One question is, who is deciding which phones will be called smartphones?
You might remember that when the iPhone first came out, Steve Jobs emphatically stated that it WASN'T a smartphone, though many were calling it one. I agreed with his statement, because of the lack of third party software, which seems to be one of the minimum specs for one.
But even some "feature phones can download some games and other limited programs. So where exactly is the dividing line?
Does the manufacture decide? Do reviewers? Do the rating services?
It’s not an exact term my any means and the colloquial definition for smartphone appears to be is changing. How about a phone that has a physical or virtual QWERTY keyboard? That is where I seem to naturally draw the line, but that is quite broad.
It’s like putting someone with an IQ of 85 (average) up against profoundly gifted people (175+) on Jeopardy and saying that you should be able to compete because they’re not in the mentally disabled categories. Not exactly fair. I’ve seen the term “super smartphones” growing in popularity, but I really don’t like that qualifier.
Got a better term for it?
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WebOs, despite its good points, is dependent on Palm phones. Will anyone ever license it? Why would they, when a free OS is available. Several, actually, all based on some Linux distro. Palm phones don't seem to be exciting many people.
Palm is making some missteps, but I think WebOS still has a shot at being viable. I think we’ll know within a year if WebOS will be a real player. BB still dominating business, though RiM possibly losing money, iPhone still leading in sales and the flagship of “intelligent phones” and Andorid picking up the rear as mobile OS street cleaner. Will there be a real forth or just Symbian losing marketshare with each passing quarter?
It will cut into everything. The question is, by how much?
I think it?ll be steam roller. Their App Store is already sizeable. Not like the iPhone?s, but big enough to not be scoffed at, like WebOS?. The comparisons to the iPhone are very close in many ways that was the initial attraction to the iPhone. Android 2.0 is a real contender at this point. Once more models hit the streets, especially lower priced devices, I expect wildfire growth.
PS: If the Apple Tablet is real, I would expect to see an Android-based tablet to appear shortly after. They are already prepping Andorid-based netbooks, so a tablet isn?t a stretch. This will likely be the biggest competition tot that market, assuming the rumors are true.
One question is, who is deciding which phones will be called smartphones?
there is no real definition of course. but there are two ways to divide it up that would clarify the discussion at least.
the iPhone unquestionably launched a new generation of smartphones. sophisticated UI's with now sophisticated apps. so lets call it and its imitators - including Web OS and Android for sure - second generation smartphones. all the prior models - including WinMo 6.x - would be first gen. the Storm yes. the other RIMs, first gen. all except the latest Nokia's are really first gen.
or one could just list phones that are 100% touch screen UI - no stylus at all. this actually leaves out WinMo 6.x too although in theory 6.5 is all touch.
pretty soon every phone made will be "smart" to some extent.
there is no real definition of course. but there are two ways to divide it up that would clarify the discussion at least.
the iPhone unquestionably launched a new generation of smartphones. sophisticated UI's with now sophisticated apps. so lets call it and its imitators - including Web OS and Android for sure - second generation smartphones. all the prior models - including WinMo 6.x - would be first gen. the Storm yes. the other RIMs, first gen. all except the latest Nokia's are really first gen.
or one could just list phones that are 100% touch screen UI - no stylus at all. this actually leaves out WinMo 6.x too although in theory 6.5 is all touch.
pretty soon every phone made will be "smart" to some extent.
When you say ?100% touch screen Ui? are you referring to no physical keyboard at all or just having a touch screen as well? How about finger-based v. stylus? I won?t even ask about multi-touch because only Palm has gone with that outside of Apple so there may by some legal reason why Android has the ability but it?s not implemented.
There are plenty that will say the iPhone isn?t a real smartphone. They?ll say that it?s a good phone, but not a true smartphone for reasons that diminish every year. I think the most popular reason currently is the lack of 3rd-party multitasking.
I do like the demarkation being based on modern mobile OSes, this means that it can move fairly easily, but that still isn?t well defined enough to be useful to the public at large.
It’s not an exact term my any means and the colloquial definition for smartphone appears to be is changing. How about a phone that has a physical or virtual QWERTY keyboard? That is where I seem to naturally draw the line, but that is quite broad.
It’s like putting someone with an IQ of 85 (average) up against profoundly gifted people (175+) on Jeopardy and saying that you should be able to compete because they’re not in the mentally disabled categories. Not exactly fair. I’ve seen the term “super smartphones” growing in popularity, but I really don’t like that qualifier.
Got a better term for it?
It's tough. Even a Qwerty keyboard isn't a requirement, if the device can upload programs. I suppose there are low end smartphones, and medium range smartphones, and high end smartphones.
Just to get the IQ thing straight. 90 - 110 is average, and 150+ is genius. My daughter's is 151, so yeah, I know the difference.
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Palm is making some missteps, but I think WebOS still has a shot at being viable. I think we’ll know within a year if WebOS will be a real player. BB still dominating business, though RiM possibly losing money, iPhone still leading in sales and the flagship of “intelligent phones” and Andorid picking up the rear as mobile OS street cleaner. Will there be a real forth or just Symbian losing marketshare with each passing quarter?
