You know this, I know this. A few people in this thread know this but the average person that wants to call his or her kids is looking for a solution. They do not care about the whys of an Apple contract or SDK. They want to call and find a phone that allows this.
That's true, but we're talking to each other, not to these others.
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My question is, as unlimited data plans are generally no problem overseas, I do not see why Apple did not look regional and allow things that other phones are allowed to do. I think this is short sighted on their part and very provincial in their planning.
Why are you assuming that it's Apple? Why would Apple care?
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I have to disagree with you here. I have used both phones and can move freely between them both. The biggest thing I see is that many people don't bother to RTFM. Usually feature sets sit in the manual where people sometimes seldom seem to look.
Yes, but you see, you are not the average person who buys these phones, are you? I don't think so. I'm not trying to flatter you, but you're more than a step up from these people who can't figure out their phones.
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I disagree with you here as well. The core business of Nokia is making phones. They will adjust and maintain their share of the smartphone market. Apple will make in roads but this will be spread across the same markets that SE, Samsung, and the others share. Fact remains, there are simply some people that do not like the iPhone. For the enterprise, the iPhone is years behind WinMobile, RIM and Symbian. It will be a hard for Apple to place the iPhone in these markets when you have dedicated OS's designed to meet these enterprise needs. I think Apple will have to adjust their SDK if they want to see real enterprise features on the iPhone.
I'm sure that Nokia will do whatever they think they must, and can do, to keep their share, esp. as they didn't do as well as expected this quarter. But that doesn't mean they will succeed.
Their share is falling already. It's not just Apple, of course, that's the cause, but Apple doesn't help.
RIM is an interesting example. You don't like their phones, and neither do I, but they are proving to be very popular in business. They do only one thing besides doing phone calls, and that's e-mail. But they have done that very well. The fact that they could rise so quickly on the basis of one feature should amaze you. I'm sure that Nokia has taken notice of them as well.
Palm seems to be flatlining in business, though its cheaper phones have proven relatively popular with younger people. Win Mobile seems to be in trouble. They were predicting over 20 million licenses sold for the last 12 months early on, but recently, it was shown that they barely made 18 million. I don't remember how many they sold the year before, but it doesn't look good. If something isn't done quickly, the license sales will drop again this year, and if it does, I don't see what MS will be able to do to get mindshare back.
It's possible that in two years, we may see a fight between Apple, Nokia, and RIM. The rest being relegated to the sidelines. I'm talking about smartphones, of course.
A ticket is not a house or apartment. These are sophiticated services that are common place here and other European countries, not to mention used by other countries.
Unless you have the cash upfront, generally buying a big ticket item like a car or house is such a complex process would be difficult to impossible to do over the phone.
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By your reasoning, if they are not used in the US, then they are not important. Very myopic and typical.
What???? I have no idea how you see that. I am only talking about US, not anyone else.
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This is laughable. So, once again, if the US does not deem it noteworthy, it is not worth doing. You don't see this as being very sophomoric?
You are suddenly having an entirely different conversation. You claimed that US does not use certain features because we are not sophisticated enough. I say no we don't use those features because we don't find them useful or they are not practical. I didn't judge their usefulness for others.
Not having Skype on the iPhone has nothing to do with the phone. It's the contract that denies it. You can't blame Apple, and the product for that. As we've recently seen, the same is true for tethering. The phone can easily do it, but the contract says no.
What about the fact that Apple said they were going to break the stronghold that the providers had? They have dropped to every demand AT&T have placed on them.
Supporting tethering, or VOIP should not be restricted on all phones because of one country, Apple should have just restricted those features in the USA.
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Originally Posted by melgross
Symbian is not only clunky, its considered to be done in such a way as to be very difficult to bring to to the required level. I'm not so sure this is really going to help.
Clunky? Yeah, it has some interface issues, but so does the iPhone
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Don't forget also, that they did this only because they see it losing out in the long term, and they thought this might slow that down, or boost it back up. I doubt it will work.
What is wrong with them wanting control over it? Isn't that what Apple demands?
From reading each post I think there is some confusion in each argument. From what I understand Daniel is more specifically talking about Symbian's ability to compete in the smartphone market. I've seen various other places where developers have written about the differences between developing for Symbian and developing for the iPhone. Largely they mostly give praise to the iPhone development structure, and don't see as much of a future in the current Symbian development structure.
