Unregistered wrote:I'm reading this thread and can't help but laugh. Laugh loud! The only site on the planet that tries to put a positive spin on this mess.Allow me to refresh your memories: a few months ago when rumors were flying high that Nokia was about to ditch Symbian from its' high end portfolio this site's collective blood pressure rose to imaginable proportions and they did all it could to discredit the gossip. Although to be fair to AAS some people at Nokia also tried very hard to kill the pesky rumor that just wouldn�t go away. Guess what folks? Didn't work. Try as you may the Nseries team at Nokia is still saying �see you later� to Symbian.
Now let me remind you at this point that Nseries is Nokia�s premier range of devices. Despite of what Rafe is spinning here the premier range is not X nor C series. It�s the Nseries that is king at Nokia. In case some of you are still doubtful please take a moment to look at this picture and let me know if you still think C series is high end: http://cellphones.techfresh.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Nokia-Symbian-based-C5-handset_01.jpg
Not quite high end, is it folks? More like Series 40 ain't it? So Rafe... please spare us.
The folks in Finland in charge of this company are not stupid. The Nseries product family
represents the best that the company has to offer and quite clearly Symbian was seen as an obstacle to achieving success. Hence the delegation to the low end of the market.
So my dear Symbian apologists, welcome to 2010 and say hello to your Series 40, err�. I mean Symbian phones
Thank you.
I could not have said it better. you nailed it spot on
The N9 is going to have to be damn good!
Unregistered wrote:I could not have said it better. you nailed it spot on
It was way off the mark, a load of negative shyte. It was more screwed than nailed.
There will be Symbian phones named X?? that are media centric and as or more capable than the current N8 and continue to grow. There will be another level of connected mobile computing devices slotted in above them using Meego and named n??.
Sounds good to me for everyone.
Suggesting that Symbian is the new S40 is crass and idiotic. Especially when you consider what Fujitsu have been doing with it.
People who have suffered the ignominy of repeatingly predicting the downfall of Nokia and repeatedly having their negative crap rammed back down their throat can't handle or see it.
Jimmy1 wrote:Also wanted to add:Nokia needs to get its communications department (and management) sorted, because this news is likely confusing the hell of not only developers, but future customers as well.
What's confusing? Seems pretty simple to me, you'd have to be stupid not to understand.
If any developer is confused then maybe they should consider another career.
Biggles wrote:Make no mistake, this is terrible news unless the Symbian Foundation can get another manufacturer to commit to high end phones.
Armchair experts need to look at what's going on in Japan.
I'm reading this thread and can't help but laugh. Laugh loud!
I'm reading your post and kind of doing the same thing.
We've known for a long time that MeeGo is going to the high end. That leaves about 80% of Nokia's smartphone range that will be running Symbian. That's all X and E series. The C Series will largely be S40 and will represent Nokia's entry level range.
The E Series is business oriented and continues to sell well. The X Series is aimed at media phones. There have been some rather silly pronouncements that there is no middle market but the global sales figures completely destroy that argument. Most of Nokia's smartphone sales - more than, say, Apple and Android's combined total sales last year - came from numbered phones which are simply the previous branding convention for the X Series.
So, as we knew, the top end - the N Series - is transitioning to Maemo. In the meantime 80% - or about 55-60 million smartphones a year - will run Symbian.
Sure. Nokia are abandoning Symbian all right.
This is basically Nokia admitting that they were caught flatfooted at the high end by Apple, and later Google, and it will have taken them 4 years to get back to a point where they can compete again in the disproportionately profitable segment.
What they are saying is that Symbian is the new S40. In other words, along with the rest of technology, last decade's high-tech is this decade's entry level. To use an analogy, it would be like Sony coming out of nowhere and building a device that caused iPad and iPhone sales to fall (or stagnate as the market expanded), and Apple relaunching iOS onto cheaper devices like the iPod Nano and AppleTV. It wouldn't be cause for celebration at Apple ("iOS is 'expanding' to new markets"😉. It would be seen as a defensive move as they regroup.