RIM is making plenty of money, not as much as before, but still plenty.
We've seen a lot of hype about the Pre and WebOs. I don't believe that it's not selling because it's on Sprint. They have other phones that are selling much better.
It doesn't seem to have caught on. The Ads are strange, not welcoming. I think they confuse a lot of people in trying to be really cool. there's cool, and then there's Palm.
It came out at $299 before the $100 rebate, against the new 3Gs. The Palm with 8 GB, and the 3Gs with 16 for the same amount, and WITHOUT a rebate. That was a losing battle if I ever saw one.
Let me tell you about Sprint's rebates. I had four. One they sent me. The next I had to fight for, for over a month. The other two I never received.
Why not just charge $199? Well, we know why.
Then sales were so bad neither company gave the numbers. It took the one whole quarter to sell substantially less than Apple sold in the first weekend. A whole 375,000. Sales are still dropping off.
The Pixi only has a 320 x 320 screen. The same as my old Treo 700p. The screen's width is smaller too. The Pre is hard to use because of the smaller screen already. I cant imagine how the Pixi's will fare. But the tech sites will likely love it. This against the 8 Gb 3G at the same price? 480 x 320 against a much smaller screen with 320 x 320? AHHH! I don't see that working.
And their store still sucks. Hardly any programs after all this time. Even programmers are complaining that the non Palm store programs are much too difficult for most people to install.
If these two phones don't sell, why would anyone else want to use the OS? It's been a dud. Seems to me that Android would be a much better choice. After all, we know that Google will be here several years from now, updating the OS. Will Palm?
And there have been suggestions about some company buying Palm. Microsoft and Nokia. I can't understand that at all. What for?
If MS can't get Win Mobile 7 out, they're through, likely, but that's got a ways to go. What would they do with Danger? Palm would be just another headache, and it would take years before they integrated the OS into some MS conglomeration.
Nokia has been working on Meamo for years, I can't see them going to WebOS.
It seems to me that OS's based on either Unix or Linux distro's are likely the best bet.
We have Apple, Google, Nokia, and some smaller companies going that route.
Palm has GOT to have a smash holiday season, or they're finished. They'll tail out until they crash. Maybe Samsung or some other second tier company may be interested. But, so what?
Can WebOS be viable for Palm with an update to speed up the sluggish UI interactions?
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On ease of use, multitasking has been great; UI latency is still an issue even though the hardware is comparable to 3GS. The problem is the path to the GPU didn’t exist, but now with CSS transforms, that will be solved in the immediate future.
I think it?ll be steam roller. Their App Store is already sizeable. Not like the iPhone?s, but big enough to not be scoffed at, like WebOS?. The comparisons to the iPhone are very close in many ways that was the initial attraction to the iPhone. Android 2.0 is a real contender at this point. Once more models hit the streets, especially lower priced devices, I expect wildfire growth.
PS: If the Apple Tablet is real, I would expect to see an Android-based tablet to appear shortly after. They are already prepping Andorid-based netbooks, so a tablet isn?t a stretch. This will likely be the biggest competition tot that market, assuming the rumors are true.
It seems as though Google has become The Great Copier. Every step Apple has, or is taking, they're prancing around in.
I think they'll do well, and will take some off the top from everyone. but some will get hurt more than others. We won't know for another year.
there is no real definition of course. but there are two ways to divide it up that would clarify the discussion at least.
the iPhone unquestionably launched a new generation of smartphones. sophisticated UI's with now sophisticated apps. so lets call it and its imitators - including Web OS and Android for sure - second generation smartphones. all the prior models - including WinMo 6.x - would be first gen. the Storm yes. the other RIMs, first gen. all except the latest Nokia's are really first gen.
or one could just list phones that are 100% touch screen UI - no stylus at all. this actually leaves out WinMo 6.x too although in theory 6.5 is all touch.
pretty soon every phone made will be "smart" to some extent.
We could make a definition for ourselves, here. But when the surveys come out, they won't be using our definitions. I'd like to know exactly what definitions they're using.
Who knows what improvements they'll see from that.
When I've used it, it was sluggish in a number of areas. The question that's been asked is whether it was rushed out to meet the 3Gs intro, and so the OS wasn't properly optimized, or is the OS incapable of doing much better?
If the former, then ok. But if the latter, and only small gains can be realized, then they've got a problem.
Who knows what improvements they'll see from that.
When I've used it, it was sluggish in a number of areas. The question that's been asked is whether it was rushed out to meet the 3Gs intro, and so the OS wasn't properly optimized, or is the OS incapable of doing much better?
If the former, then ok. But if the latter, and only small gains can be realized, then they've got a problem.
My biggest concern with WebOS is how they can have such an awful SDK when their apps are based on web-based code. I?d think it would be considerably easier to make an SDK that was HTML, CSS and JS-based than one that was C-based. It?s a dead duck if that can?t be straightened out.
