According to Gartner, worldwide mobile phone sales are down about 6% from the same time last year; yet the volume of smartphone sales has increased almost 30% in the same time frame. No doubt the uptick in smartphone sales is due to the release of cool new devices like the iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre, and the various Android phones coming to market. As expected, Nokia remains king of the hill in terms of both regular and smart phones, though sales of their fancy new N97 have been extremely weak. Compare that with sales of Apple’s iPhone which enjoyed 500% growth in shipments! RIM is number two, yadda yadda yadda.
Symbian
by Scott Merrill on August 13, 2009
by Peter Ha on July 6, 2009
About that Android-based Nokia touch-screen device the Guardian was squawking about; it’s not true, says a Nokia rep by the name of Joseph Gallo.
re: Nokia’s rumored Android phone and you can quote me on this: We (Nokia) are NOT making an Android smartphone. Symbian is our platform of choice when making smartphones.
by Devin Coldewey on June 16, 2009
Apparently they’re not too worried over there among the Symbianites. Despite growing pressure from ever-more-inexpensive smartphones, they don’t seem to care much about competing. Maybe it’s overconfidence from years on the top, or maybe they have an ace up their sleeve. I think it’s a little of both; they don’t think they need an ace, because they’ve seen what everyone else’s ace seems to do when it goes up against the iPhone: break.
Perhaps Nokia is secure in their belief that they don’t need to compete with the iPhone, webOS, and Android — at least, not yet.
by Matt Burns on June 9, 2009
We knew it was coming and sure enough, the Nokia N97 is now available for $700 at Nokia Stores everywhere. 700 bones will net you Nokia’s flagship touchscreen device, unlocked and ready to make iPhones jealous everywhere. Well, maybe not the last part, but it’s still a solid device and worthy successor to the N95/N96.
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by Jeremy Kessel on March 13, 2009
According to Gartner’s final 2008 “Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System” stats, reigning mobile OS champ, Symbian, remains on top of the world with a whopping 52.4% majority market share. Although that number is down over 11% from 2007, Symbian still maintains a healthy 35.8% lead over its nearest competitor, Research In Motion.
by Jeremy Kessel on February 24, 2009
One thousand nine hundred ninety-two – what a year: Bush, Sr. booted in the Japanese Prime Minister’s lap; Boris Yeltsin announced that Russia would no longer (publicly) target the United States with nuclear weapons; the Washington Redskins (Go Hogs!) beat the sad Buffalo Bills in Super Bowl XXVI; Microsoft released Windows 3.1, complete with Minesweeper; EuroDisney opened in France; Wayne’s World and Basic Instinct hit the silver screen (among other “classics“); the Mall of America was built; William Jefferson Clinton was elected 42nd POTUS; and, last but not least, Dr. Dre released The Chronic.
by Matt Burns on February 16, 2009
Huawei has big plans for 2009. The OEM handset maker plans to launch two to three different Android phones and maybe even a Symbian and LiMo handset all this year. Even with the global economic doom and gloom? Wowzers!
by Dave Freeman on January 27, 2009
Ah for those thrilling days of yesteryear, when gaming was 8-bit, and the world was blocky. If you thrill at the thought of having a portable Commodore 64, and you have a Symbian phone, then your dreams are coming true.
by Matt Burns on January 14, 2009
The smartphone market used to be reserved just to business types and nerds, but now everyone wants an iPhone or Palm Pre; Dell likely wants a piece of that action and might have a smartphone ready. It could be unveiled as soon next month at 3GSM or the Mobile World Congress. But does Dell have the goods needed to make a killer smartphone that stands out from the rest?
by Doug Aamoth on December 12, 2008
MIT professor Hal Abelson started today’s final presentation for the school’s “Building Mobile Applications” class by saying, “A course like this couldn’t have existed ten years ago… maybe not even a year ago. Courses like this right now are unique, but in two years they’ll be completely ordinary.”
What’s extraordinary is that on top of a full college course-load at one of the most challenging schools in the country, these groups of students built fully working mobile applications for Windows Mobile, Android, and Symbian devices while mentors from the likes of Google, Nokia, Bank of America, and Microsoft oversaw their progress.
by Scott Merrill on December 11, 2008
It’s old news that Nokia bought Symbian, the software used to power many mobile phones today. The deal finally closed, and now the Symbian Foundation is officially in charge of Symbian development. There are currently ten participants in the Symbian Foundation, though membership is open to anyone with $1,500 to spare. The Symbian Foundation has big plans for the platform. Read on for a glimpse, and some thoughts on what the future might hold.
by Doug Aamoth on July 31, 2008
The Nokia E66 will be hitting the U.S. in the third quarter with an unsubsidized price of $500. While that price may sound like it’s a bit (or a lot) on the high side, the phone actually has a fair number of tricks up its sleeve and will likely appeal mostly to corporate users who may never see the price tag to begin with.