MeeGo appears to be the right OS for moving forward. Hopefully this announcement means that an actual product announcement will be forthcoming. As of now, MeeGo is just vaporware. Maemo had promise, but the N900 was clearly just a prototype offered for sale.
Unregistered wrote:Suggesting that Symbian is the new S40 is crass and idiotic. Especially when you consider what Fujitsu have been doing with it.
People who have suffered the ignominy of repeatingly predicting the downfall of Nokia and repeatedly having their negative crap rammed back down their throat can't handle or see it.
If you're a Nokia shareholder, like me, you are not pleased with how Nokia has flailed about for the past few years, destroying about 75% of their market cap and not getting any of it back over the past year's general market rally. They are now simply a mass market producer, and no longer a market driver. That's the issue. In some respects, they are like GM after Honda became popular in the US. Sure, GM always sold more cars than Honda (and still does), and could point to some technological advances, but they seemed to follow, not lead.
Symbian is the new S40 in that it is the new entry level. Of course, entry level in 2011 is very different from entry level in 2001. What isn't? It's a bit like saying that Windows XP is the new Windows 98. No one is suggesting that it is as limited as Windows 98, only that the latest and greatest of 2001 was now powering the $250 netbook on a coffee table.
dohouch wrote:So now we have N8 which is Symbian ^3, then Symbian^4 is coming, a complete ground-up rewrite, but future high-end devices will be Meego. :stupido3: :banghead:So to avoid being a Nokia Guinea Pig, won't buy any high-end Nokia for a least 12 months! :dontknow:
Would a Nokia Android device mean the end of civilisation as we know it?
Unfortunately, "wait 'til next year" has been the rallying cry for several years now. In 2007, the message was that while Nokia didn't have a touchscreen phone then, they were working on one for next year, and given how great the N95 was, the S60 Touch OS would be great. In early 2008 (while still developing S60 Touch), Nokia released the N96, a flop, but promised better things when the first Touch devices were released later that year. In December 2008, the 5800XM finally came out (aimed at the middle market), but the hype was about the N97 coming out in 2009. Almost as soon as the N97 was released the apologies began for how underpowered it was, as did the promise that 2010 would be better. Now in 2010, even before the N8 is released, they are again telling high end buyers that 2011 will be "the year" that they really take on iOS, Android (which didn't exist in 2007), and Windows Phone 7.
Unregistered wrote:Armchair experts need to look at what's going on in Japan.
Not really. Sure Symbian is the kernel of MOAP-S but since I don't live in Japan and neither do probably 99% of the readers of AAS, we'll never be buying a Fujitsu Symbian handset.
EDIT - And you do make a point that all Symbian apologists have been trying to make to Nokia, if Fujitsu find Symbian good enough to use as the core of their phones with 1080P recording and 14 megapixel optical zoom and waterproofness etc, then surely it's good enough for Nokia as well. We know it is, but Nokia are totally direction-less.
The problem I have is that I don't want a mid-range Symbian handset, I want a high end one. And an X series isn't going to cut it. And the E series will be running S60 FP2 until the end of time and the C series is low-range stuff. I want an N series.
Now that's not to say I won't actually buy an N series handset running Meego. I might, because Nokia as a value proposition work well. But it's bad news for Symbian.
Biggles wrote:The problem I have is that I don't want a mid-range Symbian handset, I want a high end one. And an X series isn't going to cut it. And the E series will be running S60 FP2 until the end of time and the C series is low-range stuff. I want an N series.
.
What has what you want got to do with anything? Most people won't be buying high end, most will be mid and low. Symbian.
Everyone has their own personal needs. I've been waiting for a phone like the X10 mini to come along for years, the pro version will probably now be my phone, I don't care that there is Android 1.6 hidden below the SE customisation, I just want that form factor. I hate the recent trend towards bulky oversized slabs (that started with the iPhone).
And that is where most AAS readers are getting confused, they forget that their needs are a tiny niche and the real mass market will be for phones at the level of iPhone/Desire and below. Meego N series will be pitched above these, X series will be equivalent.
"High end" (I really hate that geeky expression) will be higher end with Meego.