My biggest concern with WebOS is how they can have such an awful SDK when their apps are based on web-based code. I?d think it would be considerably easier to make an SDK that was HTML, CSS and JS-based than one that was C-based. It?s a dead duck if that can?t be straightened out.
I don't know. You would think that Rubinstein, having been at Apple for so long, would have understood that the entire gismo must be ready and willing from day one. They blew it. Somehow, they thought they had time to get the SDK out. Then they thought they had time to get the store running. Then they thought they would be MORE restrictive to developers in a number of ways than Apple, etc.
Then the phone itself had several bad production problems. They never did announce a solution for the problems. When Apple does that the tech sites blast them, but were kinder to Palm. Several reviews were even being skitzo about it, stating that the cracks, light leaks, sloppy keyboard slide and other problems were ok, because Palm has ALWAYS has problems like that. ????
and imagine where the iPhone would be if they actually sat down and built a killer business iPhone, instead of the one size fits all consumer phone they are trying to shoehorn into every market niche.
Better than Microsoft's shoehorn a business phone OS onto consumers. It doesn't work and the phones are horrible and clunky as a result.
Nokia's smartphone marketshare should be taken with a pinch of salt too, as what Nokia considers a smartphone (at the low-end) is an absolute joke!
and imagine where the iPhone would be if they actually sat down and built a killer business iPhone, instead of the one size fits all consumer phone they are trying to shoehorn into every market niche.
I suspect the reason Apple gained such vast market share was precisely because they did what they did. Meanwhile, not that Apple seem to be going in this direction, but there is no reason why Apple couldn't have different versions and as you say they could make a killer version for corporate IT types and also have a consumer version ... all from a software update option. iPhone Pro anyone...
?there is no reason why Apple couldn't have different versions and as you say they could make a killer version for corporate IT types...
That only solves one of the problems of breaking into the enterprise. MS has some power server OSes that work very well with their workstation OSes. However, the hardest thing i think for Apple would be to support various PC hardware, even legacy PC hardware, and to support legacy code for their enterprise OS. I don?t even want to call this Mac OS X, but I think it would have to be a very different beast to be supported by corporate the way Windows is.
It isn't that it's legacy. It's that the OS wasn't designed for a smartphone. It's a realtime OS, as most phone OS's are. But it's a simple OS that has had feature after feature piled on. It wasn't written for touch, It wasn't written for capacitive screens. It wasn't written for multitouch. It wasn't written for 3D graphics etc.
This is incorrect.
Symbian is a realtime-capable but it's not a realtime OS in the same way as the traditional phone OSes. Realtime OSes run on the communication processor as they don't require much computation power and this reduces costs. As far as I know, Symbian always runs on a decidated application processor.
Symbian certainly was designed as a smartphone OS. In fact, Symbian invented the term smartphone to describe their new OS. Symbian started life as a PDA OS. It's first appearance was on Psion PDAs back in the early 1990s. These original PDAs were touchscreen and there's many, many touchscreen phones (including those designed for finger touch) since. Capacitive screens obviously aren't a problem as Samsung have managed to add one to a Symbian phone with apparent ease.
Symbian wasn't original designed for 3D graphics but which OS was? Symbian does support 3D graphics, as seen the new Sony Ericsson Satio. And it's support will only get better once the UI and application layers are based on Qt.
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The OS is weighted down by all this bolted on stuff, and is creaky and slow because of it. It also isn't reliable anymore. That's why Nokia is backing Meamo. I said, two years ago, that Nokia would leave Symbian for something else. They had no choice.
Nokia aren't leaving Symbian in the same that they didn't leave S40 when Symbian came along. Maemo will occopy the high-end, Symbian will occopy the mid-range and S40 will continue in the low end. It would be impossible for Nokia to cover their entire range of phones with a single OS. Nokia aren't Apple - they sell a great deal of phones in developing countries and need to hit a wider range of price points.
Symbian is a realtime-capable but it's not a realtime OS in the same way as the traditional phone OSes. Realtime OSes run on the communication processor as they don't require much computation power and this reduces costs. As far as I know, Symbian always runs on a decidated application processor.
Symbian certainly was designed as a smartphone OS. In fact, Symbian invented the term smartphone to describe their new OS. Symbian started life as a PDA OS. It's first appearance was on Psion PDAs back in the early 1990s. These original PDAs were touchscreen and there's many, many touchscreen phones (including those designed for finger touch) since. Capacitive screens obviously aren't a problem as Samsung have managed to add one to a Symbian phone with apparent ease.
Symbian wasn't original designed for 3D graphics but which OS was? Symbian does support 3D graphics, as seen the new Sony Ericsson Satio. And it's support will only get better once the UI and application layers are based on Qt.
Nokia aren't leaving Symbian in the same that they didn't leave S40 when Symbian came along. Maemo will occopy the high-end, Symbian will occopy the mid-range and S40 will continue in the low end. It would be impossible for Nokia to cover their entire range of phones with a single OS. Nokia aren't Apple - they sell a great deal of phones in developing countries and need to hit a wider range of price points.
I'm convinced that the market is too difficult to predict right now.
