Which three heavyweights will the smartphone market support?

Blackberry has to be third presently, but I think Android will take that spot sooner rather than later as they release cheaper devices later this year.

The guy said players not neccesary OS. More and more the OS become less relevant. Provided integrated services and product capabilities are the key here. Already several companies are running their own frontend over an OS. I.e. Samsung and HTC. And Nokia with the N900 ovi maps, share, mail and files will be multiplatform (Linux, S60). It is similar with cars. Most car brands have different types of engines in their product matrix (diesel, petrol and hybrid). The same will occure with smartphones. We will choose the OS best compatible with our IT/networking preferences and needs and go for a certain setup and brandsolutions to our smartphone needs.

The two current major players are definitively Nokia and Samsung, Apple/RIM/Palm seem to be vying for 3rd place if you look at the level of the integrated services and product capabilities for their smartphones. Even Volvo and Saab sell diesel engines in their cars nowadays.

As such AAS to be forced to expand into other territories or vanish within the next 3 year.

If a market can only acommodate three big players, the next question you need to ask is: which markets are there.

Ik think it is reasonable to say that there isn't a single global smartphone market: handset subsidies and operator dominance is different in in different geographies and cultures, with Europe, North America, Japan, China being different markets because of those differences. Which markets there are exactly is a matter of debate, but there surely isn't yet a global unified smartphone market, like there is for the PC for instance.

With a number of different markets, its is also clear that each market has different mayor players. North America: Apple, RIM, Windows Mobile. Europe: Nokia, RIM, Apple. Etc. Android isn't a mayor player anywhere, and neither is Palm.

If the smartphone market is going the same way as the PC market and become a single global market, then we can see which of the current crop will come on top. My guess is Nokia, Apple and RIM. Apple with a strategy of highly desirable, highly priced phones, Nokia with a strategy of something for everybody and RIM focussing on the enterprise. In car terms, think Apple as BMW, Nokia as Toyota/Lexus or Volkswagen/Audi/Porsche and RIM as Mercedes.

svdwal wrote:. In car terms, think Apple as BMW, Nokia as Toyota/Lexus or Volkswagen/Audi/Porsche and RIM as Mercedes.

I find it hard to equate Apple with BMW when Apple have only a single phone, whilst BMW sell a complete range of cars, including little 1 series, 3, 5, sporting 6 Series, a luxury 7 series and the Z cars plus the Mini and RR marques. Then across each range of cars BMW produce a choice of engine types and sizes. Add on to that the M variants.

I am looking for a car company with a single innovative product that moves thing on a bit, whilst being still comparitively limited and ridiculously expensive. I can only think of another Californian company - Tesla.

Unregistered wrote:I find it hard to equate Apple with BMW when Apple have only a single phone, whilst BMW sell a complete range of cars, including little 1 series, 3, 5, sporting 6 Series, a luxury 7 series and the Z cars plus the Mini and RR marques. Then across each range of cars BMW produce a choice of engine types and sizes. Add on to that the M variants.

I am looking for a car company with a single innovative product that moves thing on a bit, whilst being still comparitively limited and ridiculously expensive. I can only think of another Californian company - Tesla.

I forgot the BMW X series.

The other thing to mention with Tesla is all the media time they have been getting.

I wonder if filtering things down a bit more would lend prospective to the debate. If we were to look at only high-end phones I think the race would be much tighter. Nokia would be much closer to Apple, with third place wide open. The iTunes, Mobile Mac OS X, ease of use are a strong combination that Nokia is flailing about trying to achieve. To date, love them or hate them, Apple has changed the way people view mobile data. Nokia, which had a hand initially is no where to be found and is playing catch up. With all else being equal, I wonder if Nokia would be #1 if they did not already have a large but eroding lead? It is pretty amazing what Apple has done in the space of two and a half years. What makes Apple work is that what they do release to market is head and shoulders better quality, and functionality wise than what Nokia releases. With every single Nokia phone that hits the market, everyone knows that the phone will immediately need an upgrade while for the most part, Apple tests their products extensively. If the battle is to be lost, Nokia will lose it not because of hardware, but because of the OS and the fact that most people are tired of being beta testers for the lack of real quality testing by Nokia.

