everything is with it. Finally Apple has a credible competitor from Nokia.
Why do you think there’s been a huge push to port Qt to Symbian ever since Nokia bought Trolltech? Of course, the new platform will be fully Qt based. Maemo is sticking around, but they’re also transitioning to Qt, at least as an equal citizen on that platform, if not to replace GTK/Hildon. Maemo is definitely not going to be running on their regular phones though.
And the really good thing is that Nokia’s brought all development into one place.
EPOC was developed by one company, Psion, and as a result it was a beautifully integrated and well-thought interface.
Symbian was strung out between multiple companies and you could see the results – it gradually became more unfocused and messy.
This is a chance to reverse that.
As a former Nokia E61 user, I was always miffed/confused/disappointed by the fact that you “get what you get” when you buy your phone, and none of the newer features (FP1, FP2, etc…) become available on your platform. I was really disappointed to see my device get left in the dust as apps became “FP1 or later” or “FP2 or later.” Also, when looking at the state of Java on the phone, and not being able to “Auto Accept” most of the MIDlet properties because my OS was too old soon made it difficult to even try new apps.
One thing I have to applaud Apple for, is that they are still giving the original iPhone users capability updates. An original iPhone user can install OS 3.1 and take advantage of the software updates to the platform (granted, they can’t get GPS or some of the hardware-enabled features of the later phones.)
It’s all fine and dandy to talk about delivering features that will be in your next device, in your next OS, but stranding existing users (especially for devices in the multi-$100 range) makes one think twice about going that route again…
Well Apple has just med 3 phones, Iphone, Iphone 3G and the 3GS under two or so years. They are hardware wise really similar devices. The E61 are 3 years old, and hardware wise a lot different from current E-series. And before they used powerful TI OMAP 2 cpus on the N-series and Freescale on E and XM line, today the mostly use Freescale and OMAP 3 on most high-end devices.
With current line up Nokia brings the same capability updates to all 5th edition devices, they did reclock the 5800XM to have matching clockspeed with N97 and X6
I’m waiting for my N900 that I get week 51.
I wonder who woke up and found themselves more behind, Microsoft or Nokia? Nokia has a huge market share, but absolutely no momentum. All the exciting stuff is happening in the Droid, iPhone, and even Pre areas. Microsoft has more resources than anyone to throw at the problem.
Droid: Motorola
iPhone: Apple
Pre: Palm
All three of the companies listed above have had periods when some people thought that they were close to collapse. So although certain Nokia products are not generating the same amount of market interest at the moment, that bears no relation to how future products might perform.
By all accounts the N900 is proving to be a very versatile and capable device, although I’m more interested in the reportedly upcoming capacitive touchscreen version.
I say all this as a current N97 user, which is one of the key examples of where Nokia does get things wrong – it should never have shipped with its original firmware whatsoever.
Is the newer firmware better? What does it improve? Just curious since I haven’t heard too many reports on the N97 since the initial wave of disappointed-sounding reviews.
All of the above. The entire mobile phone industry has had its finger where the sun don’t shine for the last 10 years.
There was nothing preventing them from making a device like the iPhone, they simply did not have the imagination and motivation to do so.
And they still don’t. I don’t like the idea, but I can readily see Apple becoming No.1 in market share. It’s iPod all over again. Rather than do anything outstandingly new, Apple’s competitors get stuck in panic loops where they deride each new things Apple does and then struggle to catch up with their copies.
Maemo should be their focus. Symbian is a dead end, and when they get to that end they are going to find that they have cornered themselves and are hopelessly behind the iPhone with no chance of catch up.
One platform. One OS. Iterate.
That’s all Apple’s doing. That’s it guys, it’s not hard.
The iPhone lasts 2 to 3 days in normal usage. It has 1% or so of market share and is unlikely to get past 5% top. Most people want a phone to make calls and they want the battery to last well over their long week-ends. Then also want it to be as small as possible and they want to be able to share their funny pics with friends, borrow their battery when their one is exhausted (how many times that happened to me!). And they don’t even want to pay for it, or maybe $1. The iPhone is far from there.
