In case you haven't subscribed to the RSS feed yet, make sure you don't miss this one. I was at Forum Oxford's Future Technologies conference last week, where David Wood from Symbian (architect of Psion's EPOC and much of Symbian OS) was speaking on 'Browsers and Beyond'. Here's his talk, in AAS audio podcast 20, even more appropiate in the light of S60's Widgets announcement, of course.
Read on in the full article.
Steve,
I was in the audience too and though I liked David's talk it was clear and obvious that he was pushing the smartphones angle of course. I disagree with what I see as his idea that smartphones will continue to be this distinct separate section of the mobile market, and that they are necessary for the mobile(2.0) web(2.0) to be experienced properly or to it's full potential. That is true today I think (more so in light of Nokia's S60 widget announcement) but this line of thought cannot lead to a true mass market global adoption of the web on mobile, and therefore is ultimately wrong. Unless of course Symbian release an ultra cheap, ubiquitous version of Symbian OS (that would probably need to be open source to compete with mobile Linux) that runs on every handset out there, and so all phones become smartphones.
As Krisse suggests in his farsighted article "The Last Smartphone" we're ultimately heading for all phones in effect becoming smartphones and vice versa. The lowest common denominator in phones will eventually (and sooner rather than later I suspect) become capable of just about everything you want, software wise, as smart and non-smart phones become one and the same. (Hardware quality and features will differentiate but that is beside the point for this discussion)
So I think David's speech was very much a snapshot view of the situation, that did not apply in the past, and will soon not apply in the future.
Alex
MD,
PhoneThing.com
Intersting comments. I think everybody has a slightly different perspective on all this. Personally, I think all phones are getting smarter and smarter and the distinction between smartphone and phone will gradually cease to exist. That doesn't mean that Symbian OS is doomed, far from it, Symbian's market share is rising and rising, as more and more high street phones appear that run S60. With devices like the ultra-cheap 6120 now announced, this trend can only continue.
I totally agree with you Steve - yes, phones will become smarter. Yes, Symbian will thrive. It would help enormously if Symbian became as easy to use and navigate as series 40 or other "series 40" equivalent phones. They also have a large threat looming in the shape of Mobile Linux, initially from the far east. I'd like to see Symbian succeed but I'll be equally happy seeing Linux succeed. Anything but Microsoft 😉 (though there's no chance of that as they have no understanding of mobile).
The main point is that the low end of the market (all the way down to $20/$30 phones in developing markets) get the features of a smartphone in an easy to use way. This vast market is there for the taking currently - by either Symbian or Linux.
Alex