There will be a shakeout to be sure, but exactly who will be left at the top three or four positions is difficult to see. We can see three, but the forth is a question.
I think it is a bit difficult to predict right now. Particularly, Android which doesn't have numbers before this year (was it lumped in with the Palm/Linux numbers previously?) and basically where iPhone was in 2007. But I think both Canalys and Gartner are wrong.
Approximate market share changes over 2 years (based on the numbers in the article):
Symbian: -32%
RIM: +98%
Apple: +463%
Microsoft: -28%
Palm: -41%
Gartner's predictions, quoted in the article, are obviously wrong, as usual, at least in regard to Windows Mobile: there's no reason to expect their market share loss to reverse, and they certainly aren't going to grow it by 70-80%. The Gartner prediction of 400%+ growth for Android is probably based on Apple's growth, but Android seems to be on a lower trajectory so far, and it's not obvious that Droid or other offerings will accelerate its growth by that much.
On the other hand, it's not obvious to me that RIM will continue to expand it's market share at the current rate. I actually think it's more likely that RIM growth is nearing its peak, and won't see significant change over the next 2 years, after which it may begin to decline.
What does seem clear is that Windows Mobile and Palm are all but dead. Android is the obvious successor to Windows Mobile, and will grow at Microsoft's expense, as well as Symbian's. Palm will likely fade away: no one seems interested in buying Palm at this point, and I'm not sure who would be, except perhaps Nokia, if they decided to ditch their other OSs, and assuming that doesn't happen, it seeming unlikely, Palm is finished.
iPhone growth will slow, percentage-wise, simply because you can't maintain growth rates like that as the market share gets larger, but will probably continue steady in absolute numbers.
So, over the next 2 years, I see iPhone and Android increasing market share, but Android still trailing, Windows Mobile and Palm blinking out of existence, RIM holding steady (maybe a slight decline), and Symbian shrinking but maintaining significant share. Beyond that, I think there are way too many variables, some unknown, for there to be a clear picture of the market.
Symbian is a realtime-capable but it's not a realtime OS in the same way as the traditional phone OSes. Realtime OSes run on the communication processor as they don't require much computation power and this reduces costs. As far as I know, Symbian always runs on a decidated application processor.
Symbian certainly was designed as a smartphone OS. In fact, Symbian invented the term smartphone to describe their new OS. Symbian started life as a PDA OS. It's first appearance was on Psion PDAs back in the early 1990s. These original PDAs were touchscreen and there's many, many touchscreen phones (including those designed for finger touch) since. Capacitive screens obviously aren't a problem as Samsung have managed to add one to a Symbian phone with apparent ease.
This was still basically used as real time Os, even though it added the realtime kernel later. I also don't remember the older Psion as being a touch screen. The first models didn't even have a stylus input capability. That came later. Touch here meant a very basic resistance screen, when it came later. It began in the '80's, not 90's.
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Symbian wasn't original designed for 3D graphics but which OS was? Symbian does support 3D graphics, as seen the new Sony Ericsson Satio. And it's support will only get better once the UI and application layers are based on Qt.
You can badly add something to every OS, but that doesn't mean it works well. Just look to the reviews of the N97 and others to see this. The OS isn't up to the GUI.
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Nokia aren't leaving Symbian in the same that they didn't leave S40 when Symbian came along. Maemo will occopy the high-end, Symbian will occopy the mid-range and S40 will continue in the low end. It would be impossible for Nokia to cover their entire range of phones with a single OS. Nokia aren't Apple - they sell a great deal of phones in developing countries and need to hit a wider range of price points.
Don't say that. There were those here ho didn't believe that Nokia was going to abandon Symbian for their higher end phones either. It will find its way to cheaper phones as well. Just give it some time.
When you say ?100% touch screen Ui? are you referring to no physical keyboard at all or just having a touch screen as well? How about finger-based v. stylus? I won?t even ask about multi-touch because only Palm has gone with that outside of Apple so there may by some legal reason why Android has the ability but it?s not implemented.
100% touch screen UI would mean you never need to use a physical keyboard, phone keypad buttons, or stylus. there will still always be a minimal number of buttons for power, home, and volume controls. the screen will be pretty big necessarily too (i think the smallest one now for such phones is about 2.5"). sure, the phone could have an optional physical keyboard, and many do.
One question is, who is deciding which phones will be called smartphones?
You might remember that when the iPhone first came out, Steve Jobs emphatically stated that it WASN'T a smartphone, though many were calling it one. I agreed with his statement, because of the lack of third party software, which seems to be one of the minimum specs for one.
But even some "feature phones can download some games and other limited programs. So where exactly is the dividing line?
Does the manufacture decide? Do reviewers? Do the rating services?
WebOs, despite its good points, is dependent on Palm phones. Will anyone ever license it? Why would they, when a free OS is available. Several, actually, all based on some Linux distro. Palm phones don't seem to be exciting many people.
Looks like David Pogue decided this time and he choose App Phone after taking suggestions on Twitter.
Comments
One question is, who is deciding which phones will be called smartphones?