And you’re saying that none of those factors Apple can fix in later revisions? What happened when Apple introduced the iPod Shuffle, and the iPod Mini? The iPod was already very successful, but expensive. The iPod mini was Apple’s _best_ selling iPod. They doubled their market with the introduction of that model. They’ve already started doing this with the introduction of the 3G/$99, 3GS/$199 split. What happens if Apple then introduce a new model, and the traditional 3G is subsidised to $0; then what?
And what happen when Fischer Price decide to build the best phone ever, give it away for free with a free contract with unlimited data and call and TV and hire naked women to sell it in the street? When they do that, they will have instant monopoly.
Sorry for the sarcasm. I meant to say that it won’t happen. Apple didn’t ever expect to become a major player in the phone market. They aim at the high margin expensive phones. They won’t cut their margin and they won’t “fix” their phone to appeal to the low margin mass market. They never hinted that they intend to change their aim anytime soon. Moreover, they stopped producing iPhone 3G when they released the 3GS. They are selling their stock and that’s all. They don’t intend to be their own cheap concurrent.
Edited 2009-12-03 10:28 UTC
If your analysis of the consumer was correct, no one would buy any smart phone. And yet the smartphone market is enormous. The battery limitation and price for the iPhone is in line with other smart phones (RIM, WinMo, Pre, Nokia).
The iPhone has 10% market share worldwide in the smartphone market, higher in the US. And like it or not, the iPhone was the genesis that sparked a flood of innovation in a largely stagnant and stalled market of smartphones.
My analysis is correct if you read it with some attention. The “smart” phone market is a niche actually. Nokia alone sells hundreds of millions of phones every quarter. There are several billions phones around the world. Actually, what we call the ‘smart’ phones is just expensive high-end phones. There is no clear cut barrier between dumb and smart phones. Apple likes to separate the phone market in two in order to appear big. But what defines a “smart” phone really? Any $1 phone can take pictures, have a calendar, surf the web and send emails. The “smart” phones is just a bigger screen, faster processor and shorter battery life.
Edited 2009-12-03 13:01 UTC
The distinction between smart and dumb phones is actually relatively clearcut IMHO. 1) Does it support third-party apps, beyond simple JavaME or BREW games, that are installable by the user without going through the carrier? 2) Can it browse the web, without being limited to WAP or “mobile” versions of websites? 3) Does it do e-mail? 4) Does it have organizer functions that you can sync to your PC?
1) You’d be surprised what you can do with J2ME. For 99% of the people, J2ME is well enough. Anyway the iPhone does not do J2ME but you can’t install apps without going through the app store. Not so different from a dumb phone if you ask me…
2) Since Opera Mini runs on pretty much any MIDP mobile, that means any phone can browse the web.
3) Any phone can do gmail
4) All the phones can do that since 2000 or so. I don’t know if the iPhone can do that though. With the Mac yes, but can it sync with the PC, it doesn’t even understand OBEX…
Hmm, yes I guess when you put it that way the distinction is more blurry. Still I would argue that support for “native” apps is a key feature of smartphones. As for J2ME, I would also consider support of the CDC profile a unique feature of most smartphones.
Also, if a phone can’t sync to Outlook or the equivalent I don’t consider that to be a real “sync”–more like a backup. As far as I know most dumbphones don’t support this out of the box, and their organizer functions are usually rather laughable. And to answer your question, yes, iPhone does support syncing to Outlook.
Well, I suppose each man has his own definition of a smartphone.
I mean, my phone may be considered a “dumb” phone by many (symbian S40), but it does more things than “smart” iPhone. It could sync with outlook with the proper J2ME application, although I don’t need outlook.
It looks like 95% of the phone owners don’t want a “smart” phone, either because of the price or because they don’t need and don’t want the extra screen size. The few people who own a “smart” phone I know are geeks. Not even business co-workers use one. They use laptops instead. I believe the “smart phones” is a niche market. It’s a huge market, but still a niche in the phone market.
In my opinion, what most people want is a phone as tiny as possible with long battery life that can talk with other phones and PC to exchange pictures and videos for very cheap (less than $10).
Edited 2009-12-04 11:09 UTC
S40 is not Symbian – it’s a completely proprietary operating system for “feature phones”.
