Gartner's latest survey of the the mobile marketplace shows the growth of smart-phones continuing, with a worldwide increase in the order of 16%, but with a particularly large jump in the US market. Total Q2 sales were 32.2 million, and reflecting the recently released Symbian figures, Nokia retained the largest market share (47.5%), but with slower growth than others in the market.
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Put in 5320, n96, n85, n79, e71, e66, blackberry bold, innov8, Zinc....................................................................
I am wondering how other companies can incorporate multi-touch in their handsets without violating Apple's patents on multi-touch technology.
Nokia themselves admitted recently that the delayed launch of the 6220 Classic had harmed their 2008 smartphone sales. They didn't say 6220, but they did say it was a greatly delayed mid-range S60, and that's the only one that fits the bill.
The 6220 is STILL not available properly in Finland and many other countries, and the recent withdrawal of its firmware from the update system implies the root of the problem is in the firmware.
I am wondering how other companies can incorporate multi-touch in their handsets without violating Apple's patents on multi-touch technology.
First of all, multi-touch is mainly a novelty. In the real world most people want a phone interface that works with the phone held in one hand, and there's physically no way to use multi-touch in those circumstances.
But secondly, Apple didn't invent multi-touch. Multi-touch was already in use by other companies before the iPhone, for example Philips had a touchscreen-based electronic board game a few years ago which allowed multiple playing pieces to interact with the board at once.
Thirdly, Apple themselves had to bow down to Creative as Creative had successfully patented the hierarchical music player index. It didn't mean the end of the iPod though, the two companies simply came to a licensing agreement and everything carried on as before. Creative was a bit richer, Apple was a bit poorer, but beyond that the impact was minimal.
Will Nokia introduce a touchscreen smartphone by end of this year? It is going to be very tough for Nokia to achieve that with its S60 UI which in my opinion is inferior than Symbian UIQ.
It seems to me that Apple has already set a very high benchmark for other device manufacturer to catch up if they can...