Gabor Torok's Forum Nokia Blog

On Google's move in navigation

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:37:11 +0100

It's been announced a couple of days ago that turn-by-turn GPS navigation would be supported soon on devices based on Android 2.0 platform. Free of charge. The new Google Maps Navigation offers free turn-by-turn navigation garnished with Google's core business (search by voice and in plain English, search along route) and existing services (traffic, satellite and street views) for Android devices.

I was shocked to hear this news. The two biggest map data providers, Tele Atlas and Navteq, have been acquired a few years ago, former for $2.9bn by TomTom latter for $8.1bn by Nokia. Their main revenue sources were licensed map data and value added services e.g. turn-by-turn navigation. Since Google uses either its own map data or one that is freely available, I think I told everything: they do whatever they want. It is still unknown how Google will monetize on the new service - other than ruining competitors -, but advertisement seems to be a very likely option.

On a related note, I found Bill Gurley's article on Less than free business model quite interesting. Briefly, Google offers Android to OEMs free of royalty, even more, they pay ad split to them. In other words, it's not only that OEMs don't have to pay, but on the contrary, they will get paid. One of the commenters of this article gave a hint on another business model that Google may try to follow: don't bother with ads, but offer a package to navigation device makers, news agencies, automakers, roadside advertisers, etc. A package that is based on continuously updated traffic data that can be used to provide always optimal routing information.

How can competitors react on Google's move? Without own map data it's very difficult to compete with someone who's giving away the same service that we are selling.

Stefan from IntoMobile suggested that Nokia should make map data free and wait for the flood of new mapping services - let's see what innovation will result in. Not a bad idea, but would leave Nokia in a bit of passive role, wouldn't it?
The other option could be to do the same as Google may do in the future: sell a package instead of showing ads (see above). Why Nokia? Because it has maps data. Which platform? It's rather Maemo than Symbian - we're talking not only about mobile phones, but other embedded devices, too.
Finally, the third option is advertising and provide free service. Who? Microsoft doesn't have own map data, but has Bing and Yahoo! search, which is a good basis for advertising. Whereas Nokia doesn't have search, but has maps data (I told you that Nokia should have bought Yahoo!). Perhaps these companies should form an alliance?

Looking forward to your comments,

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

The $1 business model

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 02:08:53 +0100

There are two kinds of developers: those who want to sell their programs and those who write software for fun and/or for fame. The latter type is happy with writing freeware, most probably open source software. This article is about the former.

Of course, most developers want to get paid for their programs. As much as possible. The wiser usually analyses the market first:

Would people be interested in the program?
Would they be willing to pay for it?
How much will they think the program is worth?
What about competition, would our program fill a gap or it would just be one of the many?
How can I sell my program, what distribution channels are available, what is the revenue share, etc?
How much do I need to invest in writing the program financially, in terms of effort, etc.?

And the list is not over yet. But it contains the most important question from this article's point of view: how much is a program worth, how much can we ask for it? Note: the answers to these questions are not necessarily the same.

It is very difficult to foretell how much a program is worth for the users. The answer depends on so many factors, such as target group, their spending habits, type of software (e.g. leisure vs professional), what other programs with similar feature-set cost, etc. Naturally, price calculation is so often affected by that how much a developer appreciates his/her own software ("I put so many hours in creating it that it can't be cheap!") - and the expectations and the reality are not always in balance.

The available distribution channels also influence the final price: what they demand from the developer, what they offer to him, their revenue sharing model, etc. As to the latter, for example, although the 70-30 revenue share wasn't typical 1-2 years ago it is now becoming a standard. Apple's App Store, OHA's Android Market, Nokia's soon-to-be-opened Ovi Store all offer 70% off the revenue to the developer. Revenue share is not everything, though: for example, App Store is such a place where it's not uncommon to hear success stories and big earnings, whereas Android Market's community prefers free software. If you follow the news, you might have heard of the coming BlackBerry App World. I found it very interesting that they set the minimum price for a paid-for application to be $3. They said any software that is not worth this amount shall be freeware. I think it's ridiculous: these guys are not aware of how many developer they will alienate from themselves with this approach. Do they really want developers to sell BB apps or not?