Yes, because we all remember the deluge of other phones that copied Apple’s “innovations” like no copy-paste, no 3g, no MMS support, a smudgy tap-and-pray piece of crap onscreen keyboard (instead of a proper physical keyboard), etc. Thanks, Apple! </sarcasm>
It’s really funny to see the Apple fanboys trying to portray the iPhone as having some sort of massive lead over other devices. Step out of the RDF for a second or two and it becomes obvious that, in reality, Apple has been playing catch-up with the iPhone for the last 2 years. Give them another year or two, and they might actually manage feature parity with Windows Mobile (or hell, even PalmOS) devices from 5 years ago.
In 2007, I had a WinMo phone. It was a T-Mobile branded HTC running WinMo 5.0. I had cut and paste, applications (and not just web apps), MMS, and could surf the Internet. And it blew. I mean, it was awful. It crashed all the time, it couldn’t handle my large IMAP folder, I never used an app that wasn’t included (there weren’t any interesting ones anyway).
When I got the iPhone, it really showed the sorry state of smart phones at the time.
All the features in the world won’t matter if the interface and user experience is awful. The market almost utterly lacked any consideration for this, and concentrated only on “features”. That is what Apple brought to the market, focus on experience, and not features. It was something the market sorely lacked, and is better off now that it’s a universal concern.
I’d give you 10 mod points if I could.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Symbian, all of them had a lot of features with no thought to the user experience.
Apple is all about experience first and features second. That’s why it took them 3 OS versions to implement basic things like copy and paste. When they implemented it, they implemented the feature in a nice, unobtrusive way. That’s why they didn’t have a proper multitasking environment in Mac OS X until 2003, when they introduced Expose and no workspaces until 2007.
Maybe that’s not for you and me, but for the average user having a great experience using the device matters. And that’s why you see a lot of people screaming “iPhone rulz” when in fact it doesn’t. That’s why you also see “feature check-list” companies like Microsoft who just don’t get it fail.
‘Experience’ won’t get you far if that experience is of a network that is dropping calls left and right. The success of iPhone may lead to its epic collapse as AT&T simply can’t handle the increased demand for data from iPhone users.
Google has a different model: more data use -> more ads -> more money to compensate carriers for the increased demand for data.
Apple can only sell hardware units and while that may work for a closed device such as a music player, it doesn’t work for an internet device.
Well, more and more traffic are being generated and networks doesn’t seem to keep up. And its more less all carriers that has capacity related problems since 3G netbooks and 3G modems are popular products, and they use a lot of bandwidth I.
Even my carrier with powerful backhaul network and the latest HSPA+ wireless networks overloads now and then. I think they should prioritize customers like me with their largest and fastest offerings, and I use around 150 MB an hour
Nah. The open technology stack in Maemo will be the more appealing one to third party developers, compared to iPhone and even Android.
Apples lead at “phone-as-computer” is fleeting, we are talking about 1-3 years tops.
I’m personally working to that end ;-).
What appeals to third party developers is sales. Right now, the market is iPhone. Droid is there now too, with a model identical to the iPhone app store, but the variety of hardware platforms is making it tricky. It’ll be interesting to see how the Ovi store (also a copy of the initially ridiculed app store) deals with it.
It’s not quite so one-dimensional.
Things that matter are whether the skillset is worth acquiring, future prospects of business, development cost, what you can achieve in the platform in the first place (and at what cost), whether you can attract good developers, and *who* is buying your devices. Are they the kind of people that would be interested in your program?
Sales is insanely important obviously, but I believe Maemo devices will be selling like cupcakes where Symbian failed to create enthusiasm.
So far, Nokia has nothing that generates enthusiasm, so it’s pure speculation. I think that speculation part is Nokia’s biggest problem. They’ve got to prove they can pull it off a phone that can compete with the iPhone (and Android and Pre), and they haven’t yet.
I’ve just spent the past two weeks in Scandinavia, and by far the smartphones I’ve seen in several countries are iPhones and Android.
Quite odd, either you are moving in limited circles or you are failing to identify the majority of smartphones.