You might remember that when the iPhone first came out, Steve Jobs emphatically stated that it WASN'T a smartphone, though many were calling it one. I agreed with his statement, because of the lack of third party software, which seems to be one of the minimum specs for one.
But even some "feature phones can download some games and other limited programs. So where exactly is the dividing line?
Does the manufacture decide? Do reviewers? Do the rating services?
It’s not an exact term my any means and the colloquial definition for smartphone appears to be is changing. How about a phone that has a physical or virtual QWERTY keyboard? That is where I seem to naturally draw the line, but that is quite broad.
It’s like putting someone with an IQ of 85 (average) up against profoundly gifted people (175+) on Jeopardy and saying that you should be able to compete because they’re not in the mentally disabled categories. Not exactly fair. I’ve seen the term “super smartphones” growing in popularity, but I really don’t like that qualifier.
Got a better term for it?
WebOs, despite its good points, is dependent on Palm phones. Will anyone ever license it? Why would they, when a free OS is available. Several, actually, all based on some Linux distro. Palm phones don't seem to be exciting many people.
Palm is making some missteps, but I think WebOS still has a shot at being viable. I think we’ll know within a year if WebOS will be a real player. BB still dominating business, though RiM possibly losing money, iPhone still leading in sales and the flagship of “intelligent phones” and Andorid picking up the rear as mobile OS street cleaner. Will there be a real forth or just Symbian losing marketshare with each passing quarter?
It will cut into everything. The question is, by how much?
I think it?ll be steam roller. Their App Store is already sizeable. Not like the iPhone?s, but big enough to not be scoffed at, like WebOS?. The comparisons to the iPhone are very close in many ways that was the initial attraction to the iPhone. Android 2.0 is a real contender at this point. Once more models hit the streets, especially lower priced devices, I expect wildfire growth.
PS: If the Apple Tablet is real, I would expect to see an Android-based tablet to appear shortly after. They are already prepping Andorid-based netbooks, so a tablet isn?t a stretch. This will likely be the biggest competition tot that market, assuming the rumors are true.
One question is, who is deciding which phones will be called smartphones?
there is no real definition of course. but there are two ways to divide it up that would clarify the discussion at least.
the iPhone unquestionably launched a new generation of smartphones. sophisticated UI's with now sophisticated apps. so lets call it and its imitators - including Web OS and Android for sure - second generation smartphones. all the prior models - including WinMo 6.x - would be first gen. the Storm yes. the other RIMs, first gen. all except the latest Nokia's are really first gen.
or one could just list phones that are 100% touch screen UI - no stylus at all. this actually leaves out WinMo 6.x too although in theory 6.5 is all touch.
pretty soon every phone made will be "smart" to some extent.
there is no real definition of course. but there are two ways to divide it up that would clarify the discussion at least.
the iPhone unquestionably launched a new generation of smartphones. sophisticated UI's with now sophisticated apps. so lets call it and its imitators - including Web OS and Android for sure - second generation smartphones. all the prior models - including WinMo 6.x - would be first gen. the Storm yes. the other RIMs, first gen. all except the latest Nokia's are really first gen.
or one could just list phones that are 100% touch screen UI - no stylus at all. this actually leaves out WinMo 6.x too although in theory 6.5 is all touch.
pretty soon every phone made will be "smart" to some extent.
When you say ?100% touch screen Ui? are you referring to no physical keyboard at all or just having a touch screen as well? How about finger-based v. stylus? I won?t even ask about multi-touch because only Palm has gone with that outside of Apple so there may by some legal reason why Android has the ability but it?s not implemented.
There are plenty that will say the iPhone isn?t a real smartphone. They?ll say that it?s a good phone, but not a true smartphone for reasons that diminish every year. I think the most popular reason currently is the lack of 3rd-party multitasking.
I do like the demarkation being based on modern mobile OSes, this means that it can move fairly easily, but that still isn?t well defined enough to be useful to the public at large.
It’s not an exact term my any means and the colloquial definition for smartphone appears to be is changing. How about a phone that has a physical or virtual QWERTY keyboard? That is where I seem to naturally draw the line, but that is quite broad.
It’s like putting someone with an IQ of 85 (average) up against profoundly gifted people (175+) on Jeopardy and saying that you should be able to compete because they’re not in the mentally disabled categories. Not exactly fair. I’ve seen the term “super smartphones” growing in popularity, but I really don’t like that qualifier.
Got a better term for it?
It's tough. Even a Qwerty keyboard isn't a requirement, if the device can upload programs. I suppose there are low end smartphones, and medium range smartphones, and high end smartphones.
Just to get the IQ thing straight. 90 - 110 is average, and 150+ is genius. My daughter's is 151, so yeah, I know the difference.
Palm is making some missteps, but I think WebOS still has a shot at being viable. I think we’ll know within a year if WebOS will be a real player. BB still dominating business, though RiM possibly losing money, iPhone still leading in sales and the flagship of “intelligent phones” and Andorid picking up the rear as mobile OS street cleaner. Will there be a real forth or just Symbian losing marketshare with each passing quarter?