The typical revenue models for developers are as follows:

Release free application first with limited features and make it paid when it really gets traction (thousands, tens of thousand downloads per month). The application is available either for free or as paid-for (exclusive OR). Question: won't people turn away from your application once they have to pay for it?
Write an always paid program, which means that your application must be really cool and advertised so well that despite the price (i.e. that it costs money) people buy it. Question: can you compete with free programs with similar features?
Make a Lite and Pro version of your program, Lite being free and Pro paid. The free version supports a subset of Pro's features making it compelling enough to purchase the paid version. It is a very typical approach among developers. Notes: increased maintenance efforts + separation of free and paid-for features must be well thought-out.
Free program with ads. Notes:
- Not all people like ads
- You need to find a good ad provider
- It is challenging to implement a good advertising solution on mobile devices, and there is no good framework available.
Change model dynamically on an experimental basis: see if you can make it with paid version, if not then make it free, then make it paid again when it becomes popular (this is the path iStrip followed, actually). Question: when will people get bored with this behavior?

Please note that I did not include that model in the above list, where the client program is free, but it is essentially a light-weight interface to a server solution, which is exactly what your customers are paying for. Opera Mini's business model is based on this, for example: Opera Mini, the application, is available for anyone as a free download, however, it's Opera's customers (i.e network operators), who pay the price. This article is simply not about this model.

It's also worth noting how important user ratings have become recently. Some developers faced that ratings can kill: unhappy-uneducated users gave low ratings just because "game was too short", they "expected more", "it was free not too long ago", etc. Perhaps these users are not aware of how much power they have in their hands when they rate. Applications written for Android platform and distributed on Android Market are especially vulnerable to this effect.

Finally, getting closer to the point: how much can we ask for a program? Even though this habit is changing, it's still quite typical from people that they think that "cheap cannot be good" or "if it's good it can't be cheap". However, App Store's success stories have proven right the opposite: developers claimed that their revenue had become much higher when they lowered the price to $0.99. You know, this is such a low price that basically anyone can afford around the world even for the silliest program. Developers are now facing the fact that unless they sell their software at the lowest price there will be others who ask less than them. This basically forces them to sell their apps for $1 from the beginning.

Is it the final price, though? Can a $1 hit be sold for $2, too? No-one knows. It's all about making experiments. If I were to sell my app that I think is worth more than being distributed as a freeware, I would ask $1 for it. If people don't buy it at this low price, then I saved the hassle of price calibration. If it gets successful and my program is (one of) the best(s) in its category, then I would increase the price gradually until the download rate gets stabilized and I couldn't expect more revenue from making it even more expensive.

And actually this is what I call the $1 business model.

Looking forwad to your comments,

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Smartphone statistics, 2008

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:16:54 +0100

Gartner released their statistics about worldwide smartphone sales, which contains useful information not only the previous quarter (Q4 2008), but the whole past year. I'd like to share the following two figures with you:

Comments:

Nokia is still #1, but it's market position is seriously challenged by RIM, Apple and HTC.
Even Apple is suffering from decreased sales in Q4, but that didn't prevent them from being ranked as the third vendor by sales.

Comments:

Symbian had lived better days a year ago, but it's still a bit more than 50% of smartphones that runs this operating system.
RIM and Mac OS X performed exceptionally well even during the tough economical situation.
Although the share of Windows Mobile shrank a bit, it still maintains its third position. Only blinds can't see that not for long.