Nokia sells buckets of the Symbian devices, they are all over the place. But it seem like many models are not heavily advertised and labeled as “smartphones”, and they tend not to look to different from simpler Nokia models.
As for the traditional “smartphone” segment, business users, the wast majority around here seem still to be HTC or similar Windows phones.
N900 is generating enthusiasm among the tech-savvy.
Maemo 6 phones will generate enthusiasm in the mainstream.
Future Qt-based Symbian phones will likely get some people excited as well.
What I’m saying is – Apple may be “special” right now, but everything I’m seeing indicates that this won’t be for long. They have no aces up their sleeves that would “secure” their position.
Is the N900 shipping yet? I knew there were delays, and if it is shipping it’s certainly not wide-spread (I have yet to see anyone with one). Palm and Google have shipping products that are generating buzz. Nokia and Microsoft don’t have that yet. Perhaps some promising demos, but they still have to prove themselves.
PS: I just read that Maemo is only going to be in one product in 2010? Is Nokia insane?
Yes, it’s shipping already, but not everywhere, nor long enough to actually see people carrying them around. Those who preordered have got their phones already.
Yes, this is correct. We are still to see the iPhone killer from Nokia. I do believe it’s just a matter of time.
They didn’t make too many iPhone products either. I see this as a good thing – large phone selection is mostly a perk for cheap phones, but for high end phones you want distinctive, singular products.
edit: double post
Edited 2009-12-03 13:11 UTC
Right now, Symbian has by far the biggest market share, more than all other OSes combined.
They have a huge market share, but somehow the market for iPhone apps dwarfs that of Symbian.
Also, Symbian market share is dropping, while Google and Apple are increasing. And Nokia doesn’t have anything concrete on the horizon to stop the hemorrhaging of market share.
What letter in MAEMO do you fail to grasp?
Well, that negates your analysis that what drive developers is sales. Anyway most applications are developed for J2ME and not symbian because symbian supports J2ME.
Did you RTFA?
Edited 2009-12-03 13:32 UTC
Sales of apps, not phones. Is a developer more likely to sell more apps on the iPhone platform, or Symbian platform? iPhone, and probably by orders of magnitude.
Did you RTFA? [/q]
OK, on the horizen they might (might). But Google and Pre have products (that are modern) shipping en mass. Nokia still has to get their act together.
Edited 2009-12-03 13:51 UTC
I guess you live in the US, don’t you?
Where I live in Europe, people have been installing apps on their phones for years. You see adverts on TV to buy the latest dumb app all day and on all channels. My carrier spams me with SMS like ‘do you like games? click here to install SuperFighterXVIII’. Any phone you buy here comes with an icon on the front page that reads ‘install more apps’. It’s not about symbian or the iPhone, it’s all about J2ME. Every single phone support J2ME (except the iPhones). The mass market for apps is J2ME.
I believe you mean that Google and Pre are catching up on Nokia
Edited 2009-12-03 14:03 UTC
I live in the US, but I’m sitting in Scandinavia right now (and I’ve seen a lot of iPhones and Android phones). Apple has 100 million apps per week (correction: 2.2 million per day). Not all of them are paid apps of course, but I wonder if that number is higher than Symbian (I can’t find stats for Sybmian sales).
That’s Nokia’s problem. They’re losing market share, at the expense of Google, Pre, RIM, and Apple.
Edited 2009-12-03 14:30 UTC
Well it’s not about Symbian, but about J2ME. Apple’s app store is pretty much the only place where you can find iPhones apps, but you can find J2ME apps anywhere. Apple is the only provider of iPhone apps but there are thousands of J2ME application prodivers.
J2ME or not is irrelevant, the app sales volume is with Apple. That says something about the sales model (which Nokia is copying) that Apple uses, as well as the iPhone platform.
If you’re a developer, iPhone is the place to go if you want to sell more apps.
It’s like saying that developing for the Mac will sell more apps than developing for the PC beacuse there are many PC providers and only one Mac provider. The app sale volumes is for the PC. Likewise, you will likely sell more apps if you develop them for J2ME than for the iPhone.