Mr Mark wrote:I'm reading your post and kind of doing the same thing.We've known for a long time that MeeGo is going to the high end. That leaves about 80% of Nokia's smartphone range that will be running Symbian. That's all X and E series. The C Series will largely be S40 and will represent Nokia's entry level range.
The E Series is business oriented and continues to sell well. The X Series is aimed at media phones. There have been some rather silly pronouncements that there is no middle market but the global sales figures completely destroy that argument. Most of Nokia's smartphone sales - more than, say, Apple and Android's combined total sales last year - came from numbered phones which are simply the previous branding convention for the X Series.
So, as we knew, the top end - the N Series - is transitioning to Maemo. In the meantime 80% - or about 55-60 million smartphones a year - will run Symbian.
Sure. Nokia are abandoning Symbian all right.
Nobody is saying, at least I am not, that Nokia are abandoning Symbian. It's just that it won't be on Nokia's best devices.
Unregistered wrote:Nobody is saying, at least I am not, that Nokia are abandoning Symbian. It's just that it won't be on Nokia's best devices.
But it will be on their biggest selling devices.
Unregistered wrote:And that is where most AAS readers are getting confused, they forget that their needs are a tiny niche and the real mass market will be for phones at the level of iPhone/Desire and below. Meego N series will be pitched above these, X series will be equivalent.
"High end" (I really hate that geeky expression) will be higher end with Meego.
But this does create fragmentation. However versatile QT turns out in practice (and let's wait and see before we speak with authority based on technical specs), Nokia will be using separate OSes for separate devices. Clearly there will be things MeeGo does that Symbian doesn't. Otherwise Nokia wouldn't be making the switch at all. Thus this will create confusion for developers and especially consumers.
Apple has one unified OS (iOS) that drives or will drive its mobile devices, from the older 3GS still offered for $99 with subsidy, to the most advanced iPad selling at $829 and everything in between (iPhone 4, iPod Touch, and whatever else Apple expands it to).
Android faces similar fragmentation issues as Symbian because of all the different versions out there, but in practice the compatibility has been pretty good. If Symbian relative to MeeGo operates as smoothly as Android 1.6 relative to 2.2 (from app compatibility and availability) then it might be OK, but it still means another year before Nokia is able to tap whatever additional benefits come from MeeGo.
From a perception perspective, it would make more sense if Nokia took Apple's approach and didn't announce the "next way" until a few weeks before it was ready, and then state that "almost anything written for Symbian^3 will run on MeeGo" if that's indeed the case (and was tested extensively). That way the OS is transparent to the user.
Unregistered wrote:But it will be on their biggest selling devices.
But not their most profitable devices. Were you buying S40 devices a few years ago because it was on Nokia's best-selling devices?
Let's put it this way. Do you really think Nokia went through all the trouble to acquire the rest of Symbian, spin it off, and make it open source for the sole reason of putting it on its mass-market devices (where Apple, RIM, and Google barely compete)? Wouldn't it have been easier to just take S60 on its own in a different direction? And if Maemo/MeeGo were really the strategy all along, wouldn't they have put more effort into it earlier? The Internet Tablets were almost the right devices at the right time (straddling the ground between netbooks and the tablets to be such as the iPad), but Nokia didn't really pursue either market aggressively.
The argument that Nokia will eventually have an advantage in "upselling" Symbian buyers to MeeGo once they have the money is speculative at best. Do people not aspire to BMWs because BMW doesn't sell economy cars (apart from the Mini which was an accidental hit and bears very little resemblance to a BMW)? Did acquiring Chrysler help Mercedes sales in the 1990s? Were Ford and GM able to leverage their top-selling brands to attract Europeans (or many Americans, for that matter) to Lincolns and Cadillacs?
[QUOTE=KPO'M;469426]But not their most profitable devices. Were you buying S40 devices a few years ago because it was on Nokia's best-selling devices?
[/QUOTE]
Big deal. Revenue is revenue whether you do it by getting volume by value or by charging a huge premium. There is one business approach and there is another. Symbian will offer phones with full feature sets - better phones than the N95 I was buying a few years ago. The S40 devices areadifferent type of phone and irrelevant to all of this.