I won't argue that the Symbian C++ developer kit is not the nicest. But the market to develop for is a lot larger. Also, you can run Java, and Python apps on your Symbian phone
Samsung, and others have done very well here. Nokia's products fail to interest N American purchasers, who don't in general, like the pokey phones that Europeans buy, but whose features aren't even used much over there. Like Japanese phones made for that market. They have all of these features and services, but not that many actually use them.
Same could be said about the US and their choice of cars, they typically didn't like the smaller cars that the Europeans buy.... and how are the sales of SUVs etc going now?
Has Windows Mobile been able to sustain similar growth as the iPhone has achieved?
You do know you can't compare the short term sales of a new product (yes the iPhone is a new product, two new releases) to the long term sale of an existing product?
I will agree with your last statement 10000%. I still think that features unexplained are features viewed as not needed. I showed a co-worker that they could have Skype on their N78 but not on their iPhone and they say the ability to have VoIP via 3G or WiFI as a valuable feature that they did not know about. While Symbian may be clunky, I see it as being in the position to expand now that it has gone Open Source and Nokia will have controlling authority.
The fact that my E65 has SIP support built in is wonderful, I use it all the time.
I won't argue that the Symbian C++ developer kit is not the nicest. But the market to develop for is a lot larger. Also, you can run Java, and Python apps on your Symbian phone
I think the problem for Symbian developers is there isn't a market *at all*.
There's just a lot of phones.
My guess that there has been more money spent on the iPhone AppStore than has been spent on all those billion Symbian phones since they were first launched.
The typical nonexpert user of Symbian phones does not know....
I think the problem for Symbian developers is there isn't a market *at all*.
That's not true, there is a market, and people are selling apps for Symbian phones.
Also, there are a lot of useful free applications available.
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Originally Posted by Carniphage
My guess that there has been more money spent on the iPhone AppStore than has been spent on all those billion Symbian phones since they were first launched.
Probably true, but how much of that was just a rush to get something they have never had before, or people providing features missing from the iPhone?
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Originally Posted by Carniphage
The typical nonexpert user of Symbian phones does not know....
* That their phone can run Apps at all.
* What Apps are there available?
* If I wanted one, what do I do?
* What equipment do I need to install the App?
* If I get it, will it work on my phone?
* If the developer fixes a bug, how will I know?
C.
non-expert is a strange way of describing it, you would be describing the purchasing of Symbian phones as expert or non-expert then
Well, you can then break down the purchasers of Symbian phones into any two groups. One, people who wanted a smartphone, two, people who purchased the phone because they liked the look of it.
If they wanted a smart phone, it isn't hard to find out how to install Apps. For Windows users, install the Nokia Suite application (or just use IRDA, or BT), for the Mac use BT, from the phone, just download it.
Well, you can then break down the purchasers of Symbian phones into any two groups. One, people who wanted a smartphone, two, people who purchased the phone because they liked the look of it.
I think that is a very accurate statement, and I guess the same is true for iPhone too.
But the big difference is that iPhone's casual consumers can pay for and install applications with a single mouse click.
On Symbian, the difficulty level acts as a huge barrier. Way too high for casual users. And sometimes even too high for tech savvy professionals who understand the process but simply don't have the time.
In other words, one iPhone is a bigger market that twenty or thirty Symbian smartphones. And if that's true, Symbian's high volume of units does not make it a larger market.
But not for Nokia. I'm not interested in all the other low end phones, as those are not what we're talking about here, and their percentage of the market is already shrinking, as predicted.
Nokia haven't had a new smartphone out in almost a year now. The N96 is just launching now.
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Originally Posted by melgross
They tried to sell phones here, but they weren't successful.
I think there's many reasons peculiar to the US market that meant Nokia didn't sell phones there, not entirely of their own making. Your carriers are luddites in general for example and you had this strange affliction called flip phones.
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Originally Posted by melgross
It isn't just new product that matters though. It's relevent product. The market is changing from the do it all with many buttons and menus phones to more usable phones. Most phone manufacturers are trying to get on that bandwagon now that Apple has led the way.
