As expected, the global phone market has continued to contract, year on year, in the current economic climate, according to BusinessWire and Strategy Analytics, whose data table is reproduced below, though Q3 did show a shorter term rise. There's no breakdown in smartphone numbers as yet, though these are due any day now. Highlight stats from this data are that Nokia's overall market share is down a smidgen, while Samsung's is on the rise. It's still worth noting that Nokia out sold the next three manufacturers in the table though, combined.
Read on in the full article.
Suck on that Nokia knockers.
"Apple, in case you were wondering, are lumped under 'Others' and shipped 7.5 million phones.."
Still my company stopped developing for S60 a year ago because our iPhone apps generates about 30 times more profit. Our Symbian/S60 apps were (and still) successful but considering the money we are making from the App Store... well that is a different dimension.
The same was true in the good old UIQ days. S60 phones outsold UIQ devices significantly but the sales of the UIQ apps were much-much higher (not just our sales, check Handango yardstick). Marketshare doesn't matter, demography is. UIQ phone owners were willing (and had the money) to buy stuff for their phones. And maybe they knew that their UIQ phones were able to run 3rd party stuff because SE propagated this feature since day 1. And, of course, P800 was great, fast and innovative.
I'm sorry to say this but it's almost certain that we will never develop for Symbian again despite the zillions of Symbian devices out there and we are not the only company...
^
If you can show us your apps so that we may know what we are missing using a Nokia phone then maybe we will get a realization that Symbian is doomed
Unregistered's mobile app development company above are seeing the world completely differently from what I am seeing. The massive Symbian market is unignorable.
I think that he must be developing for the cloud cuckoo market.
30x more profitable is just BS.
Unregistered wrote:I think that he must be developing for the cloud cuckoo market.
Or his applications just aren't very good.
Or he is making it up. Those figures are just confounding people who didn't expect them, fact is Nokia outsell the next three combined. Nokia own everybody else.
Look, I'm not complaining here, our Symbian apps were very profitable. One of them was #1 in it's on category on Handango for years, and occasionally we got into the top10 best selling apps on Nokia Softwaremarket. But those glory days has gone. A few years ago Blackberry apps started to outsell (all devices) Symbian apps on Handango (Handango was almost a monopoly then) and now the sales are... well not that significant. You can check Handango yardsticks if you don't believe me. Or just travel back in time 5 years and compare the then quite vivid Symbian software ecosystem to today's still water. It seems like Symbian developers are not raking in money... However, I can't tell anything about OVI store because we didn't bother converting our once quite profitable Nokia Softwaremarket account.
"fact is Nokia outsell the next three combined. Nokia own everybody else. "
Doesn't matter. This is why I bought up the UIQ example in my first post. OK, you can argue that you don't care about 3rd party developers, but a platform without apps is a dead platform.
@Unregistered (the developer 😊 )
What app did your company develop? Just curious, if you are getting 30x more hits using the apple store, perhaps putting your app on the ovi store might make for more hits?
Maybe you are right but *in my opinion* it doesn't worth because the process is not very easy/fast/cheap. We are too busy porting our stuff to Android 😊
One more thing: I do hope I'm wrong with this Nokia/Symbian thing because despite the cold climate and darkness (and the fact that Finlandia vodka is the most expensive in Finland... 😊 ) I kind of like Finland and Finnish people. I love to be there. And Nokia is very important for their economy.
Unregistered wrote:"fact is Nokia outsell the next three combined. Nokia own everybody else. "
Doesn't matter. This is why I bought up the UIQ example in my first post. OK, you can argue that you don't care about 3rd party developers, but a platform without apps is a dead platform.
It does matter to me, because I sell far more apps on Symbian than anything else. You can't ignore that many million potential customers unless you are a very short sighted business man.
You marketing must be broken. I wouldn't just stick stuff through Handango and hope, because Handango don't market themselves well and they want too big a slice of the pie for doing f*** all. There are far better methods, you have to think beyond Europe. I'm not going to give too much else away though.
I am also porting to Android,I expect to do OK out of this for the next 12 months. There is absolutely no point wasting time with iPhone apps though, they are saturated. It's like trying to sell pebbles on the beach.
PS: Handango has never been a monopoly.
"I wouldn't just stick stuff through Handango and hope, because Handango don't market themselves well"
Our apps are/were available on Handango, Softwaremarket, Motricity/Mobile2Day, and our own PayPal web shop. And as I mentioned previously, they did quite well. But lately, the numbers told me that it doesn't worth to bother about OVI Store. Maybe I'm wrong here but I can afford it because our BlackBerry and especially our iPhone app sales are skyrocketing.
I agree that the 'noise' on the App Store is getting higher and higher and Apple is a control freak and well, we don't trust Apple, quite often they screw up their partners etc. this is why we are busy porting our apps to Android.
Interesting how none of these 'developers' will tell us who they are, and what apps they developed.
