SYMBIAN ON THE LINE

This evening, at the official N900 meet-up in London, the Maemo marketing team revealed that Nokia plan to drop Symbian from the entire ‘top end’ N-Series range of handsets in favour of Maemo by 2012.

Finally, but still semi-officially, someone has the guts to put Nokia's plans into words. Plans that were really not that hard to figure out, mind you.

So, what is this?

An interesting experiment for Nokia. While doing this tomorrow would certainly make sense from the "we-must-appeal-to-Scoble" perspective, doing it "by 2012" (which, this being Nokia, probably means the end of 2012) is a lot tougher to understand.

By then, Symbian what, ^5, will be available? Is that still not good enough for high-end devices? Probably, but since I'm rather sure it hasn't yet gone into *any* development phase, how would anyone know that?

Again, strange, but expected. And even though Nokia might deny this tomorrow, I'm pretty sure it IS their actual plan.

Oh, and also expect S30 to disappear around the same time. Completely. Disappear. I'm hoping S40 will too (it really needs to), but that probably won't happen as it will be replacing S30 in the low-end. The same way Symbian will be replacing S40 mid-end. Get it now?

You know what's funny?

This ensures Symbian will be the #1 mobile OS (by sales - no, not by number of fart apps, thankfully) for at least 5 more years. Although no one will tell you that.

Why?

It will rule the mid-end. You know, the second best selling tier after, you guessed it, the low end, which basically offers no 'smart' phones.

As for Maemo... It's an interesting project, and I'm still waiting for version 6. And for a browser that doesn't advertise itself as being built on "Mozilla technology". And for portrait mode. And for it to be, you know, a proper smart*phone* platform. That, right now, it isn't.

But hopefully this time next year it will have become that.

Will it be too late?

It may actually be too early. But more on that on another day.

Now go, you've got 9567 "Nokia is ditching Symbian, which is dead and buried" very, very, smart posts to read elsewhere.

My advice has been the same for many years: just get the best device today. Forget about the next announced device. You know that adage “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush?” Well, that’s quite relevant here. You will get more use out of a device today than waiting for that ultimate device tomorrow.

And, yes, be ready to see a more desirable device be announced as soon as you buy one today. Just look at the newly announced device, laugh, and know that you will not get it. Because when you are ready to get your next device, there will already be an even more desirable one for you.

It’s inevitable.

Charlie Schick wrote an interesting post on Nokia Conversations (Nokia's official blog) a while ago and I couldn't not write about this because I think the subject is timeless.

The point is we should get used to obsolescence in the mobile world. Things move fast. That's the way it is.

And while I refrain from agreeing 100% with this (being such a mobile geek does that), I do get the point. Actually, it seems I might have 'lived' the point.

I purchased my Nokia N95 in April of 2007, the second day it was available around here. I just had to have it, there was no doubt in my mind.

A few months later, the N95 8GB was announced and subsequently launched, it was basically what the original N95 should have been - all the issues people (well, mainly bloggers) were complaining about were fixed. Did I buy it? No. Would I have bought it if I had not bought the N95 before it? Sure.

Months passed. Years passed. About two and a half years, to be precise, until I bought my next smartphone (a few days ago, actually), the Nokia E55. During this time, there were a lot of devices I craved. And yet I didn't buy any. Why? Well after the geeky crave went away (or at least got to a bearable level), I sat and thought rationally about whether any of those devices would be of much more use to me than my N95. And even if many stroke the "yeah, a bit more useful" chord, none had any feature or, even better, collection of features I just had to have, objectively speaking.

The E55 has 7.2Mb/s HSDPA and HSUPA, a 600 MHz processor (not as relevant as everyone thinks, but still, nice to have), a great keyboard (which is why I didn't buy it's twin, the E52, instead), a digital compass, the BP-4L 1500 mAh battery on board and still manages to be 9.9mm slim. Yum!

Come to think of it, out of the myriad of phones launched in these years, there are only two I feel I'd actually buy. The aforementioned E55 (done) and the Nokia N97 Mini (because its bigger brother is just too big for me, and the Mini's hinge angle is better, and the keyboard seems to have a more logical layout in my opinion). Looking forward to somehow being able to afford that (probably not).

Everything else?

Yeah, a lot of interesting phones had I not had the N95 to start. But I did.

And the funny thing is, I still enjoy using it. A lot. And I still am.

I guess obsolescence is relative, then.