I don't think so. Apple are taking market share away from non-smartphones, not from smartphone manufacturers. Other manufacturers are taking share away from non-smartphones too. It's not just the simple smartphones that are gaining from the more feature rich smartphones.
Plus I think it's a matter of perception. In the USA you've had really fucking stupidly complicated smartphones from Palm, WinMo and Blackberry as a whole. I don't find Nokias or SEs as complicated as those. You have to remember that Symbian accounts for over half the smartphone sales worldwide and probably 70% here even if they're like 5% in the USA.
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Originally Posted by melgross
They may not have new product, because they may have shelved some of what they were going to produce, and are scrambling to produce something closer to the iPhone, as other manufacturers are doing.
I don't think so there either. The N96 has been leaked for almost a year now and is just coming out. They demod a touch screen phone about a year ago too.
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Originally Posted by melgross
Nokia has bought the rest of Symbian to control its development all by itself. The open sourcing it is an attempt to make it matter, as it seems to be losing marketshare. Nokia is hoping more manufacturers will use it to compete with their new competitors, but I don't think they will succeed. Symbian has its own problems.
It'll take them a year to 18 months to open source Symbian.
You might say that's the last gasp of desperation but I think it's more that they're confident they have the time.
They need to update their toolchain for developers and I wonder what they'll do with QT and Trolltech.
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Originally Posted by melgross
Of course it's their fault, though I thought you loved their phones. I know you loved the N95.
You couldn't be further wrong. I really can't stand the N95 or Nokia's Symbian S60 interface. It's a very poor relative to UIQ.
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Originally Posted by melgross
I just wish you would stop calling the iPhone the "Jesus" phone. It doesn't help the debate. I certainly don't think the iPhone is perfect, as you must know if you've read my posts on the subject.
In one word it sums up blind faith and the iPhone's perceived role as the messiah, saving the world from cruddy smartphones. I think it's apt.
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Originally Posted by melgross
But Apple does have the concept right. Miost people simply don't use most of the features in other top phones. Apple is appealing to those for whom those features are a waste, and would prefer features that are more meaningful to them.
I agree though they sometimes have a very USA-centric idea of what people want - eg. no MMS, shit camera and no Bluetooth transfer or tethering.
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Originally Posted by melgross
Everybody can be served here. Apple isn't going to sell 100% of the smartphones in the market. They don't need to, to be very successful.
Agreed. Again, my complaint with the original piece was the unjustified slagging off of competition.
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Originally Posted by melgross
If Apple can somehow get 15 to 20% of the world market for smartphones, a possibility, then they can be seen as having succeeded in a market in which they were novices, and in which were told they had little chance.
That would be enough. When you consider that the market for smartphones will eventually take over from the general cell market, this means a lot. I remember when Samsung had but 3% of the cell market. If they could do it, so can someone else. I also remember when the cell market was owned by Motorola, and no one thought it would ever be lost by them. That also shows that Nokia had better be very careful. They have it all to lose, and it can surely happen.
Yes, they surely can. I'm also routing for Apple beating Microsoft.
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Originally Posted by melgross
You're minimizing what it represents, and you know that you are. A pretty face is just the opening gambit. It's what inside that matters too, and what makes the pretty face possible. So far, I've made it a point to try to play with as many new competitors to the iPhone as I can get my hands on as they come out (not too many yet). While others have a pretty face as well, theres nothing behind it. They still use phone OS's, which despite being prettified, are still fairly simple when compared to the iPhone OS. They have nowhere to go in the future. Most can barely handle the new interfaces they've been given. After that, they fade. They have to be totally re-written from the ground up.
Taking the analogy further, with the iPhone you get past the pretty face, find the insides great too but discover someone's installed a chastity belt.
My experience with the iPhone is I get most of the way there on what I'm trying to do only to find it's missing a feature. This is normal for Apple software though. It's like iPhoto v2 currently. It wasn't till v4 that I really felt that it'd do what I wanted. I'm sure they'll get there but at the moment I'm sticking with more mature feature rich phones even if the underlying OS is a bit creaky. Back to the analogy, cheerleaders are great but old prostitutes do more for your money. You might feel dirty about it later.