However I do agree with many of their points, the mass market really doesn't know what Symbian is, nokia's symbian devices are seen as phones not as smartphones. Symbian needs to be promoted as Android is. When you buy an Android device you know it is Android.
How many Symbian geeks will still be using the platform in a year, many long time users have switched to other platforms, many more I expect will jump ship to maemo when the N900 comes out.
I think AAS' comments are either being facile or are pure bravado. All ships rise in a growing market. There is business case study after business case study of market incumbents that sat around an watched their market share slowly get eaten by new entrants. The trend of shrinking market share (especially at the high end) is fairly apparent.
Nokia won the first phone war convincingly. However its a new battle and Nokia appears too unfocused to win this time.
Lark
Ratkat wrote:
How many Symbian geeks will still be using the platform in a year, many long time users have switched to other platforms, many more I expect will jump ship to maemo when the N900 comes out.
I doubt anyone much cares what the geeks do. The geeks are a micro-fraction of the Symbian market.
The N900 isn't going to be a massive seller. It's a chunky bulky object that will have a battery life of a few nanoseconds and this will count against it when normal humans compare it to devices like the Pre.
Ratkat wrote:Interesting how none of these 'developers' will tell us who they are, and what apps they developed.
.
Simple common sense will tell you why it's not advisable to go shouting opinions around on web forums whilst apparently representing a business. The are due processes to follow and I wouldn't expect a savvy business person to communicate officialy in a forum post.
Unregistered wrote:Nokia won the first phone war convincingly. However its a new battle and Nokia appears too unfocused to win this time. Lark
Win what?
And what do you mean this time?
do you expect Nokia to fall into third place for shipments in the next quarter, or still be shipping more than everybody else?
No surprise here.
Most people seem to think that the US and UK is all that matters in this world. Well they need to travel more - India China and Africa are growing mobile markets with Africa growing more than the rest.
All the talk of Apps is pure drivel. Symbian OS or rather s60 (clunky yes) still has the best and most fully featured PIM suite and comes with features oput of the box than other platforms.
I find that recently, one of the top apps in the iPhone app store is one that lets you send files over bluetooth. Imagine that ?
I admit that Symbian OS lacks the glamour and media attention of the other contenders. This plucky OS is not going away; Symbian foundation features will keep it fighting fit.
Thanks
Unregistered wrote:Look, I'm not complaining here, our Symbian apps were very profitable. One of them was #1 in it's on category on Handango for years, and occasionally we got into the top10 best selling apps on Nokia Softwaremarket. But those glory days has gone. A few years ago Blackberry apps started to outsell (all devices) Symbian apps on Handango (Handango was almost a monopoly then) and now the sales are... well not that significant. You can check Handango yardsticks if you don't believe me. Or just travel back in time 5 years and compare the then quite vivid Symbian software ecosystem to today's still water. It seems like Symbian developers are not raking in money... However, I can't tell anything about OVI store because we didn't bother converting our once quite profitable Nokia Softwaremarket account."fact is Nokia outsell the next three combined. Nokia own everybody else. "
Doesn't matter. This is why I bought up the UIQ example in my first post. OK, you can argue that you don't care about 3rd party developers, but a platform without apps is a dead platform.
No please no - Apps is just a fad.
There is only one killer app and thats the browser. All a phone needs really is a standards compliant browser (webKit), a good PIM suite, one or two simple games, goiod security features, ability to send information over a short distance, SMS and voice communication of course, good camera, sound quality and good media software etc.
Just watch the E72 fly off the shelves and then come back and tell me that Symbian a dead platform.
"There is only one killer app and thats the browser."
If this is true, then Symbian is doomed. Why should I buy Symbian device when other platforms has as good or better browser?
"No please no - Apps is just a fad."
Only apps can bind people to a platform. This is why microsoft is still huge.
What is really happening is the hype surrounding iPhone is stimulating interest in apps in all platforms, including Symbian owners. This goes for both sales and sales led development.
Symbian app activity is steadily increasing.
You need to be fast moving though, OS's keep evolving. Android 2 is already out as an SDK, so how long has it been and we've already had 1.5, 1.6 Donut and 2.0 Eclair.
Nokia seem to be losing ground now days an its there own fault,as all the others are releasing more attractive an featured mobiles,they used to be the ones that would release the better featured mobiles but 2009 as not been a good year for Nokia,an i hope in 2010 we something more outstanding mobiles from Nokia,as they are way behind in the camera featured mobiles an hope the strategy at Nokia changes quickly
Unregistered wrote:Nokia seem to be losing ground now days an its there own fault,as all the others are releasing more attractive an featured mobiles,they used to be the ones that would release the better featured mobiles but 2009 as not been a good year for Nokia,an i hope in 2010 we something more outstanding mobiles from Nokia,as they are way behind in the camera featured mobiles an hope the strategy at Nokia changes quickly
Way behind? Name me the best 5mp and 8mp cameras so far..Most probably the N82 & N86 respectively??? If they ever come up with a 12mp camera, anybody willing to bet against them coming up with the best 12mp ever on a phone?