Well, currently, there are not that many iPhone apps, so you have more chance to sell them. I don’t have number, but there are at least 10 J2ME apps for 1 iPhone app. That market will quickly saturate though. The more apps there are, the harder it is to sell yours.
Believe it or not, but the iPhone is still too expensive for a lot of people. Nokia wants to cover the sector of the market that the iPhone doesn’t touch. And I can only applaud them for it–more smartphones in more people’s hands can only be a good thing for the industry as a whole.
I generally agree with your point about Apple being the only manufacturer with a clue, though. Not only has the software side been unimaginative all these years, but Apple is the only manufacturer in the computer or the phone biz that has figured out that you don’t need millions of models to be successful.
To some extent, customers *like* their choices being limited, if it means that every model they buy does exactly what they expect and does it well. The problem with the rest of the computer, mobile phone, and consumer electronics industry (and even the U.S. car industry) is that they think there needs to be one model per every “type” of consumer–and then they end up with half of their models being mediocre, and every one of them being the result of compromises. Not to mention that the names of products are then cryptic number/letter combinations that hardly anyone can remember.
I’m not saying Nokia needs to take it to the extreme that Apple has taken it–I like some of the choice it provides. But I don’t think it would hurt it to limit its variety just a little bit. For instance, how many models of mid-priced Nokia candybar phones do we need? Might it not be better to have one iconic model available at any given time?
Edited 2009-12-03 11:29 UTC
Writing Symbian off due to current poor end-user-experience is very superficial IMO.
I was sad to witness the extraordinary little OS that powered my Psion Revo become the stuttering mess that I found on my Nokia N73, but it its heart, Symbian is still an extremely capable platform. It’s proved itself more than capable of powering a netbook like the Psion Series 7.
It needs a totally new interface, but having played with KDE 4 a little, I see no reason at all why a Symbian+QT4 can’t be every bit modern as Android, iPhoneOS or webOS, or offer the kind of platform that developers want to work on.
That’s like saying compiz killed GNOME and KDE.
The exiting stuff you talk about is just GUI. Everything else is there in Symbian and more. The other OSes you cited are still behind Symbian for the rest. The GUI is being fixed.
Nowadays, having a sexy GUI is essential in order to compete in the iPhone niche market (expensive “smart” phones that make you look cool)
I believe Maemo will fill that niche, but it won’t quite match the iPhone sexy interface. Nokia can’t match Apple’s marketing machine and pinching will always be cooler than what Nokia can offer. Apple won’t ever license their patents to nokia, it would simply kill their business, not even in exchange for Nokia’s licenses.
Nokia does not sell well in the US anyway. They should release a world version and a US version. The world version would feature pinching and all the cool stuff advertised by Apple. That way Nokia can use Apple’s marketing machine for its own profit. The US version would not have all features, but you could download the world addons from a foreign server (illegaly of course but Nokia couln’t be held responsible for what people do with their phone)
Actually, pinching, flicking and kinetic scrolling are all featured in the new version of Qt and will be coming to a next-gen Nokia smartphone near you.
…until Apple sues them, that is. And then, mark my words, we’ll get an entertaining circus of iApologists claiming that flicking and pinching are proprietary to Apple (despite the fact that those gestures are as old as the opposable thumb itself).
…until Apple sues them, that is. And then, mark my words, we’ll get an entertaining circus of iApologists claiming that flicking and pinching are proprietary to Apple (despite the fact that those gestures are as old as the opposable thumb itself). [/q]
What was the recent patent cases from Nokia to Apple really about. Basically if Apple sues Nokia. Nokia will take them off face of earth. Nokia was proving it willingness to fight.
Nokia is really moving to a single GUI with multi OS cores.
QT GUI basically runs on most hardware. So application developers can reuse code more.
…until Apple sues them, that is. [/q]
And then it still does not matter, since Nokia already have them by the throat. As it’s quite impossible to make a mobile-phone without infringing on several of Nokias patents.
Incidentally as it is, Nokia has already sued Apple over those. My best guess is that Apple will end up with a out-of-court settlement, handing over a bunch of cash and a nice cross licensing deal for whatever patents Nokia feel they need.