Finally, some words on regional sales:

Dramatic increase (69%) is experienced in sales of smartphone in North-America, which now accounts for 20% of mobile phones in this region. Carriers are agressivelypushing data plans that is beneficial for vendors, too, offering vertical mobile solutions from hardware manufacturing to providing developer SDKs to cloud services.
While overall device sales dropped, Asia/Pacific recorded a 2.3% growth in smartphone sales.
EMEA region were up by only 2%, Western-Europe sales increased by 9.6%. Samsung drove sales in 2008 with Omnia as its most successful product.

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Mobile advertising - An experience

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:51:28 +0100

Background

I decided to give a try to a Reversi-like game found on the Internet just the other day. There was a link to an installation package, which I downloaded and manually installed on my Nokia N95. Even though there was nothing mentioned about that the application is ad-supported, I found the name of the program suspicious since it revealed something about this fact. Never mind, I thought I would still give it a try even though I don't like suprises that come in the form of embedded installation packages (for non-Symbianers: an installation package can contain other 3rd-party software, too, which the main application depends on - these additional programs are referred to as embedded installation packages). Nevertheless, the complementary software has become so intrusive during the installation process and wanted to know such information about me (surprise: it gave me a default birth year, which was exactly the year I was born in - was it an accident or it could find it out somehow?) that I was unwilling to give. Finally I gave up the installation with some bitter taste in my mouth. That was my first experience with Adtronic.

As to mobile advertisement

It's a cliché that there are three-times more mobile devices than desktop computers. If people believe that desktop computers are the homeland of Internet and advertising they will soon have to realize that the transition has already begun from one to the other. Undoubtedly, a device that is always with us is much more compelling platform for advertisers to reach their audience. Their are challenges, though:

Generally the 'context' is an invaluable piece of information from advertising's point of view:
- What is the user's location so that those ads will be shown first that are more relevant at that place.
- Any kind of information can come in handy regarding the user's social network (gender, age, habits, relation to user, etc.) for better targeted ads.
- What the user really wants to do in the given moment, such as browsing to a car rental web page, calling a carpenter, receiving a status report SMS from the bank, etc.
Mobile phones has different characteristics as desktop computers: one of the most notable differences is that they have smaller display giving less room for nice ads that can easily capture the user's attention.

Questions to the 'Audience'

There are couple of things that even I, as a advertisement target, have to answer. The root question is the same in all cases: How much am I willing to give up from my freedom when using my beloved gadget?

How frequently may ads appear without disturbing me?
How much should I let the ad-provider know about my context?
What can an ad do without being too intrusive?
Is it a single application that is 'ad-aware' or I let my entire phone user experience be 'ad-driven'?

Adtronic

Based on what I wrote above you can imagine that I classified Adtronic software as 'suspicious'. But I was surprised to read Forum Nokia Newsletter this morning giving fame to Adtronic. Was it early to judge this software, I asked. A brief summary to those not wanting to visit Forum Nokia:

Adtronic offers advertising solution for S60 devices.
Ads are shown upon new/missed calls, SMS, MMS. Ads usually appear above alert dialogs covering the majority of screen real estate.
How many ads are shown a day can be limited by the user - one must not count on a lot of earned points if it's severely limited, though.
Earned points can be used in various ways
- For reduction of phone bill (who will take care of this?)
- Points can be used to purchase other applications at a discounted price
- Or can be redeemed for GreenPeace, Unicef (nice feature)
The whole solution relies on a working network connection resulting in some data traffic (how much?).

Adtronic offers better monetization to developers should they allow their applications to be bundled with this service. May I ask, though: is it really the price users (not the developers!) have to pay to use applications at a low price? Am I wrong with that selling $0.99 programs also works in Apple's App Store and I bet it will soon work on Android Market, too? Do we really need this?

Another question I'd like to be answered, too: where can I use my points to purchase applications? Is it Adtronic's own store? Or an operator store? How does the whole idea fit into the model of unified content store that all device/platform vendors are pushing lately?

I'm sure I've missed a lot of points with regards to the topic. Could you please make the picture clearer? Thanks!

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Nokia should buy Yahoo?