S60 is on the down, and it's only going to continue that way unless it is seriously revamped. The problem is that up until now, the people who have used and enjoyed S60, are those who know a bit about computers, and have an interest in making it work - basically a bit geeky. It's been like this since the first smartphones were announced. There is another huge group of S60 users who aren't at all aware of the capabilities of their phones (I know a huge number personally myself).

When the Iphone came out, it was seen as a revolution in mobile phones by everyone except the geeky S60 users, who'd enjoyed web browsing, gps, 3rd party apps for years.

Then came the N97 - apparently Nokia's answer to the iphone. This attracted a completely new market of people who want the functionality of the iphone, but don't want an iphone. They then discover that S60 was never a hugely intuitive operating system, and suddenly symbian (and yes, it is symbian that gets the stick for it) is the poor-man's OS.

So, back to my original point - symbian needs an overhaul so that everyone else can use it.

I don't know if Nokia are going to do that, or if they will invest their time into Maemo instead. I notice though that Nokia have bought QT - the programming display language (I think that's its name, but I'm not a programmer, so I'm not sure) which help created loads of software on PC/Mac/Linux, and is now licensed for symbian, which means that it shouldn't be too hard to port the maemo user interface between symbian and linux.

My top three prediction in 5 years will be:

Iphone
Android
Maemo

Duncan.

I'm going to be controversial here - I think the iPhone's ecosystem is horribly fragile and likely to be dead in the water in terms of the mass market within a couple of years. Sure, it'll remain a niche device with a hardcore following but that's all.

Now, first things first, I think the iPhone is an exceptionally good phone and has given the market a kick in the pants that was badly needed. However, it's now late 2009 and we have the first really comparative devices in that class of device (high end touchscreen) coming out - the HTC Hero with it's new firmware, for example as well as the Samsung Galaxy. Interestingly these devices are Android powered, not Symbian and it's clear that Symbian - and Nokia in particular are behind the curve in this market. However it's also clear that their strategy is very different to Apple's and HTC's and that they have the scale to catch up.

Apple's undoing will be its restriction on software and hardware. Whilst it's great just now I don't think they realise that the mobile phone market is notoriously fickle, fashions change and that its competitors are catching up very, very quickly. The App store was miles ahead of anything else when it came out but that lead is fading and by 2010 I don't think there will be any real differentiation.

My predictions for 2010 are:

1) Nokia/Symbian
2) RIM/Blackberry (people forget just how huge the corporate sector is and that RIM have been adding individual subscribers at an incredible rate - far in excess of the iPhone)
3) Android/HTC/Samsung (but climbing very fast)

Duncan J Murray wrote:S60 is on the down, and it's only going to continue that way unless it is seriously revamped. The problem is that up until now, the people who have used and enjoyed S60, are those who know a bit about computers, and have an interest in making it work - basically a bit geeky. It's been like this since the first smartphones were announced. There is another huge group of S60 users who aren't at all aware of the capabilities of their phones (I know a huge number personally myself).

When the Iphone came out, it was seen as a revolution in mobile phones by everyone except the geeky S60 users, who'd enjoyed web browsing, gps, 3rd party apps for years.

Then came the N97 - apparently Nokia's answer to the iphone. This attracted a completely new market of people who want the functionality of the iphone, but don't want an iphone. They then discover that S60 was never a hugely intuitive operating system, and suddenly symbian (and yes, it is symbian that gets the stick for it) is the poor-man's OS.

So, back to my original point - symbian needs an overhaul so that everyone else can use it.

I don't know if Nokia are going to do that, or if they will invest their time into Maemo instead. I notice though that Nokia have bought QT - the programming display language (I think that's its name, but I'm not a programmer, so I'm not sure) which help created loads of software on PC/Mac/Linux, and is now licensed for symbian, which means that it shouldn't be too hard to port the maemo user interface between symbian and linux.