From last year, the first half of 2009 shows that in smartphones, Nokia, RIM-Blackberry and Apple have grown market share. HTC has held steady. In the operating systems, Symbian has shrunk but still commands half of the global market. RIM and Apple are big rivals and growing. Android is a tiny rival and growing. Windows Mobile is crashing and Palm is nearly invisible. I would appreciate it, if future journalists reporting on smartphones bother to quote the facts, not some silly analysis of "market shares" based on Admob stats etc.

You can always count on Tomi Ahonen to set the record straight, when it comes to the mobile world. And here he does that beautifully yet again. If you're not going to read his entire post, I will be angry at you. Seriously.

I hope you have read it all.

Now, I have a few things to add so that when bloggers want to report on something like this again, they'll know what it is they're writing about.

The thing everyone quoted when they recently said that the iPhone has a 40+% market share in smartphones was an AdMob statistic. Let's pause here for a bit.

AdMob is a leading mobile ad network. But what isn't 'leading' these days? Anyway. Their stats refer, naturally I'd say, to the 'content' they serve. Ads, specifically. Now, on the sites or apps or whatnot that have AdMob ads on them, that percentage of visits came from the iPhone and so on.

Get it?

Good.

Now there are always some stats floating around that show that the iPhone is 'leading' mobile internet usage.

This is normal. Remember, when you buy an iPhone, you are REQUIRED to purchase a monthly data plan (absurdly expensive too, in most cases). This is something you probably are made aware of when you make the purchase.

You are aware of the fact that you're paying a bucketload of money per month for internet access.

Isn't it then reasonable to think that you'll use it? I mean, isn't t reasonable for you to say "well, if they make me pay for it, I might as well try it?".

Exactly.

As for what market share should mean (and really does, if you know anything about anything), that's sold devices. Where you can go to Tomi's numbers for reference. Because they're not his. They're quoted from the companies that actually, you know, report on market shares for a living.

Thanks.

Scott Weiss of the Symbian Foundation talked about "Open Source and the User Experience" which can now be found here.

 

The presentation is about how we do user interface design and development work, and otherwise improve the user experience at Symbian Foundation.

A very nice slideshow that was presented by Scott Weiss, the Symbian Foundation's UI Technology Manager, at the Over the Air mobile developer event in London on September 26th, is hiding behind the link above.

Definitely recommended reading, dare I say required even.

The Nokia Extra Power DC-11 is basically an external rechargeable 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery. The concept behind it isn’t new: charge your device using a portable, external power source when on the move and when empty you charge it just like any other Nokia phone. The Extra Power DC-11 is one of two external power units offered by Nokia. The other model is the Nokia Extra Power DC-8 which uses either standard or rechargeable AA batteries. While the latter unit is more compact it does require rechargeable AA batteries or the not-so-eco-friendly standard AA batteries. Here at The Nokia Guide, we prefer technology that helps every bit when it comes to our environment and the use of AA batteries, even the rechargeable ones are something we wouldn’t recommend or even consider using. For this simple fact we prefer the DC-11 over the DC-8.

 

                

Devin Balentina has a very good review on his site, The Nokia Guide, of the Nokia DC-11. You can get the basic idea of what it is from the excerpt above, but the full review is very worthy of your time, so if you haven't already, go read.

The title of this post is easy to decrypt if you know Twitter-speak.

As I said before, I'd like Nokia to fit EVERY phone they make with the BP-4L battery, the biggest capacity battery they make, at 1500 mAh.

Seriously, it's amazing. My new Nokia E55 (more on that in a later post) has it, and it broke a record. With my usage, my old N95 (BL-5F, 950 mAh, yes I love battery codes) lasts me for three quarters of a day. The E55 lasts me two and half days. On identical usage. I think that says it all.

So what we have here basically is a BP-4L (I'm guessing, but it being the exact same capacity means it's almost certain) inside a nice casing, with microUSB and 2mm Nokia plugs for connecting it to your phone.

And that's it. You charge the DC-11, then when you're out and about (say, videoblogging your way through a few countries, *cough*) and your phone's battery dies (which it will), you use the DC-11 to charge your phone.

Simple.

And a must-have for any power user that isn't blessed with a BP-4L equipped phone.

I would have killed for this during the N86 Tour.

Also, if you're looking for alternatives, Proporta make quite a few, and I've only heard good things about them.

Technology and traffic shaping have moved on a lot since the millennium, as have customer expectations. You want a prediction? Unlimited data tarriffs will become the norm, probably late in 2010. One network is going to open the floodgates and just go for it as a marketing campaign, and the others will have to follow. The question is which companies are going to stare down each other to be the first to see what happens to their network when they do throw the switch.