RIM is making plenty of money, not as much as before, but still plenty.
We've seen a lot of hype about the Pre and WebOs. I don't believe that it's not selling because it's on Sprint. They have other phones that are selling much better.
It doesn't seem to have caught on. The Ads are strange, not welcoming. I think they confuse a lot of people in trying to be really cool. there's cool, and then there's Palm.
It came out at $299 before the $100 rebate, against the new 3Gs. The Palm with 8 GB, and the 3Gs with 16 for the same amount, and WITHOUT a rebate. That was a losing battle if I ever saw one.
Let me tell you about Sprint's rebates. I had four. One they sent me. The next I had to fight for, for over a month. The other two I never received.
Why not just charge $199? Well, we know why.
Then sales were so bad neither company gave the numbers. It took the one whole quarter to sell substantially less than Apple sold in the first weekend. A whole 375,000. Sales are still dropping off.
The Pixi only has a 320 x 320 screen. The same as my old Treo 700p. The screen's width is smaller too. The Pre is hard to use because of the smaller screen already. I cant imagine how the Pixi's will fare. But the tech sites will likely love it. This against the 8 Gb 3G at the same price? 480 x 320 against a much smaller screen with 320 x 320? AHHH! I don't see that working.
And their store still sucks. Hardly any programs after all this time. Even programmers are complaining that the non Palm store programs are much too difficult for most people to install.
If these two phones don't sell, why would anyone else want to use the OS? It's been a dud. Seems to me that Android would be a much better choice. After all, we know that Google will be here several years from now, updating the OS. Will Palm?
And there have been suggestions about some company buying Palm. Microsoft and Nokia. I can't understand that at all. What for?
If MS can't get Win Mobile 7 out, they're through, likely, but that's got a ways to go. What would they do with Danger? Palm would be just another headache, and it would take years before they integrated the OS into some MS conglomeration.
Nokia has been working on Meamo for years, I can't see them going to WebOS.
It seems to me that OS's based on either Unix or Linux distro's are likely the best bet.
We have Apple, Google, Nokia, and some smaller companies going that route.
Palm has GOT to have a smash holiday season, or they're finished. They'll tail out until they crash. Maybe Samsung or some other second tier company may be interested. But, so what?
On ease of use, multitasking has been great; UI latency is still an issue even though the hardware is comparable to 3GS. The problem is the path to the GPU didn’t exist, but now with CSS transforms, that will be solved in the immediate future.
I think it?ll be steam roller. Their App Store is already sizeable. Not like the iPhone?s, but big enough to not be scoffed at, like WebOS?. The comparisons to the iPhone are very close in many ways that was the initial attraction to the iPhone. Android 2.0 is a real contender at this point. Once more models hit the streets, especially lower priced devices, I expect wildfire growth.
PS: If the Apple Tablet is real, I would expect to see an Android-based tablet to appear shortly after. They are already prepping Andorid-based netbooks, so a tablet isn?t a stretch. This will likely be the biggest competition tot that market, assuming the rumors are true.
It seems as though Google has become The Great Copier. Every step Apple has, or is taking, they're prancing around in.
I think they'll do well, and will take some off the top from everyone. but some will get hurt more than others. We won't know for another year.
there is no real definition of course. but there are two ways to divide it up that would clarify the discussion at least.
the iPhone unquestionably launched a new generation of smartphones. sophisticated UI's with now sophisticated apps. so lets call it and its imitators - including Web OS and Android for sure - second generation smartphones. all the prior models - including WinMo 6.x - would be first gen. the Storm yes. the other RIMs, first gen. all except the latest Nokia's are really first gen.
or one could just list phones that are 100% touch screen UI - no stylus at all. this actually leaves out WinMo 6.x too although in theory 6.5 is all touch.
pretty soon every phone made will be "smart" to some extent.
We could make a definition for ourselves, here. But when the surveys come out, they won't be using our definitions. I'd like to know exactly what definitions they're using.
Can WebOS be viable for Palm with an update to speed up the sluggish UI interactions?
Who knows what improvements they'll see from that.
When I've used it, it was sluggish in a number of areas. The question that's been asked is whether it was rushed out to meet the 3Gs intro, and so the OS wasn't properly optimized, or is the OS incapable of doing much better?
If the former, then ok. But if the latter, and only small gains can be realized, then they've got a problem.
Who knows what improvements they'll see from that.
When I've used it, it was sluggish in a number of areas. The question that's been asked is whether it was rushed out to meet the 3Gs intro, and so the OS wasn't properly optimized, or is the OS incapable of doing much better?
If the former, then ok. But if the latter, and only small gains can be realized, then they've got a problem.
My biggest concern with WebOS is how they can have such an awful SDK when their apps are based on web-based code. I?d think it would be considerably easier to make an SDK that was HTML, CSS and JS-based than one that was C-based. It?s a dead duck if that can?t be straightened out.