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Originally Posted by melgross
We'll see how many other phones are capable of full OS upgrades as the iPhone is, and how many manufactures are willing to give up phone sales in order to offer it.
They all are, it's just the phone manufacturers move on to new models and in reality so do the users. Who keeps a phone for more than their contract length when you get a free upgrade at the end of it?
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Originally Posted by melgross
No. They are correct as far as they go. They are just old. New figures would show the iPhone to have much wider sales and distribution.
And I'd have liked to have seen them. Seemed silly posting old graphs.
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Originally Posted by melgross
If Apple is selling as many as it seems they are, they will take a respectable percentage of total sales this quarter. When they are on sale in all 70 countries by the end of the year, their sales will be much higher still. If they manage to sell as many as some are predicting, not an impossibility it seems, they will have had a meteoric rise. It's no wonder other companies are busily revising their lines.
It certainly is looking meteoric. I think it's fantastic as it has stirred up the market. I do hope we don't get lots of iPhone clones though.
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Originally Posted by melgross
I really don't find the article that far off though. Some cheerleading, to be sure, but he could be right too. If you would rather have gloomy assessments of Apple's products, go read some Windows fanboi sites, or perhaps some Linux sites.
I was complaining about the uncalled for Symbian gloom really.
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Originally Posted by melgross
I've also had my argument with Daniel. While he's often right in general, he goes overboard, and foregts things, as well as minimizing others.
But, that's his job.
If that's the case then the editorial policy here stinks.
I won't argue that the Symbian C++ developer kit is not the nicest. But the market to develop for is a lot larger. Also, you can run Java, and Python apps on your Symbian phone
Wasn't as if those were left out on accident. Jobs specifically said Apple didn't feel java was a good development language.
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Originally Posted by jfanning
You do know you can't compare the short term sales of a new product (yes the iPhone is a new product, two new releases) to the long term sale of an existing product?
My point is has Win Mo ever had 400% year over year growth.
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Originally Posted by jfanning
So, the fanboi attitude is, if the iPhone doesn't support a feature, the feature is not important?
No that's not it at all. Studies have shown their are a basic subset of features that most everyone uses. For people who want a Swiss Army phone those will be available.
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Originally Posted by jfanning
Same could be said about the US and their choice of cars, they typically didn't like the smaller cars that the Europeans buy.... and how are the sales of SUVs etc going now?
This roughly drafted propaganda is becoming a bore. Its just constant platform bashing, rather than focusing on technically accurate and enlightening content. And I don't mean just the phone related content, I mean all of it. Can the author not write a balanced article?
What about the fact that Apple said they were going to break the stronghold that the providers had? They have dropped to every demand AT&T have placed on them.
Supporting tethering, or VOIP should not be restricted on all phones because of one country, Apple should have just restricted those features in the USA.
Apple is doing that where they cn. Music was in the hands of the providers at high prices. They ended that. We've not seen phones that could have fully upgradable OS's before, now we do.
But Apple is subject to economics just as everyone else is. They need carriers to sell their product. If they tried to break all of the carriers income sources, none of them would carry the phone. What purpose would that serve?
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Clunky? Yeah, it has some interface issues, but so does the iPhone
Despite a couple of its fans here, Symbian has a lot more problems that Apple's OS. It's clunkier inside as well.
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What is wrong with them wanting control over it? Isn't that what Apple demands?
If they want control over it, then they shouldn't sorta' kinda' put it out as open source. Rhey should have just convinced the other minority owners to sell it to them, and announced that they now own the whole thing, and will do with it as they please.
They're trying to have it both ways. Apple isn't pretending that, though they USE open source.
Same could be said about the US and their choice of cars, they typically didn't like the smaller cars that the Europeans buy.... and how are the sales of SUVs etc going now?
Don't equate the oil price crunch with phones. Gas prices have been three, or more, times higher in Europe for decades due to taxes, so Europeans don't drive that much compared to those in N America.
The countries there are also far smaller, going from one to the other is not quite the same as driving around the US, or Canada.
Comments
You know this, I know this. A few people in this thread know this but the average person that wants to call his or her kids is looking for a solution. They do not care about the whys of an Apple contract or SDK. They want to call and find a phone that allows this.
That's true, but we're talking to each other, not to these others.