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:31:11 +0100

It's already known to most people that Yahoo! is in big financial trouble. Even worse, they were tried to be bought by a company (Microsoft) they didn't want to sell themselves to. They successfully fought against that attempt, however, their value was much higher at that time than what it is today. They were even "helped" to survive by a company that they normally call a competitor (Google). But this help didn't last long as Google was afraid of the consequences of a deeper relationship with Yahoo! (i.e. antitrust).

Now Yahoo! has an even bigger problem with much lower valuation. That, among others, inspired telecoms.com to speculate on whether it would be worth for Nokia to buy Yahoo!. Besides the fact that financially it would be a good deal for Nokia, they would even win a very popular brand (especially in the US!) for themselves. And all this along with that Yahoo! is very strong in (web) services would make their position much stronger against Google, Microsoft, Apple and the likes.

Putting aside the negligible fact that there's a world-wide financial crisis lately is this option not worth considering?

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Update: El Reg reported that Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuohad answered this question during MWC 2008 saying 'no' to a possible acquisition of Yahoo!.

Transforming mobile industry

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:44:30 +0200

I read the following quote from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia CEO, in InformationWeek:

"The industry as whole is in the middle of a transformation, and it's a very exciting time," said Kallasvuo. "It's moving from a device industry to an experience industry, and we're making a conscious long-term effort to capitalize on that."

It is so true that it inspired me to write a summary on how things have changed in the "smarter" segment of mobile sector (read:smartphones) lately. Let me recap what was the situation in the near past and then talk about how things are changing recently.

In the classic device manufacturer - network operator - user triangle the roles were as follows (simplified version): user purchases mobile phone from network operator (or elsewhere) and uses those services that are primarily provided by the network operator. The manufacturer never gets any money after purchase and the user is often unhappy with the content/quality of provided (value-added) services.

This is now about to change. The two most important changes (as I see it) are that 1: the above triangle is "rectangularized" by an old/new member of the value chain, a separate content/service provider and 2: that device manufacturers such as Nokia and Apple OR operating system vendors such as Microsoft and Google want to get money after sales, too: they'd like to enter services business. As to point #1, not as if content providers hadn't been present so far, however, the means to access content and the capabilities of devices have not been ideal so far to say the least. As for point #2, there are two reasons why manufacturers would like to enter services business (take it over from operators?): first, there's a great demand from users to consume content that operators have not been good at providing and second, there's great money in it. Apple and Google are very good at providing services now they'd like to be involved in adding new means (i.e. phones) to accessing their services. Whereas Nokia and Microsoft are both in a strong position in smartphone market and naturally they'd like to get more money out of the whole business.

Another aspect in the new business model is whether or not shall mobile OS vendors require license fee for their software to be included in shipping devices. I'm talking about free and open-source mobile OSes, like mobile Linux. Although mobile Linux stacks have not gained so much popularity in the past years, they still do attract manufacturers wishing to lower their bill-of-materials (BOM). Google Android and the new Symbian (Foundation) OS are another two good examples for "license-fee-free software stacks" and Windows Mobile is for fee-based. iPhone's Mac OS X cannot be mentioned here, since Apple doesn't allow anyone to license their software stack, but make everything on their own.

How do mobile OS vendors pamper their developers?