The argument that Nokia will eventually have an advantage in "upselling" Symbian buyers to MeeGo once they have the money is speculative at best. Do people not aspire to BMWs because BMW doesn't sell economy cars (apart from the Mini which was an accidental hit and bears very little resemblance to a BMW)? ?
iPhone 3GS could be had for free with a contract, or subsidised on PAYG where I live, they were not expensive. Nor will the 4 be after the honeymoon period, due to competition.
The car analogy makes me laugh. Don't they sell 3 series where you live? They must be one of the most popular cars on the road round here, 318d and 320d are two a penny and not considered premium or special. I drive a 520d and I only chose that car because of the MPG it gives for the size of vehicle.
You can't analogise Apple phones with BMW, you need to find a car company that makes only one car..... and maintains control of it once they've got your money.
buster wrote:How on earth can you complain about Meego being Unix derived and then say that you are thinking of moving to Android, which is also Linux based. Very strange reasoning if you ask me...
Because I believe, that Android will be much more successfull than MeeGo. And if I must switch to an OS which I don't like (on a mobile device), I will switch to the OS wich will be more successfull.
As I have written: I would prefer an high end phone (like my E90 was at its time) with Symbian. And for me the screen resolution is most important. It's fun to browse the web with Opera (supporting multiple tabs) and an 800 pixel wide display (no need to scroll horizontally).
Just a few general points here.
Don't try to fit what's happening now and in the future into old structures models. Series 40 is still going to be around and will be the biggest seller in pure device numbers (lower cost per unit). Saying Symbian is the new Series 40 is misleading.
Symbian only in the mid tier / low end - not the high end. I don't think this is true. However it does depend how you define high end. I don't think Nokia's high end consists of just a couple of devices a year... Yes Nokia highest end devices are Nseries and will be MeeGo, but bear in mind that the device spectrum is getting wider (mobile computers of MeeGo far closer to laptops than the first smartphones, never mind a simple phone).
Platform fragmentation - I also agree we need to wait and see the reality on Qt, but it looks good. And remember that Symbian stretches over a much broader range of devices and prices. Nokia with two platforms does what some don't do at all or others do with multiple platforms.
Unlike many smartphone makers (Apple, HTC, Sony Ericsson, Motorola) Nokia is not just about the high end devices. This needs to be understood when looking at their strategy.
Unregistered wrote:iPhone 3GS could be had for free with a contract, or subsidised on PAYG where I live, they were not expensive. Nor will the 4 be after the honeymoon period, due to competition.
The car analogy makes me laugh. Don't they sell 3 series where you live? They must be one of the most popular cars on the road round here, 318d and 320d are two a penny and not considered premium or special. I drive a 520d and I only chose that car because of the MPG it gives for the size of vehicle.
You can't analogise Apple phones with BMW, you need to find a car company that makes only one car..... and maintains control of it once they've got your money.
The 3 series is marketed as a premium car here. We don't get the 318d or 320d. The lowest we have is the 328i (and the 128i). They absolutely do not compete in the Ford Focus or Fusion territory here.
The BMW/Apple comparison is made all the time. The companies compete in the premium segment. Do people really weigh any BMW against a VW Lupo or Ford Ka?
As for the iPhone pricing, that is based on a healthy carrier subsidy. Apple makes a lot more on an iPhone than Nokia does on an X-series, since they can extract more from the carrier, so don't tell me that just because you can have an iPhone for "free" that suddenly it means Apple is competing in the low end.
Revenue is revenue, but Apple has been eating Nokia's cake. Nokia used to get revenue both from volume at the middle and low-end markets, and margin at the high-end. Now they have virtually ceded the high-end to others. Let's face it. They are saying that in 2011, Symbian is no longer a high-end OS. I don't care that your Symbian phone in 2011 can do more than the S40 phones of 2007 (at the same price range). That's technology. Again, a netbook from 2010 can do as much as a high-end notebook from 2003. What's happening is that "feature phones" are going away and being replaced by low-end smartphones, which is exactly what we'd expect.