My question is, as unlimited data plans are generally no problem overseas, I do not see why Apple did not look regional and allow things that other phones are allowed to do. I think this is short sighted on their part and very provincial in their planning.
Why are you assuming that it's Apple? Why would Apple care?
I have to disagree with you here. I have used both phones and can move freely between them both. The biggest thing I see is that many people don't bother to RTFM. Usually feature sets sit in the manual where people sometimes seldom seem to look.
Yes, but you see, you are not the average person who buys these phones, are you? I don't think so. I'm not trying to flatter you, but you're more than a step up from these people who can't figure out their phones.
I disagree with you here as well. The core business of Nokia is making phones. They will adjust and maintain their share of the smartphone market. Apple will make in roads but this will be spread across the same markets that SE, Samsung, and the others share. Fact remains, there are simply some people that do not like the iPhone. For the enterprise, the iPhone is years behind WinMobile, RIM and Symbian. It will be a hard for Apple to place the iPhone in these markets when you have dedicated OS's designed to meet these enterprise needs. I think Apple will have to adjust their SDK if they want to see real enterprise features on the iPhone.
I'm sure that Nokia will do whatever they think they must, and can do, to keep their share, esp. as they didn't do as well as expected this quarter. But that doesn't mean they will succeed.
Their share is falling already. It's not just Apple, of course, that's the cause, but Apple doesn't help.
RIM is an interesting example. You don't like their phones, and neither do I, but they are proving to be very popular in business. They do only one thing besides doing phone calls, and that's e-mail. But they have done that very well. The fact that they could rise so quickly on the basis of one feature should amaze you. I'm sure that Nokia has taken notice of them as well.
Palm seems to be flatlining in business, though its cheaper phones have proven relatively popular with younger people. Win Mobile seems to be in trouble. They were predicting over 20 million licenses sold for the last 12 months early on, but recently, it was shown that they barely made 18 million. I don't remember how many they sold the year before, but it doesn't look good. If something isn't done quickly, the license sales will drop again this year, and if it does, I don't see what MS will be able to do to get mindshare back.
It's possible that in two years, we may see a fight between Apple, Nokia, and RIM. The rest being relegated to the sidelines. I'm talking about smartphones, of course.
A ticket is not a house or apartment. These are sophiticated services that are common place here and other European countries, not to mention used by other countries.
Unless you have the cash upfront, generally buying a big ticket item like a car or house is such a complex process would be difficult to impossible to do over the phone.
By your reasoning, if they are not used in the US, then they are not important. Very myopic and typical.
What???? I have no idea how you see that. I am only talking about US, not anyone else.
This is laughable. So, once again, if the US does not deem it noteworthy, it is not worth doing. You don't see this as being very sophomoric?
You are suddenly having an entirely different conversation. You claimed that US does not use certain features because we are not sophisticated enough. I say no we don't use those features because we don't find them useful or they are not practical. I didn't judge their usefulness for others.
Not having Skype on the iPhone has nothing to do with the phone. It's the contract that denies it. You can't blame Apple, and the product for that. As we've recently seen, the same is true for tethering. The phone can easily do it, but the contract says no.
What about the fact that Apple said they were going to break the stronghold that the providers had? They have dropped to every demand AT&T have placed on them.
Supporting tethering, or VOIP should not be restricted on all phones because of one country, Apple should have just restricted those features in the USA.
Symbian is not only clunky, its considered to be done in such a way as to be very difficult to bring to to the required level. I'm not so sure this is really going to help.
Clunky? Yeah, it has some interface issues, but so does the iPhone
Don't forget also, that they did this only because they see it losing out in the long term, and they thought this might slow that down, or boost it back up. I doubt it will work.
What is wrong with them wanting control over it? Isn't that what Apple demands?
Why are you assuming that it's Apple? Why would Apple care?
The fact that they have disabled all features globally instead of letting the operators disable features have shown it is Apple
From reading each post I think there is some confusion in each argument. From what I understand Daniel is more specifically talking about Symbian's ability to compete in the smartphone market. I've seen various other places where developers have written about the differences between developing for Symbian and developing for the iPhone. Largely they mostly give praise to the iPhone development structure, and don't see as much of a future in the current Symbian development structure.