My top three prediction in 5 years will be:

Iphone
Android
Maemo

Duncan.

Nokia have (up til now) almost viewed Maemo as a Skunkworks project - its never had much time, and had a lot of geeks doing the development in their spare time (look at the HE firmware variants).

I believe that the purchase of QT may involve UI changes on Symbian.

The iPhone was viewed as moving the game on by people who don't want to think about how to use their phones. Not that its bad by any stretch of the imagination, its pretty darned slick - but you've got to have serious mental problems if you actually think that S60 has a bad UI. Its consistent, ridiculously easy to use.

S60 is going to be revamped - look at the Symbian Foundation.

Symbian is still by far and away the best mobile operating system, and the only major player that has ever been designed from the ground up for mobile usage. You could say that Windows mobile was designed for mobile usage, but its grown out of Windows CE, which was always an abortion of UI elements, and after 6 major revisions, its barely changed.

I think the big 3 will be :

Symbian
iPhone
Android

Although Blackberry will always keep its niche as a corporate e-mail device. But I can't ever view it as a smartphone.

Unregistered wrote:I find it hard to equate Apple with BMW when Apple have only a single phone, whilst BMW sell a complete range of cars, including little 1 series, 3, 5, sporting 6 Series, a luxury 7 series and the Z cars plus the Mini and RR marques. Then across each range of cars BMW produce a choice of engine types and sizes. Add on to that the M variants.

Nokia hasn't the breadth of the Volkswagen group or Toyota either, the number of models is not the point. The point is the way these companies segment their market. Apple, Nokia and RIM compete in the high end market, just like BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Nokia and RIM compete in the business market, just like Mercedes and Volkswagen with their vans. BMW tries to own the ultimate drivability experience, just like Apple tries to own (and currently does) the ultimate usability experience. Both BMW and Apple are (coming) under pressure from Audi and Nokia in their respective owned experiences. Etc. I also don't think that iPhones are as good as phones as BMW's are as good as cars. But if I look at Apple's computers, I have no doubt that the iPhone will be as good a phone as BMW is as a car.

There are more differences, there isn't a North American car manufacturer here, while two of the smartphone makers are North American based, for instance.

And all these car brands have their loyal supporters, who wouldn't dream of driving something else 😉

"All the talk that there is a victor in the smartphone market is just that. Talk."

Absolutely. So what exactly are we doing here, besides adding more words to the talking?

Interesting question.

I think Symbian will still be there.

I think Apple will still be there and popular in a few years time but will it be a big player? At the end of the day they are one company with one product.

RIM currently is definitely a big player and is very popular with business. However I'm not sure what advantage their proprietary OS will give them in the long term. It would not surprise me if they eventually elect to start using one of the other OS's mentioned.

Android is a good candidate but still to prove itself. It seems a bit limited at the moment but Google could open the platform up more to make use of its Linux core.

The other Linux OS's cant be ignored. Maemo could well do well but probably in its next incarnation after the N900 as I suspect the phone functionality will need improving to increase its appeal. Also of interest is Nokia's collaberation with Intel. Perhaps there could be some link up with Moblin.

There is another player that keeps getting overlooked. Its a bit of a dark horse but LiMo is backed by many of the big players in the telecoms industry. They have quite a few phones already (mainly in Japan) but that may change soon with rumors of this Vodafone Samsung device.

svdwal wrote:Nokia hasn't the breadth of the Volkswagen group or Toyota either, the number of models is not the point. The point is the way these companies segment their market. Apple, Nokia and RIM compete in the high end market, just like BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Nokia and RIM compete in the business market, just like Mercedes and Volkswagen with their vans. BMW tries to own the ultimate drivability experience, just like Apple tries to own (and currently does) the ultimate usability experience. Both BMW and Apple are (coming) under pressure from Audi and Nokia in their respective owned experiences. Etc. I also don't think that iPhones are as good as phones as BMW's are as good as cars. But if I look at Apple's computers, I have no doubt that the iPhone will be as good a phone as BMW is as a car.