Ewan Spence has a great feature/rant/article/post about the concept of "unlimited" data (and, to a lesser extent, phone calls and text messages) in this day and age on the mobile networks.

Now, I have a rant of my own on this, but first, I really think you should click above and read the entirety of Ewan's post. It's so good, it was actually hard for me to decide which part to quote.

Right.

First off, they're lying. Most of them, at least.
Those operators who impose a transfer limit, after which they charge you extra, are just outright lying by using the word "unlimited". Fortunately, it seems there are fewer and fewer of those. We're now slowly moving to a model of "really unlimited, but after X amount of traffic, the speed goes down to something ridiculous, just so you can't say we're lying anymore".

It's more or less the same thing. But you can't say they're lying in this case.

Moving on.

See, the thing I like telling my American friends who complain about dropped calls on AT&T is: they're just cheap.

And mostly, that's it. They don't want to invest.

Sure, there is a point (of people in the same cell connecting at the same time) where it could get messy (and after a certain point condensing a cell doesn't work anymore), but NOT as messy as we are led to believe.

t's quite clear that if, say, all UK operators would just offer unlimited data, and for a reasonable price, their networks would collapse under the load. At least in London. And it's probably the same story everywhere.

But.

I mean their current networks. Their current infrastructure.

I've seen people that I normally consider smart defend the operators on this. "But if everyone would suddenly start streaming stuff or torrenting or whatnot, the network would collapse".

Mmm...yeah. Maybe. But then, 'filtering' or 'throttling' or whatever you want to call it makes sense ONLY in this case, of mobile connections. Yet companies are applying that more and more to fixed connections. And that's insane. And not necessary. So if you as an operator would prioritize 'normal' internet traffic, and set very low priorities to uncommon and bandwidth-intensive protocols, you'd solve two problems. First, the network would not collapse, and second, you'd encourage (coerce, ok) your customers not to try doing those things in the future.

People might hate me for saying this, but I believe it's a simple solution. Again, in the case of mobile networks ONLY.

However, none of this will help if you're not willing to fork out some cash and upgrade your network, work on the cell density and so on.

People in Romania defend the networks' lack of investments for this, but are they not aware that these are the companies (at least in this country), that, for their size, have by far the biggest profit shares compared to their earnings?

What if some of that money went not to the shareholders, but into investments?

I think they hope no one will notice any of this.

Well I do.

Like I noticed when I was in England that in half of Oxford I could not get a decent 3G signal from Vodafone, the UK's most praised network especially for coverage.

It's 2009. That's unacceptable.

Get the money out and do what has to be done. If you do, in a few years (perhaps even months or weeks) data will outsell calls and texts. By far.

And I shall repeat. Network unreliability is NOT a matter of physics. It's, in 99% of the cases today, just your operator being cheap. I'm sorry.

I'm skeptical. I don't think we'll see truly unlimited anything in the mobile world for quite a while.

Because the operators are scared (as Ewan put it), clueless (that they WILL in the end become 'dumb pipes' no matter how hard they fight it) and constantly feel profit pressure from their shareholders.

Which is why the little that they spend of those profits today mostly goes to rather dishonest advertising of this or that new animal-plan.

See, some are still trapped in the Jungle Book.

While we live in 2009.

So let's just patiently form a queue and wait for them to catch up, shall we?

Since February Nokia has been closely collaborating with Adobe on a smart initiative dubbed the Open Screen Project, designed to help developers create innovative Flash-based apps with a view to getting their creations out to more people. Back in April we highlighting the first handful of these from news that surfaced at the Nokia Developer Summit, and more recently we touched on the CNN app and highlighted Twittle, both born as a result of this $10million joint development. Today sees over 35 new winning apps officially roll down from the mountain of developers involved in the project

Nokia has always (well, in the past few years, anyway) been about supporting as many development platforms as possible. There's Symbian's native C++, Java, Python, Qt, and now, Flash (and I'm sure I missed something).

A 'lite' version of Flash has been integrated in Nokia's smartphones for quite a while now (a couple of years for sure), and until the 'full' Flash experience will come to Symbian in 2010, they want to draw awareness to the possibility of developing apps in Flash.

And about that 'full' Flash that Palm fans are so excited about. I really don't know what improvements it will bring to Symbian. I presume these will be more optimizations and will have more to do with hardware APIs than Flash in the Web browser. Which is not only possible, but works today, even with Flash Lite.