Of course, with a free SDK to develop on. Most of them can be used only on Windows (except iPhone on Mac OS X), true emulation is available on Windows Mobile and iPhone, where development is done on the same platform as the target platform,
Free tools for development. Unfortunately not everything can be done with these tools, but you have to pay for their fee-based version should you need to use more advanced features (e.g. on-device debugging in Carbide.C++),
Signing your own installation package is mandatory for both iPhone and Nokia S60 phones, but not on Windows Mobile and Android. Latter advocates that the user is always capable of making proper decisions on security-related questions and it does not restrict the availability of 3rd-party applications by requiring signature. As Symbian's David Wood put it: let's see what operators will say on it.
As to developer support, old players are in the best position here: there's a great community support for Windows Mobile developers as well as materials to train themselves. The same is true for people who are developing for Nokia phones. Whereas the first non-beta Android SDK has just been introduced (you can imagine the level of support Google provides at such an early stage), not to mention Apple who wanted developers to sign an NDA that essentially prevents free information flow, writing books on development, etc. This has changed recently, since Apple finally scrapped their iPhone NDA and promised a new contract with less restrictions. Note: if Apple hadn't made this step they would have lost the majority of their developers.
Developers reward programs (MVP from Microsoft, Forum Nokia Champion program from Nokia), fee-based support for ISVs willing to pay for advanced services, webinars, trainings, books, etc.
Stores to capitalize on applications, themes, etc.

As to the stores mentioned above,

Apple's (in)famous App Store acts as a central distribution channel for 3rd-party applications. Unfortunately, Apple keeps this place under such a strict control that bitters lots of developers' life who simply don't understand why their programs can't be sold just because they're similar to the built-in applications. On the other hand, Apple keeps only 30% of revenue making App Store more compelling than lots of rival portals, such as Handango.
Having introduced T-Mobile G1 a few weeks ago, Google has also thought that it was a wise idea to create their own Android Market, a market place for downloading Android applications. What is surprising, though, is that Google is not planning to capitalize on sold applications, but expects mainly freebies to populate this place. It wouldn't be Handango if they didn't make the best out of this situation: why not use Handango to get some money for your Android app? It's also worth noting that Google, similarly to Apple, will be able to remove any 3rd-party applications (downloaded from Android Market) from Android-powered handsets if those applications turn out to violate developer distribution agreement.
Nokia already has their Software Market, however, things might change with the start of Symbian Foundation next year: as Antony Edwards from Symbian put it "[they're] pushing hard for a ensuring a zero, or a close as possible to zero, cost to the software vendor: so no cut of revenue for the Foundation".
Finally, Microsoft hasn't maintained their own single portal that ISVs could use for selling their 3rd-party applications, but people had to (and still have to!) use other providers. This article shows what one can conclude from job postings: with the coming of new devices based on Windows Mobile 7 a new portal, SkyMarket will also come in Q1 2009.

Nokia is very keen on transforming from being a device manufacturer to an "internet company". Their Ovi and Mosh are two examples of already launched services, which they just want to further improve with Instant Messaging (by buying OZ Communications) and Comes with Music. On the other hand, whilst strengthening their services portfolio they restructure their businesses so that they focus less on own product development (selling Nokia IntelliSync). Sometimes lowering the prices raises the revenue - wonder how the recent price cut will work out. It's especially important that since more and more people own Nokia devices, it increases after-sales revenue, too.

I've been already thinking on what Microsoft's reaction will be to open source and then found the answer: Steve Ballmer doesn't understand what's good in open source for Symbian and Google and anyway they won't get into handset business as long as they can make a lot of money from software only.

What they've started to work on lately, which you might have already heard of in the news, is 'Windows Cloud' OS. This idea is not new at all, however, it might affect the way how people use their mobile phones today: all you need is a portable device with a tiny display, some computing power and a good browser (you can call it 'smartphone') plus a good connection to the "cloud". Data, business logic, resource intensive heavy computation - all done on remote server(s) and you get only the result to your handset. I wrote 'this idea' was not new, however, what is new is Microsoft's patent on sharing device resources. Now this one is really new, but I don't know how much I can expect from it in real life - what it shows you, though, that it would be too early to write Microsoft off. Side-note: let me recommend you Ajit Jaokar's thought-provoking blog on how network operators could make use of cloud computing.

One more point to add to why M$ is not to enter the handset business today: HTC, designer & manufacturer of feature-rich phones, says that although they can see the potential in Android devices they do belive that Android and Windows Mobile complements each other.