Lest you think this device is all business, there’s a unique (and perhaps a bit gimmicky) “switch mode” that allows you to basically keep all of your work-related stuff in one profile on the phone throughout the day and then switch to a more lifestyle-centric profile at night, complete with a darker theme, friendlier icons, and that kind of stuff. Picture an employee for a large company getting in the elevator at the end of the day, loosening the tie and switching phone modes before getting into a cab to go wait in line for some new overpriced, dark, loud, small-portions restaurant.
by Teresa von Fuchs on July 22, 2008
As thrilling as leaked photos usually are, it looks like the screen shots of Nokia’s S60 Touch UI have so far failed to excite. Since the photos apparently weren’t taken from a device, but from the PC-based theme editor, its hard to say what revolution Touch will really bring to S60. But from here it looks like the new Touch UI will be pretty similar to the regular UI, only with a few bigger buttons. A preview is still always appreciated, thanks Mobile Royale for the screen shots.
by Teresa von Fuchs on July 22, 2008
Efficiency was the force behind the recent decision to take Symbian open source, and not concerns about competition from Google’s Andriod or mobile Linux, John Forsyth, vice president of strategy for Symbian, reportedly said at the Open Mobile Exchange conference in Portland, Ore. Forsyth said that despite Symbian’s 60% market share, lack of research and development efficiency, “was one of our biggest barriers to growth.”
Forsyth also said that Symbian wants to be the face of a mobile-specific open-source community, which doesn’t really exist yet.
Symbian also seems prepared for the pain that can accompany growing; Forsyth finished by saying, “I’m going to wrap up by stating the unbelievably obvious: that we’re going to make a lot of mistakes as we do this.”
by Nicholas Deleon on July 22, 2008
A British cellphone carrier has confirmed that the Nokia N96 will be released there in September. This isn’t a rumor, or from some guy who knows some guy or anything, but comes from a “Christmas in July” event held all the way in the UK. The mobile operator is 3, by the way.
At current exchange rates, Americans should be prepared to fork over quite a bit of cash to nab this one, whenever it’s more widely available.
And really, it couldn’t be any worse than the iPhone 3G, right? They (Peter and John) tell me the battery lasts less than a day before you have to charge it, which is hardly ideal.
by John Biggs on July 7, 2008
Nokia’s N-Series is an odd amalgam of high-tech and low, melding some of the best smartphone technology with phones that haven’t changed much since the first proto-Finns heaved their bark boats onto the rocky beaches of Soumenlinna and began fashioning crude cellphones out of cork and shale.
Much has changed about the Nokia line over the years but all of the phones are refreshingly familiar. Whether they are clamshells, candybars, or sliders the buttons are always in the same place, the maddening power switch is still at the top, and the old menu-asterisk unlock code is still in force, ensuring your phone will never unlock itself under any circumstances. Nokia knows how to make good phones.
Sadly, however, the latest N-series N78 didn’t quite grab me the way its older siblings like the N95 did. Was it the form factor? The speed? The size?
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by John Biggs on June 25, 2008
Livin’ on the high end.
TheRegister makes an interesting point: Symbian is dead. Once Nokia bought and decided to open-source it you can be certain that it will end up in low-end, developing market phones and not any of Nokia’s flagship models. It can’t simply because the OS and UI are twenty years old and far too klunky to offer any wow to a jaded populace.
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by John Biggs on June 24, 2008
Open operating systems, for most folks, means that the operating system is essentially free. The average computer user knows that Linux is free, as in beer, while Windows costs money. The case is the same for mobile OSes although, until very recently, the idea of purposely using an open OS has been a fairly nebulous concept.
To be clear open mobile OSes have been around for years, starting most prominently with the QTopia project that ran on ARM hardware found in many PDAs and phones. The Linux kernel plays well with almost any platform, making it ideal for small installations.
With the announcement of an “open” version of Symbian coming soon, let’s take a look at what open means to the average consumer.
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by Doug Aamoth on June 24, 2008
Nokia announced today that it “plans to acquire the remaining shares of Symbian Limited that Nokia does not already own” and then open the Symbian Foundation along with other device manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson, Motorola, AT&T, LG, and others. The foundation will be open to all developers and "will provide a unified platform with common UI framework” under the royalty-free Eclipse Public License.
The Symbian operating system is currently the most widely used in the world, found on over 50% of “smart mobile device” handsets. This move to open source will place Symbian in competition with Google’s Android platform and the LiMo platform, although only “selected components” will be available at the Symbian Foundation’s launch. The rest of the platform will by fully opened up over the next two years.
by John Biggs on June 7, 2008
Microsoft Watch has a good examination of the slow improvement in market share for Windows Mobile. Their assessment? The interface is hampering sales. Duh!
Symbian is, of course, the number one smartphone OS in the world simply because Nokia runs them exclusively and Nokia is doing pretty well (14 million Nokia phones shipped in Q1 2008 with 18.4 million Symbian phones shipped) while RIM is a distant second (4.3 million). Windows is at 3.86 and the “everyone else” is in the 2 million range. Palm is at 657 thousand, a sad place to be for the gentle giant.
That Symbian, something completely divorced from Microsoft, can eat Microsoft’s lunch is a damning situation. Unless the new versions start looking – and working – like Microsoft spent more than 40 man hours in in back in 1998, they’re in trouble.
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