Coming on the eve of Apple's big tablet release and Nokia's Q4 09 results announcement, IDC gathered all their numbers, analysts and (ahem) runes and produced a forecast for the smartphone market in 2013. Unusually, for an American data analysis firm, there's surprising understanding of the worldwide scene, with the headline stat being that the smartphone market will exceed 390 million units per year by 2013, with Symbian holding on to its world marketshare lead over the next three years. Quotes from the IDC press release below.
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Of course these accredited professional analysts are all wrong because there are keyboard warriors posting "Symbian is dead" on AAS forums.
I love it when these people are forced to eat their own ****.
Sure, Symbian maybe ahead, but it will be by not a very large margin.I've been using Symbian and frankly, I don't understand why these people keep releasing feature packs and not concentrate on building a whole new OS from scratch. This laze has showed results in 'touch' UI S60 phones, none of them feels uniform all the way.
And keep in mind,these (IDC)are just projections, Symbian might not change,the competition will.
Still,being one of the people who stood by Symbian, unless they make an OS from the ground up, they(Symbian) are going to fail miserably in the upcoming years. About 'open ness',check out the video of a guy running Android on his Maemo N900.This is openness, not the ability to install whatever app you want on top of the OS, but the ability to utilise hardware resources the exact way you want
Another OS from the ground up? Which succesful smartphone manufacturer has done that? Palm? Surely they are an existing OS (MAC, linux) that have been adapted. This has the advantage of being a familiar environment for coders to easiliy adapt to.
Symbian is an OS designed for portable devices/limited resource from the ground up and consequently has the advantage of lightness despite being unfamilar to new developers.
It remains to be seen whether Symbian rid of S60 and with a QT enabled programming system will be a success, but the low level Symbian OS is as good as anything in most errors (esotericness being the exception) and is not in need of a redesign.
raffmonster wrote: About 'open ness',check out the video of a guy running Android on his Maemo N900.This is openness, not the ability to install whatever app you want on top of the OS, but the ability to utilise hardware resources the exact way you want
Yes, because everybody buys a phone so they can hack about with it right?
raffmonster wrote:Sure, Symbian maybe ahead, but it will be by not a very large margin.I've been using Symbian and frankly, I don't understand why these people keep releasing feature packs and not concentrate on building a whole new OS from scratch. This laze has showed results in 'touch' UI S60 phones, none of them feels uniform all the way.
Re-vamping symbian UI is one of the things that is been attempted through the symbian foundation now. Whether that happens or not and how successful they are at the effort is something that only time will be able to verify.
raffmonster wrote:Sure, Symbian maybe ahead, but it will be by not a very large margin.I've been using Symbian and frankly, I don't understand why these people keep releasing feature packs and not concentrate on building a whole new OS from scratch. This laze has showed results in 'touch' UI S60 phones, none of them feels uniform all the way.[QUOTE=raffmonster;455547]
And keep in mind,these (IDC)are just projections,
Yes and.....
raffmonster wrote:Sure, Symbian maybe ahead, but it will be by not a very large margin.
Keep in mind, this (raffmonster) is just speculation.
Symbian does not need to be 'redesigned from the ground up', unless you're mistaken about what 'from the ground up' actually is in this context. Do you mean the UI needs a major rethink? Then you're right, which is why it's happening. If you mean anything else then you're sadly mistaken.
Brendan Donegan wrote:Symbian does not need to be 'redesigned from the ground up', unless you're mistaken about what 'from the ground up' actually is in this context. Do you mean the UI needs a major rethink? Then you're right, which is why it's happening. If you mean anything else then you're sadly mistaken.
The UI needs an overhaul, each and every component is showing its age. In regards to OSes ,I meant a rethink of UI features and abilities(such as touch).Optimizations for 3-D acceleration in the interface itself(If a device has 3D chip,It should show in the UI).
As I said, you're regarding the UI as the 'whole OS'. This is wrong. The UI is getting an overhaul, which it does need. I totally disagree that 3d effects should be used in the UI. It's just eye candy, get over it.
Symbian, as all the rage in forums that is critically criticized. It is just a small percentage of the market. Not all people are active on forums. I am from Philippines and I say, that Nokia have got a lot of fans here.
Nokia is up to something. I know that, maybe it is part of their plan to make people hate them as of the moment to garner much attention when a major change is set to launch.
The hype today is all about the UI. Remember the time when the megapixel count of camera matters, the dual cam feat, the music player, the 3G, the GPS craze, the stereo speakers, and now the UI. Many phone manufacturers are up to creating their own UI (Samsung, LG). Because it is a trend. Long time ago, Nokia has it's own, whether or not that UI is a trend. It will come off soon and another trend will be set.
Ease in UI is a disguising factor of smartphones today. UI might look easy, simple, but functionality is poor. Apple is a good example. They set this to cover things up. Hehe.