Rafe wrote:
Symbian only in the mid tier / low end - not the high end. I don't think this is true. However it does depend how you define high end. I don't think Nokia's high end consists of just a couple of devices a year... Yes Nokia highest end devices are Nseries and will be MeeGo, but bear in mind that the device spectrum is getting wider (mobile computers of MeeGo far closer to laptops than the first smartphones, never mind a simple phone).
Rafe,
I agree with you about .... "define high end"..... and I would like to add my 2 cents here.
I think Symbian still the best smartphone OS now. It just phone and mobile computing line has been blurred (in nokia word convergence). We were asking more and more mobile computing functionality in the mobile phone. As a result many symbian user were asking nokia to turn the symbian (mobile phone OS) into UMPC area (in nokia term is mobile computing).
But the truth (to me) is symbian is not lame. it just we're moving towards something out of the mobile phone realm. and since linux (read: maemo) is good for low end device, nokia won't push symbian towards mobile computing, but will put maemo instead.
Maybe for those who were comparing symbian to android needs to look this way. Even microsoft have several OS for mobile device. such as Windows CE, windows mobile, and now the Kin one and Kin two OS (don't remember the name). So, nokia strategy is not wrong. There's no one OS for a big range. Apple could afford only using 1 OS because they just have the 1 range.
There's my 2 cents
KPOM wrote:The 3 series is marketed as a premium car here. We don't get the 318d or 320d. The lowest we have is the 328i (and the 128i). They absolutely do not compete in the Ford Focus or Fusion territory here.The BMW/Apple comparison is made all the time. The companies compete in the premium segment. Do people really weigh any BMW against a VW Lupo or Ford Ka?
What a terrible straw man throwing in VW Lupo and Ford Ka. BMW don't make a car in that bracket. BMW do make diesel cars for the ordinary person in Europe. Barely anyone buys a gasoline powered BMW these days unless it's an M3 or M5.
KPOM wrote:
As for the iPhone pricing, that is based on a healthy carrier subsidy. Apple makes a lot more on an iPhone than Nokia does on an X-series, since they can extract more from the carrier, so don't tell me that just because you can have an iPhone for "free" that suddenly it means Apple is competing in the low end.
Nobody suggested Apple were "competing in the low end" but they are not premium. Anyone can afford one. They are knocked out by supermarkets. I have one, I use it as a second phone for when I think I need Internet with me.
Revenue is revenue, but Apple has been eating Nokia's cake. Nokia used to get revenue both from volume at the middle and low-end markets, and margin at the high-end. Now they have virtually ceded the high-end to others. Let's face it. They are saying that in 2011, Symbian is no longer a high-end OS. I don't care that your Symbian phone in 2011 can do more than the S40 phones of 2007 (at the same price range). That's technology. Again, a netbook from 2010 can do as much as a high-end notebook from 2003. What's happening is that "feature phones" are going away and being replaced by low-end smartphones, which is exactly what we'd expect.
You seem to be having an argument with yourself. Are you feeling OK?
Unregistered wrote:
But the truth (to me) is symbian is not lame. it just we're moving towards something out of the mobile phone realm. and since linux (read: maemo) is good for low end device, nokia won't push symbian towards mobile computing, but will put maemo instead.Maybe for those who were comparing symbian to android needs to look this way. Even microsoft have several OS for mobile device. such as Windows CE, windows mobile, and now the Kin one and Kin two OS (don't remember the name). So, nokia strategy is not wrong. There's no one OS for a big range. Apple could afford only using 1 OS because they just have the 1 range.
But then the point is why did it take Nokia so long to come to the conclusion that Linux was the way forward?
When the original iPhone was announced 3.5 years ago, Nokia arguably was far ahead with Maemo of where Google was with the Android project. Yet look at how quickly Google has produced several significant updates to Android, and how robust even the early versions have proven to be.
After the original iPhone's success, the writing was on the wall that the high end would move to devices that were basically pocket computers that happened to have phone capabilities rather than phones that happened to have PC capabilities. Yet it seems that Nokia squandered a lot of time between 2007 and 2009 trying to bring Symbian up to snuff when they could have been focusing on Maemo and making only relatively modest enhancements to Symbian in the process (such as getting it touch-compatible).