My biggest concern with WebOS is how they can have such an awful SDK when their apps are based on web-based code. I?d think it would be considerably easier to make an SDK that was HTML, CSS and JS-based than one that was C-based. It?s a dead duck if that can?t be straightened out.
I don't know. You would think that Rubinstein, having been at Apple for so long, would have understood that the entire gismo must be ready and willing from day one. They blew it. Somehow, they thought they had time to get the SDK out. Then they thought they had time to get the store running. Then they thought they would be MORE restrictive to developers in a number of ways than Apple, etc.
Then the phone itself had several bad production problems. They never did announce a solution for the problems. When Apple does that the tech sites blast them, but were kinder to Palm. Several reviews were even being skitzo about it, stating that the cracks, light leaks, sloppy keyboard slide and other problems were ok, because Palm has ALWAYS has problems like that. ????
and imagine where the iPhone would be if they actually sat down and built a killer business iPhone, instead of the one size fits all consumer phone they are trying to shoehorn into every market niche.
Better than Microsoft's shoehorn a business phone OS onto consumers. It doesn't work and the phones are horrible and clunky as a result.
Nokia's smartphone marketshare should be taken with a pinch of salt too, as what Nokia considers a smartphone (at the low-end) is an absolute joke!
and imagine where the iPhone would be if they actually sat down and built a killer business iPhone, instead of the one size fits all consumer phone they are trying to shoehorn into every market niche.
I suspect the reason Apple gained such vast market share was precisely because they did what they did. Meanwhile, not that Apple seem to be going in this direction, but there is no reason why Apple couldn't have different versions and as you say they could make a killer version for corporate IT types and also have a consumer version ... all from a software update option. iPhone Pro anyone...
?there is no reason why Apple couldn't have different versions and as you say they could make a killer version for corporate IT types...
That only solves one of the problems of breaking into the enterprise. MS has some power server OSes that work very well with their workstation OSes. However, the hardest thing i think for Apple would be to support various PC hardware, even legacy PC hardware, and to support legacy code for their enterprise OS. I don?t even want to call this Mac OS X, but I think it would have to be a very different beast to be supported by corporate the way Windows is.
It isn't that it's legacy. It's that the OS wasn't designed for a smartphone. It's a realtime OS, as most phone OS's are. But it's a simple OS that has had feature after feature piled on. It wasn't written for touch, It wasn't written for capacitive screens. It wasn't written for multitouch. It wasn't written for 3D graphics etc.
This is incorrect.
Symbian is a realtime-capable but it's not a realtime OS in the same way as the traditional phone OSes. Realtime OSes run on the communication processor as they don't require much computation power and this reduces costs. As far as I know, Symbian always runs on a decidated application processor.
Symbian certainly was designed as a smartphone OS. In fact, Symbian invented the term smartphone to describe their new OS. Symbian started life as a PDA OS. It's first appearance was on Psion PDAs back in the early 1990s. These original PDAs were touchscreen and there's many, many touchscreen phones (including those designed for finger touch) since. Capacitive screens obviously aren't a problem as Samsung have managed to add one to a Symbian phone with apparent ease.
Symbian wasn't original designed for 3D graphics but which OS was? Symbian does support 3D graphics, as seen the new Sony Ericsson Satio. And it's support will only get better once the UI and application layers are based on Qt.
The OS is weighted down by all this bolted on stuff, and is creaky and slow because of it. It also isn't reliable anymore. That's why Nokia is backing Meamo. I said, two years ago, that Nokia would leave Symbian for something else. They had no choice.
Nokia aren't leaving Symbian in the same that they didn't leave S40 when Symbian came along. Maemo will occopy the high-end, Symbian will occopy the mid-range and S40 will continue in the low end. It would be impossible for Nokia to cover their entire range of phones with a single OS. Nokia aren't Apple - they sell a great deal of phones in developing countries and need to hit a wider range of price points.
This is incorrect.
Symbian is a realtime-capable but it's not a realtime OS in the same way as the traditional phone OSes. Realtime OSes run on the communication processor as they don't require much computation power and this reduces costs. As far as I know, Symbian always runs on a decidated application processor.
Symbian certainly was designed as a smartphone OS. In fact, Symbian invented the term smartphone to describe their new OS. Symbian started life as a PDA OS. It's first appearance was on Psion PDAs back in the early 1990s. These original PDAs were touchscreen and there's many, many touchscreen phones (including those designed for finger touch) since. Capacitive screens obviously aren't a problem as Samsung have managed to add one to a Symbian phone with apparent ease.
Symbian wasn't original designed for 3D graphics but which OS was? Symbian does support 3D graphics, as seen the new Sony Ericsson Satio. And it's support will only get better once the UI and application layers are based on Qt.
Nokia aren't leaving Symbian in the same that they didn't leave S40 when Symbian came along. Maemo will occopy the high-end, Symbian will occopy the mid-range and S40 will continue in the low end. It would be impossible for Nokia to cover their entire range of phones with a single OS. Nokia aren't Apple - they sell a great deal of phones in developing countries and need to hit a wider range of price points.
It still sucks.
Maybe Maemo won't.
