Ewan gets all financial and peers into his strategic crystal ball, reckoning that the Symbian OS ecosystem will weather the current financial crisis, even it parts of it will get a little 'battered'... He looks at the manufacturers, the big software houses and smaller developers - the challenges and opportunities are slightly different for each.
Read on in the full article.
One very interesting thing is how low Symbian device prices are going, and how quickly: everyone expected the 5800 to be in the 400 to 600 euro range, but it's actually launching at 280 euros plus taxes for the SIM-free version (which probably means zero euros on contract).
And as the article mentions, the timing of the E63 is very fortunate, it provides what seems to be a pretty good brand new QWERTY smartphone with wi-fi for just 200 euros plus taxes SIM-free (which again means zero euros on contract, even on the cheapest monthly fees). And in a year's time that price may have dropped to something like 150 euros plus taxes with no contract.
The rich world's tech media is so obsessed with expensive devices even though it's the cheaper ones that form the bulk of sales globally. Perhaps this recession will get journalists to look more at low and mid range devices? I think they should anyway, as even in boom times most people just buy the cheapest phone in the shop, so the cheapest phones tell you what technologies have a chance of establishing themselves like SMS did. Look at how well Opera Mini is doing even on non-smart phones, it's things like that which create quiet revolutions.
Actually Tzer, its not that cheap. The 5800 has had a recent price bump due to reasons unknown. See here: http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/008/11/5800_may_not_be_as_cheap_as_you_thought.htm
Bear in mind the 279 price is before taxes and is intended as an estimate. I'm not surprised the price is a bit higher in the official Nokia store - happens a fair bit. Nor would I be surprised if the price is up a bit for the pre-Christmas period, but this will be around �280 on the UK high street at the end of January - and that's a very competitive price.
i.e. The 5800 has not had a price bump as such. Though of course restricted availability typical forces retail prices in any market.
Hopefully not then, as I intend to try one out. Although I still cant help feeling that its an unrealistic price for such a device, especially given the hardware its got.
The really overpriced device is the N96.
5800 still very cheap even its price jump to 400 euro...look at HTC and Xperia prices and tell.
as an avid reader and listener of aas over the years
I get a bit fed up with Rafe being very PC
Its as if he knows more than he is lettnig on
know what I mean nodd wink wink
I have to disagree with your thoughts that Mid Tier developers are going to take the "brunt of the damage". Being one of them, we're actually still seeing growth in our direct to consumer sales, especially from our own website, as well as the Nokia Software market. You have to remember, that a huge amount of S60 devices will be found in the emerging economies, such as India - and they aren't going to be hit as hard as countries such as the US or the UK. Not to mention, hardly any of our sales come from the US (although this is a growth area for us right now), the UK being a relatively small country population wise probably only makes it to #5 on our list.
I think the mid tier guys will do just fine, especially considering that we're much more flexible than the big development houses that have much larger overheads, and in some cases investors to appease.
You are correct that the "code to order" segment will do fine - we're seeing more custom development requests than we've ever seen right now.
I think the largest threat to S60 dominance right now is plain and simply the iPhone, and to a smaller degree Blackberry. It's too early to tell how well Android will do, but simply based on the amount of emails we see requesting iPhone versions of our apps (which for the most part aren't even possible on the iPhone platform) it's clear that the platform has gone from zero to 100 very quickly.
Josh
Killer Mobile