And all these car brands have their loyal supporters, who wouldn't dream of driving something else 😉

The problem is that BMW biggest selling products, like entry level 3 Series (320d) give a lie to the Ultimate Driving Experience claim, and are in fact (apart from fuel consumption) pretty ordinary, average machines, with limited space. Real driving machines like the M3 are much rarer.

The one real similarity between BMW and iPhones that I would agree with, is the generally opinion of their drivers/users are not too well respected.

Duncan J Murray wrote:S60 is on the down, and it's only going to continue that way unless it is seriously revamped. The problem is that up until now, the people who have used and enjoyed S60, are those who know a bit about computers, and have an interest in making it work - basically a bit geeky. It's been like this since the first smartphones were announced. There is another huge group of S60 users who aren't at all aware of the capabilities of their phones (I know a huge number personally myself).

.

The traditional smartphone user (symbian) was never a geek, if you see a geek as a person that is turned on by the gadgets and technology. The symbian user is the person who likes to use the phone as a PDA, principally a calendar, to-do lists, note taking etc. Normal built in stuff. The email and web browsing capabilities are an exptension of that. The vast majority of users were slef-organisers. Not coders, improvisers and people really into how their phone does stuff.

This is shifting though, because every self-organiser I know seems to want a Blackberry, Symbian users tend to be people who don't know they are Symbian users and just see the Nokia devices as simply a phone that does a bit more stuff. iPhone users are people that are impressed by the way ift works on the surface, and like the entertainment capabilities and associations.

Any self-respecting geek seems to be not bothered by phones, they like the little netbooks and some of them have iPhones because of some of wierd and wonderful apps that normal people wouldn't be impressed by.

Hello Ewan,
In marketing and corporate life-cycle, this is sometimes referred to as the rule of three.
Three presences demonstrating dominate traits will typically own the majority of a given population:

- One presence clearly ascending
- One presence fairly static though typically aging
- One presence in decline

Current world-wide stats for over-all smart phones have Nokia/Symbian atop though in gentle decline.
While Apple may have significant opportunity for failure, they're clearly ascending.
Third? That position shows larger regional differences but Palm (even after the recent OS refresh), BB and WinMo devices demonstrate traits often found in that position.

Breaking it down by region often changes the name of the players but not their characteristics.

Additionally, the rule of three does not preclude market share owned by the very best offerings, boutique (often vertical) offerings or the worst.
It simply looks more like a bell curve with the largest three tending to occupy the space somewhere in the 30% to 90% range depending on how you read the theory and/or numbers.

Popularity will always be a transient spot so Apple? You bet they'll burn but inertia is going to keep that train rolling for a while.
Nokia/Symbian is due for a transition into decline but how far for how long is entirely up for grabs.
Who will take over the ascendant slot as Apple morphs to Nok's current position?
With Android new and Palm already into their refresh, I'd say one of those two with the edge going to a Samsung/HTC Android offering. Palm is just a ghostly paler version of Apple at this point with a dedicated OS and HW platform.
BB has to go through a little more pain before we see them really break out - again with the dedicated OS and HW platform.
Windows Mobile, while a darling of embedded devices, is a dark pick because of the age of the 6.x line and the potential letdown of WinMo 7.
My five year picks in a non crises market?
Android (ascending with multiple vendor offerings), Apple (transitioning into the second, somewhat stale state) and
The third slot on the down elevator?
A dog fight between Nok/Symbian and BB. The winner here may turn it around based on the OS refresh.
The brighter picture is in the very best and boutique market space.
I think Meamo has a place near the top.

One thing to consider beyond the emotional "Who is best" bragging rights;

It usually does not suck to be in third place on this list.

Whoever sits in that seat is typically making huge amounts of money selling millions of units.