I won't argue that the Symbian C++ developer kit is not the nicest. But the market to develop for is a lot larger. Also, you can run Java, and Python apps on your Symbian phone
Samsung, and others have done very well here. Nokia's products fail to interest N American purchasers, who don't in general, like the pokey phones that Europeans buy, but whose features aren't even used much over there. Like Japanese phones made for that market. They have all of these features and services, but not that many actually use them.
Same could be said about the US and their choice of cars, they typically didn't like the smaller cars that the Europeans buy.... and how are the sales of SUVs etc going now?
Has Windows Mobile been able to sustain similar growth as the iPhone has achieved?
You do know you can't compare the short term sales of a new product (yes the iPhone is a new product, two new releases) to the long term sale of an existing product?
I think Mel's point is that the iPhone emphasizing the features most used will make it a universal success around the world.
So, the fanboi attitude is, if the iPhone doesn't support a feature, the feature is not important?
I will agree with your last statement 10000%. I still think that features unexplained are features viewed as not needed. I showed a co-worker that they could have Skype on their N78 but not on their iPhone and they say the ability to have VoIP via 3G or WiFI as a valuable feature that they did not know about. While Symbian may be clunky, I see it as being in the position to expand now that it has gone Open Source and Nokia will have controlling authority.
The fact that my E65 has SIP support built in is wonderful, I use it all the time.
I won't argue that the Symbian C++ developer kit is not the nicest. But the market to develop for is a lot larger. Also, you can run Java, and Python apps on your Symbian phone
I think the problem for Symbian developers is there isn't a market *at all*.
There's just a lot of phones.
My guess that there has been more money spent on the iPhone AppStore than has been spent on all those billion Symbian phones since they were first launched.
The typical nonexpert user of Symbian phones does not know....
* That their phone can run Apps at all.
* What Apps are there available?
* If I wanted one, what do I do?
* What equipment do I need to install the App?
* If I get it, will it work on my phone?
* If the developer fixes a bug, how will I know?
C.
I think the problem for Symbian developers is there isn't a market *at all*.
That's not true, there is a market, and people are selling apps for Symbian phones.
Also, there are a lot of useful free applications available.
My guess that there has been more money spent on the iPhone AppStore than has been spent on all those billion Symbian phones since they were first launched.
Probably true, but how much of that was just a rush to get something they have never had before, or people providing features missing from the iPhone?
The typical nonexpert user of Symbian phones does not know....
* That their phone can run Apps at all.
* What Apps are there available?
* If I wanted one, what do I do?
* What equipment do I need to install the App?
* If I get it, will it work on my phone?
* If the developer fixes a bug, how will I know?
C.
non-expert is a strange way of describing it, you would be describing the purchasing of Symbian phones as expert or non-expert then
Well, you can then break down the purchasers of Symbian phones into any two groups. One, people who wanted a smartphone, two, people who purchased the phone because they liked the look of it.
If they wanted a smart phone, it isn't hard to find out how to install Apps. For Windows users, install the Nokia Suite application (or just use IRDA, or BT), for the Mac use BT, from the phone, just download it.
Well, you can then break down the purchasers of Symbian phones into any two groups. One, people who wanted a smartphone, two, people who purchased the phone because they liked the look of it.
I think that is a very accurate statement, and I guess the same is true for iPhone too.
But the big difference is that iPhone's casual consumers can pay for and install applications with a single mouse click.
On Symbian, the difficulty level acts as a huge barrier. Way too high for casual users. And sometimes even too high for tech savvy professionals who understand the process but simply don't have the time.
In other words, one iPhone is a bigger market that twenty or thirty Symbian smartphones. And if that's true, Symbian's high volume of units does not make it a larger market.
C.
I had the numbers in a link, but now I can't find it. Smartphone sales are up about 35%.
Or 16% according to Gartner.
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/...to_slow_1.html
But not for Nokia. I'm not interested in all the other low end phones, as those are not what we're talking about here, and their percentage of the market is already shrinking, as predicted.
Nokia haven't had a new smartphone out in almost a year now. The N96 is just launching now.
They tried to sell phones here, but they weren't successful.
I think there's many reasons peculiar to the US market that meant Nokia didn't sell phones there, not entirely of their own making. Your carriers are luddites in general for example and you had this strange affliction called flip phones.