I just wanted to make this clear. YouTube videos play in the default Web browser on Nokia phones right now. Other Flash content works too. Now.

Anyway, having a more integrated experience (aka, the same version of Flash across desktop and mobile operating systems) will surely make developing apps a lot easier and porting probably just a matter of optimizing for different screen resolutions.

Happy developing!

Nokia has a particular way of developing and marketing their mobile phones. It must be working OK to have been able to lead the world in production year after year. But, the way they design their phones – down to the way in which keys are designed in their keyboards – is very ‘European’ that resonates well outside North America but does not resonate well with consumers in the North America.

I blame much of the poor performance in the US market on design principles. If you look carefully at Nokia phones, they all use the same font on the display – the same font used in marketing literature. I don’t know why but the font is not attractive to many people in the US (from talking with lots of users and other analysts). It gives you an uncomfortable feel when you look at it without necessarily knowing why.

They keys in Nokia’s phones (both 10-key numeric in feature phones and alphanumeric in SmartPhones) have a square shape and no raised domes. All SmartPhone in the US by other manufacturers have rounded keys with domes & inter-key spacing which gives the fingers a more positive tactile feedback.

The Symbian OS, while very good technically, has a user interface style that seems foreign to those in the US.

Ewan from Mobile Industry Review (3.0, I believe) has posted an 'opinion' of what Nokia should do to 'win' the US market over. You know, the same old story, "but we're the greatest nation on Earth, if you're not big here we don't care". Well, the end of the article brings us the revelation of who the author is: Mr. J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D (yes, he lists his name that way himself!) - VP & Chief Analyst, Mobile & Wireless at Frost & Sullivan. Wow, having this guy introduced to you may take a while, so be advised if you're ever in the same room.

Oh, analysts... If bloggers are the trash of the web (or what was it?), I wonder where analysts go.

First off, congrats on the "the North America". Very cool. He's probably paid by the number of words in such an analysis. Wrote this amazing piece, but was one word short. Hence, the the.

I wanted to comment on the above excerpt, but what is there to say? I literally laughed out loud at some of his 'points'. Be sure to jump to MIR to read the whole thing, it's even funnier in other parts! Also, make sure you read the comments there too. Some interesting ideas.

So, I won't comment. I will however say what I think would be best for Nokia to do regarding the ever-troubled (in network quality) US market.

I actually found myself agreeing with one of Mr. Purdy's suggestions there. Just one, but still. Unbelievable.

So it goes like this. Nokia should buy Palm. Recent rumors suggest they might indeed be looking into this, which is good. It wouldn't be an expensive buy, and they have the money. So just do it.

Then, take the Nokia brand completely, I can't stress this enough, completely, out of the US market. Canada too. Have Palm as their North American brand. And only that, don't ever launch a Palm device anywhere else. Leave Palm there, and Nokia elsewhere.

Invest in Palm's R&D, bring them some cash so they can actually manufacture their products, and maybe, release 1-2 Nokia phones (with qwerty keyboards, no others please) in the US rebranded as Palm. But make sure to change the keys. And the font (sic!).

Also, release a GSM version of all Palm phones (Pre, Pixi and whatever comes next), actually two, one for AT&T's and one for T-Mobile's frequencies. Get the CDMA version on Verizon too. And make the Pre $89 on contract on all 4 US carriers.

In 2-3 years they'll have 15% market share. Or ten, or something better than now, anyway.

I don't think that will actually happen, because big corporations are always about integrating companies they bought. But not here, please. There's no integration necessary. I mean, sure, you can integrate at supply-chain level, which is good and expected (so you can reach that target price I set above), but other than that, what?

Yet another OS? No. Keep it simple. Make apps developed for WebOS installable on Symbian (that might be coming anyway).

The (sic!) North America loves North American companies, by default. Palm is one of them. Gizmodo only has one Palm-bashing post for every 20 Apple-loving posts, compared to, well, all posts on Nokia being anti-Nokia (though I haven't seen that many recently, and GigaOm is catching up - fair warning!). Did I mention Palm's UI is pretty? There's that too.

So do it. Now. Stop trying to understand the US market the way you understand other markets. It's different. Stop trying everything you try where your brand is already established, in the US, it's not. So none of that will work.

If anyone from Nokia is reading this, I can outline a much more detailed strategy starting from these points, so feel free to contact me. Alternatively, keep wasting millions of dollars on strategies that don't and won't work in the US. Best of luck.