I think Nokia genuinely believed devices like the 5800XM and N97 would be adequate to reclaim their high-end space, but then only later came to realize Symbian wouldn't cut it, and that they'd need to rely on a more robust OS like Maemo to get them back in that market. However, since that OS had been used only on Internet tablets, it wasn't and still isn't ready for prime time. The N900, for instance, had very primitive phone capabilities that appeared tacked on. It also was too bulky for a mass market device and didn't have the capacitive touchscreen that is the norm today. The partnership with Intel brings additional funding and a key sponsor to the table, but it also set back the final product since Nokia has to wait for MeeGo 1.0 (what might have been Maemo 6) to be finished.
I think the high end market and Nokia's stock price might be very different today if they had made the decision back in 2007 instead of 2010 to proceed with Maemo as the future of the N-series.
Unregistered wrote:What a terrible straw man throwing in VW Lupo and Ford Ka. BMW don't make a car in that bracket.
That's my point. BMW doesn't compete for all segments of the market, but they do just fine. I don't know the European car market very well, but it seems to me that BMW is still seen as something higher end than Ford.
Unregistered wrote:
Nobody suggested Apple were "competing in the low end" but they are not premium. Anyone can afford one. They are knocked out by supermarkets. I have one, I use it as a second phone for when I think I need Internet with me.
I think Apple would disagree with you that they aren't "premium." They are sold out of airport vending machines here, and the iPod has a huge market share, but that doesn't mean that Apple as a whole, and iPhone in particular aren't premium devices. Apple commands higher overall prices (before subsidies, which are a marketing cost of the carrier, not Apple) than its competitors for products with comparable specifications. That's premium in my book (just as BMWs generally are priced higher than Hondas or Fords with comparable specifications). They may be priced within range of the large market, but they are still premium.
Unregistered wrote:
You seem to be having an argument with yourself. Are you feeling OK?
What's with the personal insults? I had raised the point that Nokia ceded the high end, and then your counter was that "revenue is revenue" and that it was pointless for me to compare S40 in 2007 (the low end back then) with S60 in 2010 (the low end now) because Symbian is "so much different" from S40. My point is that of course today's low end is different from the low end of 3 years ago. Technology has moved forward, and today's low-end users want what high-end or middle-market buyers had in 2007.
My larger point is that pre-iPhone, Nokia dominated all 3 segments of the market. Now they dominate 2 out of 3 (middle and low), and the middle is shrinking. That doesn't bode well, which is why they need a new strategy for the high end.
Unregistered wrote:But then the point is why did it take Nokia so long to come to the conclusion that Linux was the way forward?When the original iPhone was announced 3.5 years ago, Nokia arguably was far ahead with Maemo of where Google was with the Android project. Yet look at how quickly Google has produced several significant updates to Android, and how robust even the early versions have proven to be.
Apple and Google really caught nokia off-guard.
Nokia were in the middle of liberating symbian and push symbian into the next step. Nokia also in the middle of their big plan buying the QT trooltech. And making Symbian & Maemo to use QT as the single development platform.
Therefore, nokia doesn't really have a mature product to compete with both google and apple at the last 2 years.
But we really need to see that nokia didn't try to go half-way with unfinished product. Apple on the other hand, execute their plan in several stages. For example, in the first iphone there were no MMS & cut&paste. Their first 3G phone doesn't have a video call. No multitasking on their OS, and their current multitasking is limited. Their next aim is the messaging service like the NMS (Nokia Messaging Services) or BB. Whereas nokia goes on different route. Symbian-Maemo/Meego-QT. The next symbian must be ready with QT and they won't release it halfway.
What matter most is when the symbian^3 + QT + next-Maemo/Meego ready, nokia will be unstoppable. I wonder if Android manufacture such as Motorola/SE/HTC can fight nokia in another round.