I'm convinced that the market is too difficult to predict right now.
There will be a shakeout to be sure, but exactly who will be left at the top three or four positions is difficult to see. We can see three, but the forth is a question.
I think it is a bit difficult to predict right now. Particularly, Android which doesn't have numbers before this year (was it lumped in with the Palm/Linux numbers previously?) and basically where iPhone was in 2007. But I think both Canalys and Gartner are wrong.
Approximate market share changes over 2 years (based on the numbers in the article):
- Symbian: -32%
- RIM: +98%
- Apple: +463%
- Microsoft: -28%
- Palm: -41%
Gartner's predictions, quoted in the article, are obviously wrong, as usual, at least in regard to Windows Mobile: there's no reason to expect their market share loss to reverse, and they certainly aren't going to grow it by 70-80%. The Gartner prediction of 400%+ growth for Android is probably based on Apple's growth, but Android seems to be on a lower trajectory so far, and it's not obvious that Droid or other offerings will accelerate its growth by that much.On the other hand, it's not obvious to me that RIM will continue to expand it's market share at the current rate. I actually think it's more likely that RIM growth is nearing its peak, and won't see significant change over the next 2 years, after which it may begin to decline.
What does seem clear is that Windows Mobile and Palm are all but dead. Android is the obvious successor to Windows Mobile, and will grow at Microsoft's expense, as well as Symbian's. Palm will likely fade away: no one seems interested in buying Palm at this point, and I'm not sure who would be, except perhaps Nokia, if they decided to ditch their other OSs, and assuming that doesn't happen, it seeming unlikely, Palm is finished.
iPhone growth will slow, percentage-wise, simply because you can't maintain growth rates like that as the market share gets larger, but will probably continue steady in absolute numbers.
So, over the next 2 years, I see iPhone and Android increasing market share, but Android still trailing, Windows Mobile and Palm blinking out of existence, RIM holding steady (maybe a slight decline), and Symbian shrinking but maintaining significant share. Beyond that, I think there are way too many variables, some unknown, for there to be a clear picture of the market.
This is incorrect.
Symbian is a realtime-capable but it's not a realtime OS in the same way as the traditional phone OSes. Realtime OSes run on the communication processor as they don't require much computation power and this reduces costs. As far as I know, Symbian always runs on a decidated application processor.
Symbian certainly was designed as a smartphone OS. In fact, Symbian invented the term smartphone to describe their new OS. Symbian started life as a PDA OS. It's first appearance was on Psion PDAs back in the early 1990s. These original PDAs were touchscreen and there's many, many touchscreen phones (including those designed for finger touch) since. Capacitive screens obviously aren't a problem as Samsung have managed to add one to a Symbian phone with apparent ease.
This was still basically used as real time Os, even though it added the realtime kernel later. I also don't remember the older Psion as being a touch screen. The first models didn't even have a stylus input capability. That came later. Touch here meant a very basic resistance screen, when it came later. It began in the '80's, not 90's.
Symbian wasn't original designed for 3D graphics but which OS was? Symbian does support 3D graphics, as seen the new Sony Ericsson Satio. And it's support will only get better once the UI and application layers are based on Qt.
You can badly add something to every OS, but that doesn't mean it works well. Just look to the reviews of the N97 and others to see this. The OS isn't up to the GUI.
Nokia aren't leaving Symbian in the same that they didn't leave S40 when Symbian came along. Maemo will occopy the high-end, Symbian will occopy the mid-range and S40 will continue in the low end. It would be impossible for Nokia to cover their entire range of phones with a single OS. Nokia aren't Apple - they sell a great deal of phones in developing countries and need to hit a wider range of price points.
Don't say that. There were those here ho didn't believe that Nokia was going to abandon Symbian for their higher end phones either. It will find its way to cheaper phones as well. Just give it some time.
When you say ?100% touch screen Ui? are you referring to no physical keyboard at all or just having a touch screen as well? How about finger-based v. stylus? I won?t even ask about multi-touch because only Palm has gone with that outside of Apple so there may by some legal reason why Android has the ability but it?s not implemented.
100% touch screen UI would mean you never need to use a physical keyboard, phone keypad buttons, or stylus. there will still always be a minimal number of buttons for power, home, and volume controls. the screen will be pretty big necessarily too (i think the smallest one now for such phones is about 2.5"). sure, the phone could have an optional physical keyboard, and many do.
One question is, who is deciding which phones will be called smartphones?
You might remember that when the iPhone first came out, Steve Jobs emphatically stated that it WASN'T a smartphone, though many were calling it one. I agreed with his statement, because of the lack of third party software, which seems to be one of the minimum specs for one.
But even some "feature phones can download some games and other limited programs. So where exactly is the dividing line?
Does the manufacture decide? Do reviewers? Do the rating services?
WebOs, despite its good points, is dependent on Palm phones. Will anyone ever license it? Why would they, when a free OS is available. Several, actually, all based on some Linux distro. Palm phones don't seem to be exciting many people.
Looks like David Pogue decided this time and he choose App Phone after taking suggestions on Twitter.