As to Android, it's amazing to read about the ambitious plan to reach 4% US market share by the end of 2008. If that's so easy with a single device, a not perfect software and hardware AND suppose that they will achieve it - may I ask how on Earth Nokia could not do the same?

Anyway, I found a great analysis over at Telco 2.0 on the strategic impact of Google's first handset on the mobile industry. I especially liked the statements, such as "increasingly intense competition with new entrants who are willing to change the rules" and "the world in which handset manufacturers crammed the latest technology into devices simply for the sake of having the best specification sheet and operators flogged them to consumers on the basis of megapixels and memory is changing" and finally "it has been fascinating to watch ‘old school’ industry commentators pick apart the technicalities of the G1 spec sheet and Android platform, all the while forgeting to look at this announcement through the customer’s eyes".

Finally, some words about other members of the mobile industry whom we don't hear much about (well, at least I haven't lately).

Sony Ericsson has rationalised their R&D investment recently. This move, however, didn't prevent them from announcing a new run-time environment, called Capuchin, mixing Java ME and Adobe Flash Lite technologies. SE is eyed-up on Android, too, not only Windows Mobile (Xperia X1) and Symbian so this along with Capuchin will make their way to follow Nokia's approach by offering lots of alternatives for mobile software development.
Motorola is also interested in Android, so much that they are building-up a team of 350 people to develop on Android.
Samsung is not interested in anything else but manufacturing. This will not make their position stronger in today's competing market.

That's all for now about mobile industry news, thanks for reading so far!

All comments are welcome,

Tote
mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Collection of great materials on Symbian going open-source

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 14:15:26 +0200

My regular readers may wonder why I've been silent on the great news of the mobile industry: Symbian is going open-source. The reason is simple: I was so shocked to hear it in the news that I just sat back watching the flood of new blogs and comments trying to digest this new information. But I've been digesting it, too. Other people whom I respect and think knowledgeable in this area have written their opinion and I'm now about to collect some of them in a blog and share it with you.

Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile was one of the fastests in commenting the news. He concluded that it was a logical move from Nokia (and Symbian, etc.) both from technical and business point of view:

" ... [Symbian] was crippled without control of the UI, application stack and the core OS under the same entity"
Eclipse (EPL) license is a weak one, which will make it desirable for OEMs to choose it.

He was also the first to point out that this move would cause lay-offs and some hard times for the following industry players:

SonyEricsson and Motorola: they will eventually have to give up with UIQ, since S60 will be the dominant UI and ecosystem and S60 will basically swallow both UIQ and MOAP(S).
Android's royalty-free, open source business model is not the only compelling alternative for OEMs, operators, etc. On the contrary, Symbian has already proved whereas Android has not yet.

Simon Judge over at Mobile Phone Development comments that " ... full access to the platform code allows for much more innovative applications using facilities that are currently hidden" and all this "only" for $1.500 is definitely a step forward.
He also cleverly notes that "Nokia and Symbian now see licensing the OS as a dead end" - I wonder what Microsoft will comment on it?
Finally, he raises his concerns on a technical question, backward compatibility: "... [the announcement] doesn’t explain whether this is source code, binary or application compatibility" - we wouldn't like to face with such a big break as what we did with the introduction of Platform Security, would we?

Mobile Opportunity's Michael Mace hails Nokia for their courage. He suspects, though, that "... the announcement is actually half cleanup and half power move: ... The power move is that it challenges Android ... The cleanup is that the ownership situation of Symbian was unstable and had to be changed eventually, and SonyEricsson clearly wanted to get out of the UIQ business".
He also asks what will drive Symbian developers after this change? While he believes that developers "respond to user excitement and the chance to make lots of money", he fails to see how the new Symbian strategy drives either one.
Finally, Michael points out that the longer it will take for Symbian Foundation to kick off, the bigger the advantage for Apple and Android. What about Microsoft? "This is Microsoft's ultimate open source nightmare, becoming real.