Unregistered wrote:But then the point is why did it take Nokia so long to come to the conclusion that Linux was the way forward?When the original iPhone was announced 3.5 years ago, Nokia arguably was far ahead with Maemo of where Google was with the Android project. Yet look at how quickly Google has produced several significant updates to Android, and how robust even the early versions have proven to be.
�hm? Has you ever used a Psion 5? It was absolute stable from the day it was sold - I have never seen my Psion mx 5pro crashing!
Unregistered wrote:After the original iPhone's success, ...
and making only relatively modest enhancements to Symbian in the process (such as getting it touch-compatible).
�hm? You know the Psion 5 has an excellent touchscreen (and an higher resolution than an iPhone: 640x240) - the EPOC OS of the Psion _I_S_ Symbian!
Unregistered wrote:It also was too bulky for a mass market device and didn't have the capacitive touchscreen that is the norm today.
Just because Apple uses a capacitive touchscreen, that doesn't mean, that it is the best solution. I would prefer a resistive touchscreen which is pressure sensitive, like on some notebooks.
Unregistered wrote: The partnership with Intel brings additional funding and a key sponsor to the table, but it also set back the final product since Nokia has to wait for MeeGo 1.0 (what might have been Maemo 6) to be finished.I think the high end market and Nokia's stock price might be very different today if they had made the decision back in 2007 instead of 2010 to proceed with Maemo as the future of the N-series.
_N_O_ ! They finally should realize, that they have the be most modern (microkernel, realtime) and _B_E_S_T_ OS on the market: _S_Y_M_B_I_A_N_!
But we need the high end devices (as the "Communicators"😉 - I would love the N900, if it would have Symbian as the OS and an extra digits row on the keyboard.
Unregistered wrote:Apple and Google really caught nokia off-guard.Nokia were in the middle of liberating symbian and push symbian into the next step. Nokia also in the middle of their big plan buying the QT trooltech. And making Symbian & Maemo to use QT as the single development platform.
What matter most is when the symbian^3 + QT + next-Maemo/Meego ready, nokia will be unstoppable. I wonder if Android manufacture such as Motorola/SE/HTC can fight nokia in another round.
The problem you are making is that you are thinking in tech terms.
Apple sold 600,000 iPhone 4s on the first day, and would have sold more if AT&T's computers could handle the order flow. They have blown through sales estimates quarter after quarter. Meanwhile, Nokia just issued another profit warning for the second quarter in a row and reduced sales estimates for their smartphones. Friday's announcement sounds more like a defensive move.
If Symbian were as ready to compete in the high end as you claim it is, they wouldn't have ceded most of their high-end market share to Apple, RIM, and Google over the past 3 years trying to pass off devices like the N97 as realistic competitors to the iPhone and Android when clearly they weren't (but instead were smartphone alternatives to featurephones). If your strategy is continued upselling and servicing of all market segments, you just don't do that if you can prevent it.
Peter Sulzer wrote:You know the Psion 5 has an excellent touchscreen (and an higher resolution than an iPhone: 640x240) - the EPOC OS of the Psion _I_S_ Symbian!
Not higher than the iPhone 4. 960x640.
Peter Sulzer wrote:
Just because Apple uses a capacitive touchscreen, that doesn't mean, that it is the best solution.
So what kind of touchscreen does the N8, Nokia's latest flagship device, use?
Peter Sulzer wrote:
._N_O_ ! They finally should realize, that they have the be most modern (microkernel, realtime) and _B_E_S_T_ OS on the market: _S_Y_M_B_I_A_N_!
So why is the N8 the last N-series to use the OS? Clearly Nokia sees the high end needing a different OS. They spent the last 3 years trying to get Symbian up to snuff to compete in the iPhone's segment, and they apparently concluded earlier in the year and just re-affirmed Friday that MeeGo is the way forward.
Rafe, excellent, factual post ... Symbian will continue to be our lead OS in the Smartphone range & MeeGo will be the lead OS for our Nseries devices going forward (Post N8) Symbian 3 is shaping up very nicely indeed, and 4, when it arrives, will enhance the UX even further. Mass market reach, scale for Ovi services and a great platform for developers will ensure Symbians continued success.
RayH (Nokia)