It isn't just new product that matters though. It's relevent product. The market is changing from the do it all with many buttons and menus phones to more usable phones. Most phone manufacturers are trying to get on that bandwagon now that Apple has led the way.
I don't think so. Apple are taking market share away from non-smartphones, not from smartphone manufacturers. Other manufacturers are taking share away from non-smartphones too. It's not just the simple smartphones that are gaining from the more feature rich smartphones.
Plus I think it's a matter of perception. In the USA you've had really fucking stupidly complicated smartphones from Palm, WinMo and Blackberry as a whole. I don't find Nokias or SEs as complicated as those. You have to remember that Symbian accounts for over half the smartphone sales worldwide and probably 70% here even if they're like 5% in the USA.
They may not have new product, because they may have shelved some of what they were going to produce, and are scrambling to produce something closer to the iPhone, as other manufacturers are doing.
I don't think so there either. The N96 has been leaked for almost a year now and is just coming out. They demod a touch screen phone about a year ago too.
Nokia has bought the rest of Symbian to control its development all by itself. The open sourcing it is an attempt to make it matter, as it seems to be losing marketshare. Nokia is hoping more manufacturers will use it to compete with their new competitors, but I don't think they will succeed. Symbian has its own problems.
It'll take them a year to 18 months to open source Symbian.
You might say that's the last gasp of desperation but I think it's more that they're confident they have the time.
They need to update their toolchain for developers and I wonder what they'll do with QT and Trolltech.
Of course it's their fault, though I thought you loved their phones. I know you loved the N95.
You couldn't be further wrong. I really can't stand the N95 or Nokia's Symbian S60 interface. It's a very poor relative to UIQ.
I just wish you would stop calling the iPhone the "Jesus" phone. It doesn't help the debate. I certainly don't think the iPhone is perfect, as you must know if you've read my posts on the subject.
In one word it sums up blind faith and the iPhone's perceived role as the messiah, saving the world from cruddy smartphones. I think it's apt.
But Apple does have the concept right. Miost people simply don't use most of the features in other top phones. Apple is appealing to those for whom those features are a waste, and would prefer features that are more meaningful to them.
I agree though they sometimes have a very USA-centric idea of what people want - eg. no MMS, shit camera and no Bluetooth transfer or tethering.
Everybody can be served here. Apple isn't going to sell 100% of the smartphones in the market. They don't need to, to be very successful.
Agreed. Again, my complaint with the original piece was the unjustified slagging off of competition.
If Apple can somehow get 15 to 20% of the world market for smartphones, a possibility, then they can be seen as having succeeded in a market in which they were novices, and in which were told they had little chance.
That would be enough. When you consider that the market for smartphones will eventually take over from the general cell market, this means a lot. I remember when Samsung had but 3% of the cell market. If they could do it, so can someone else. I also remember when the cell market was owned by Motorola, and no one thought it would ever be lost by them. That also shows that Nokia had better be very careful. They have it all to lose, and it can surely happen.
Yes, they surely can. I'm also routing for Apple beating Microsoft.
You're minimizing what it represents, and you know that you are. A pretty face is just the opening gambit. It's what inside that matters too, and what makes the pretty face possible. So far, I've made it a point to try to play with as many new competitors to the iPhone as I can get my hands on as they come out (not too many yet). While others have a pretty face as well, theres nothing behind it. They still use phone OS's, which despite being prettified, are still fairly simple when compared to the iPhone OS. They have nowhere to go in the future. Most can barely handle the new interfaces they've been given. After that, they fade. They have to be totally re-written from the ground up.
Taking the analogy further, with the iPhone you get past the pretty face, find the insides great too but discover someone's installed a chastity belt.
My experience with the iPhone is I get most of the way there on what I'm trying to do only to find it's missing a feature. This is normal for Apple software though. It's like iPhoto v2 currently. It wasn't till v4 that I really felt that it'd do what I wanted. I'm sure they'll get there but at the moment I'm sticking with more mature feature rich phones even if the underlying OS is a bit creaky. Back to the analogy, cheerleaders are great but old prostitutes do more for your money. You might feel dirty about it later.
