A number of recent reports provide a new picture of the current smart phone market landscape and the trends likely to impact that landscape over the coming year. The latest US market share report by Nielsen shows both the iPhone OS and Android growing at the expense of Windows Mobile and the Blackberry OS.
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Member since:2009-02-07
I think main problem is that Nokia seems to put lot of phones as smart phones when they really aren't (atleast I don't view them same level phones).
I think they are on the same level, but I pretty happy with my HTC Desire right now, but I miss ovi maps. But the E and N series are pretty good as well, my old E71 is still high on my list and my XM5800 is useful to take running.
Member since:2008-08-09
Well, yeah, but defining smartphones too narrowly makes the survey less interesting anyway. After all, we are more tech nerds than business people here, how well Apple or Nokia does money-wise is not that important, what is more interesting is what the sales number says about the future of the tech.
From the fact that Nokia keeps steaming ahead it mostly tells me that a lot of people can settle for slightly less smart phones if they impress through other factors (battery life, price, simplicity, small form-factor). After all, you can do a lot of sweet things on a Symbian smartphone still, most of the key apps run, like Spotify and various social networking applications. Having a sane subset is probably sufficient to a lot of people who don't bother to chase through an app store for the latest and greatest anyway 
Still, I am looking forward to Symbian^4. Qt is awesome and Symbian is actually if anything more free than Android (since key pieces of Android functionality are closed source), so I hope to see them remain in the running going forward.
Member since:2007-09-06
Since there is no getting around Maemo being replaced with Meego, I'm watching how it progresses also. The N900 is the first device where I wanted my phone and PDA merged together and I'm very willing to give up the choice of multiple woopy-cousion apps in exchange for 300 mostly usable apps currently available for Maemo5.
On the up side, Meego is also further separate from Nokia than Maemo so if they do go a different route, the OS can continue to develop.
Nokia.. hurry up and bring the N900 to canada at a reasonable price!!
Member since:2010-01-08
No, Nokia just make smartphones look like normal phones. But once you get over the look you can really use the full power of symbian.
They might not use the most powerfull CPU, the most memory, the most eye candy. They don't have the best UI, but the functionality of a smartphone OS is there, and it is not locked.
You might say that they lack GPS or WiFi, but that is just hardware to keep cost down. The smarphone is defined by the OS.
Member since:2008-10-23
I believe Nokia was the first to add a GPS in a phone and Nokia is part of the core working group that design wifi.
But indeed, wifi and GPS is only available in high end Nokia phones. You mention the price as a reason. It's true but I should add battery life, size, weigh and robustness. And that is what most people want. They don't care much about GPS and Wifi. They want small rock solid phones with long battery life. Only geeks use the wifi on their mobile phone. People are quick to bash Nokia because they sell so called low end phones without wifi or GPS when actually it is what most people buy. Competitors sell phones without MMS, without 3G and without GPS and call that a revolution because apparently people don't care about features but when it's Nokia apparently it should have multitouch, wifi, gps and all the geek stuff to be usable.
"I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.
A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
"The key takeaway we've reached (after two less than 24 hours playing with the iOS 7 Beta release) is this - every App must consider even basic updates to its UI to survive in a post-iOS 6 world." Great. Telling developers to update their entire application - user interface and behaviour alike - to target a look and behaviour that isn't final yet. Seems like potential for a lot of wasted work here."Overall the app is really basic, and designed for on the go editing. Microsoft says it's not planning to create an iPad version, noting that tablet users can utilize the Office Web Apps instead. We'd like to see some additional options for editing, including more clear options for text formatting and the ability to insert and change images, but it's a solid attempt for something you're only really going to use for editing in emergencies." A resounding meh can be heard from all over the world."Today, most people are using modern browsers that support the majority of the latest web technologies. Better yet, the usage of legacy browsers is declining significantly and newer browsers stay up to date automatically, which means the leading edge has become mainstream. Given these factors we've decided to retire Chrome Frame, and will cease support and updates for the product in January 2014." Eh.
Member since:
2006-01-12
I think main problem is that Nokia seems to put lot of phones as smart phones when they really aren't (atleast I don't view them same level phones). But in Nokias defence I think whole smartphone statistic was originally greated by competitors, because if look whole cellphone market Nokia is pretty much dominating field outside US. So in order to look bigger in minds of consumers lets make statistic that makes companies like RIM and Apple look bigger than they actually are.
I think there should be only 3 meaningful numbers, amount of sale in units, amount of sales in currency and average price of sold phones(this can be calculated easily by dividing sales per currency with sales per unit).