Hi Torok,

As per the current smart phone market share (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Smartphone_2009.svg) I see symbian loosing this market share very fast (loosing about 11% share in just 3 year). So saying that nokia "will probably be able to fight successfully against its competitors" seems going against facts.

Its interesting too see that android will see a bump in its share (which is almost no brainer when seen in context of this years CTIA). That growth has been at the expense of both symbian and rim both of which are relatively closed platforms as compared to android. So yes open platforms are really way to the future.

Also i think calling Palm Pre a copy of iPhone is bit naive. Plam has done some real innovations in the past and their web os seems a fascinating idea to me. Your article suggests that you would consider any multitouch mobile device as a "copy of iPhone".

Hi,

First of all, let me thank you for your comments, Vaibhavjain! Please see my comments below.

Let me start with that it was foreseeable that Symbian will not be able to maintain its position as market leader when Apple and Google came on the stage. It was not a question that it would change, the question really was how much Nokia (and others) can preserve. Undoubtedly, Nokia lost market share considerably, so did others. But it can't go forever like this. Nokia's decision to use Qt as the primary application layer gives the promise that developers will be able to write applications with more compelling GUI, more easily. Not to mention that their programs will be (more or less) portable across wide range of Nokia devices. I've already mentioned that a lot of programming language/environments are available for devs -> there will be more applications on the market -> people will be more willing to buy Nokia phones. Symbian going open source will attract more OEMs, carriers to choose Symbian (too). Etc ...

As to insisting on Symbian being a closed platform (similar to RIM?) tells me you haven't heard that it is going to be open source. Whether it was a response to Android or an inevitable step - it's the same. The point is that Symbian's biggest challenger is now Android (and not iPhone) and vice versa.

Finally, Palm. I don't care what innovations Palm has made in the past as long as the article is about the future. That fact (i.e. past innovations) doesn't matter quite often. webOS is a nice idea indeed, rumoured to be Palm's last attempt before sinking ... but you know what, that doesn't matter, either, if it really makes Palm successful. Will it? Web technologies is a great thing, admittedly will not offer/make possible lot of things that developers CAN do natively. And yes, you were right: I shouldn't have called Palm Pre a copy of iPhone.

Again, thanks for your comments!

Thanks for the reply Tote,

I do appreciate Nokia's QT effort for making the life easier for the developers. However QT on S60 is still a work in progress and i seriously think that it will hard for nokia to pull this off (more than an year and they still have only a tech preview!!). Nokia has been great at hardware but as far as far as software is concerned they don't have such an edge as Google/Apple. Development on symbian is still a story of horrors for many and in comparison other development platforms seem light years ahead.

As far as symbian being an open source platform is concerned . Though I agree that foundation is the right path to go but after more than an year of its announcement we have only one subsystem (OS Security) making it to OSS. Also still only foundation members have access to the symbian source at the moment which coupled with ineligibility of individuals and $1500+ annual fees makes it really hard to distinguish it from Symbian Platinum partnership in the past. So the probability that in future Symbian will be open source doesnt change the hard realities a symbian developer faces today. And symbian foundation is still far away from preventing these developers from shifting to other platforms.

Regarding Symbian being a relatively a closed platform i was writing in context of Symbian Signed. Traditionally it has been the single largest reason of developer frustration and i dont see any radical change in foundation's standpoint to fix this. In comparison projects on andriod/rim dont have to face this bottle-neck.

The constant bashing of apple screening process in developer world makes it quite evident that such processes are bound to fail one day. It was a similar scenario with symbian signed initially , only that this one is on much larger scale.

Vaibhavjain

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/2009/10/15/nokia-report-steep-profits-drop-looks-new-markets-b72018/

Briefly: analysts agree that Nokia handles recession (and competition) well.