We'll see how many other phones are capable of full OS upgrades as the iPhone is, and how many manufactures are willing to give up phone sales in order to offer it.
They all are, it's just the phone manufacturers move on to new models and in reality so do the users. Who keeps a phone for more than their contract length when you get a free upgrade at the end of it?
No. They are correct as far as they go. They are just old. New figures would show the iPhone to have much wider sales and distribution.
And I'd have liked to have seen them. Seemed silly posting old graphs.
If Apple is selling as many as it seems they are, they will take a respectable percentage of total sales this quarter. When they are on sale in all 70 countries by the end of the year, their sales will be much higher still. If they manage to sell as many as some are predicting, not an impossibility it seems, they will have had a meteoric rise. It's no wonder other companies are busily revising their lines.
It certainly is looking meteoric. I think it's fantastic as it has stirred up the market. I do hope we don't get lots of iPhone clones though.
I really don't find the article that far off though. Some cheerleading, to be sure, but he could be right too. If you would rather have gloomy assessments of Apple's products, go read some Windows fanboi sites, or perhaps some Linux sites.
I was complaining about the uncalled for Symbian gloom really.
I've also had my argument with Daniel. While he's often right in general, he goes overboard, and foregts things, as well as minimizing others.
But, that's his job.
If that's the case then the editorial policy here stinks.
I won't argue that the Symbian C++ developer kit is not the nicest. But the market to develop for is a lot larger. Also, you can run Java, and Python apps on your Symbian phone
Wasn't as if those were left out on accident. Jobs specifically said Apple didn't feel java was a good development language.
You do know you can't compare the short term sales of a new product (yes the iPhone is a new product, two new releases) to the long term sale of an existing product?
My point is has Win Mo ever had 400% year over year growth.
So, the fanboi attitude is, if the iPhone doesn't support a feature, the feature is not important?
No that's not it at all. Studies have shown their are a basic subset of features that most everyone uses. For people who want a Swiss Army phone those will be available.
Same could be said about the US and their choice of cars, they typically didn't like the smaller cars that the Europeans buy.... and how are the sales of SUVs etc going now?
Not all Americans like big SUV's.
Wasn't as if those were left out on accident. Jobs specifically said Apple didn't feel java was a good development language.
Just like all the other features were not left out by accident
My point is has Win Mo ever had 400% year over year growth.
Well you can't say the iPhone has either
Not all Americans like big SUV's.
I'm sorry, everyone else was just throwing around wild generalisations so I thought I would join in
But the big difference is that iPhone's casual consumers can pay for and install applications with a single mouse click.
Welcome to the Nokia Store and 9,834 applications...
http://www.download.nokia.com/
What about the fact that Apple said they were going to break the stronghold that the providers had? They have dropped to every demand AT&T have placed on them.
Supporting tethering, or VOIP should not be restricted on all phones because of one country, Apple should have just restricted those features in the USA.
Apple is doing that where they cn. Music was in the hands of the providers at high prices. They ended that. We've not seen phones that could have fully upgradable OS's before, now we do.
But Apple is subject to economics just as everyone else is. They need carriers to sell their product. If they tried to break all of the carriers income sources, none of them would carry the phone. What purpose would that serve?
Clunky? Yeah, it has some interface issues, but so does the iPhone
Despite a couple of its fans here, Symbian has a lot more problems that Apple's OS. It's clunkier inside as well.
What is wrong with them wanting control over it? Isn't that what Apple demands?
If they want control over it, then they shouldn't sorta' kinda' put it out as open source. Rhey should have just convinced the other minority owners to sell it to them, and announced that they now own the whole thing, and will do with it as they please.
They're trying to have it both ways. Apple isn't pretending that, though they USE open source.
The fact that they have disabled all features globally instead of letting the operators disable features have shown it is Apple
Which features have they "disabled", and what evidence do you have that they HAVE disabled them?
Same could be said about the US and their choice of cars, they typically didn't like the smaller cars that the Europeans buy.... and how are the sales of SUVs etc going now?
Don't equate the oil price crunch with phones. Gas prices have been three, or more, times higher in Europe for decades due to taxes, so Europeans don't drive that much compared to those in N America.
The countries there are also far smaller, going from one to the other is not quite the same as driving around the US, or Canada.