Now that is cool, although I don’t know how they will sell it in the US then. Maybe they will cut the feature for US export? Not that the US is a big market for them anyway, but it would make some extra sales…
Anyway, I believe Nokia should buy Opera and include it by default. Many people don’t know Opera even exist and are stuck with crappy browser.
Nokia did include Opera with S60 for a long time, but has now switched to its own homegrown WebKit browser on Symbian and the Firefox-based Fennec browser on Maemo.
Nokia has higher brand value, and they have more experience and understands the importance of cultures. Apple did do a huge mistakes when they lunched Iphone in China and they sold just 5,000 of them since October.
Well Nokia are a keypatent holder to do a working phone you need to license their patents, and their portfolio is broad. You can do without Apples patents and you can do multi touch.
Well Nokia are doing some special phones for the US market, like the E71x for AT&T and a few new once for Verizon and AT&T, and ovi store are about to open in the US soon. I think that the problem lies in different cellular standards, Nokia’s key markets use GSM/WCDMA/HSPA while most of NA carriers use CDMA.
I think that they should do a Western version and a Asian version. Western consumers can do without the stylus and use capacitive screens, I think that the new X6 could do well in the US, its fast and comes with free music and 32GB memory with good camera, and N900 could do well when they find a carrier.
Free music are probably cool, and maps and other ovi services are useful and then there is those large concert halls Nokia Theater that they have.
Once they’ll get the Qt interface up and running, it doesn’t matter if it’ll run on top of Symbian or Linux. There’s a beautiful demo of this at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCx8RfNhhXk
Nice video. That’s what I thought their strategy was – you develop for QT, not Symbian or Maemo, and it runs on any Nokia smartphone. (I trust those demo apps weren’t coded twice!)
My concerns are (1) can Nokia really pull this off, with QT apps running well enough on Symbian to convert developers, and (2) will they actually generate enough developer interest to build a repository large enough to compare favorably to iPhone’s and Android’s?
I’ve owned and loved a N770 and (currently) N800, but eleven apps for N900 at launch, only one (one!) new Maemo device next year, and Nokia’s constant “Symbian! Symbian!” chanting, have led me to consider jumping ship to Droid. It’s hard to be enthused about buying the red-headed step-child, and the carpet bombing of clever Droid ads leave no doubt as to Motorola’s commitment.
*sigh*
Qt is really a more polished, and simultaneously more modern in all but implementation language, platform than Android though. I am not a fan of Symbian as a platform (very archaic), but if there is anything that gives Nokia a good shot it is getting a modern API set on there. Nokia has always been good at putting together nice hardware at a reasonable price, it is just the software strategy that has been messy.
Buying Trolltech could very well turn out to be the best thing they every did. I am more hopeful about Symbians future than I have been in years and years. I am on Android now, but could very well consider switching back to Symbian if this turns out well.
Well, I think you partially answered your question as to why they are chanting “Symbian”–because it already has an enormous app catalog. It’s just that up until now, it wasn’t consolidated in any one place or easy for the average person to figure out how to find and install apps–but they’re rectifying that with the Ovi Store (still very much a work in progress though).
Maemo is slowly catching up, but the next iteration will be the first with a capacitive screen, Qt interface and API, and fully-baked Ovi Store, so I think it’ll be the first version really ready for mass consumption.
Btw: Their entire marketing strategy for Maemo is based on the concept of “one device”. It’s their better version of an iPhone. I don’t think you should be hoping for them to dumb it down for other devices– that would end in disaster.
Edited 2009-12-03 11:45 UTC
Indeed, Nokia is losing market share, and this is major point in one of their last press releases. I was a Nokia user, but their phones are consuming power like a laptop. Sorry, went over to SE, where my battery lives for one week with the same usage. This is not only smartphone related. Take for example the last E52 – it’s like is made of cheap plastic in a garage by an 10 year old kid. No, 10 year old child will actually do better. This phone should have been the successor of E51, but it has nothing to do with it in terms of build quality and responsiveness.
I can’t afford iPhone, honestly, here is extremely expensive, but I don’t want it anyway, I hate touchscreen. But, Maemo looks like the right route to take. Time will tell.
“Nokia To Overhaul Symbian User Interface”
Good!