Rafe Blanford from AllAboutSymbian has written about Symbian Foundation unwrapped. He says that the tranformation of Symbian OS to a royalty-free, open-source system is according to today's industry philosophy and whilst it's a logical move forward it would not have been possible 10 years ago, since "...companies would have been unwilling to let Nokia or anyone else have such a dominant position". The new Symbian OS will challenge LiMo, Android and the likes on their own strength and "negates their key advantage". Apple's iPhone might be not affected, according to Rafe, since "it is difficult to see how Apple will expand to become a significant overall player in mobile space (rather than an individual niche player with lots of press attention)".

The hypothetical ("10 years old") problem Rafe was referring to is supported by The Register, too. They say, "the most damaging problem is that Symbian's licensees may have no desire to make Nokia stronger now that it owns the operation 100 per cent".
They also worry about that "the 'Foundation' may also prove to be an expensive liability for Nokia".
Finally they write that "it's largely Nokia that must be blamed for failing to make Symbian phones remotely 'enchanting' ..." and "... today it's the iPhone which has the enchantment factor. ... Symbian has done everything its original designers asked of it - a twenty year lifespan is not bad at all. But it's now Apple's business to lose."

Apple and world dominance. What about Microsoft? They're still bigger than Apple at least in terms of mobile OS market share, aren't they? Well, we've already got used to the style Microsoft comments similar announcements, thus it must not have come as a surprise that they have welcomed this move. To be more accurate, they have "welcomed the transformation of the Symbian mobile-phone platform into an open source project, because the software giant contends the change will create a host of new problems for the Symbian community." Sweet, isn't it? They use FUD referring mainly to the big 'F', fragmentation, saying that "there are more Linux consortiums that come and go than there are Linux phones".

Which might be true, actually. But don't lump Symbian and mobile Linux together. David Wood, EVP of Research at Symbian, has written a lengthy article about how he (and Symbian) sees this problem. He argues that 1: fragmentation really is a problem, 2: Symbian has the experience and ability to handle it. As opposed to Google, for example, says the side-note. :)

Finally, it's worth paying attention to Ajit Jaokar's article, who warns that "it is not possible to compare Symbian vs. Android; or Symbian vs. iPhone .. because it is not possible to mix operating systems with ecosystems". These are like "apples and oranges" in terms of "iPhone, Ovi and Android are ecosystems. In contrast, Symbian and Limo are operating systems or Operating system consortia". It's another lengthy article that is worth reading.

So I've been silent and haven't commented this news yet. Why? Because there are so many people to listen to ...

What about you?

Tote

mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com

Pay or not to pay for incoming calls and messages?

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 23:00:31 +0200

Hi there,

This is going to be a short post. I was just amazed by the fact that the same topic was discussed in two different blogs coming to totally different conclusions. It inspired me to write about it briefly.

IntoMobile's (and also Nokia's) Stefan Constantinescu, an American blogger living in Finland, blamed Apple why they had started negotiations with network operators and why not tried to sell their handsets unlocked and unsubsidized. He explained why the "American model" sucked (people have to pay even for incoming calls and short messages, they're usually bound to contracts, there's big burocracy, etc.) and praised the freedom Europeans and basically the "Rest-of-the-world" enjoy.

On the other hand, it was shocking to read it from El Reg that an EU commissioner Viviane Reding would let mobile operators charge subscribers to receive calls". Back to stone-age, ehh? It's the very reason why Europe and some countries in Asia are ahead of the US in this area: the burden coming from having a SIM-card + mobile device is not as big here as in the US. American carriers demand too much from users (burocracy, long-term commitment, etc.) while provide too little (poor services, strongly controlled activities [in terms of used services, installable programs, etc.]). I think it would be a huge step back if this idea came true.

Originally from mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com.

I promised that I would be short,

Tote :)

Nokia stirs water with mobile Linux

Thu, 22 May 2008 10:37:02 +0200

It seems it's time for another round to discuss about whether Nokia will abandon Symbian OS in favour of (mobile) Linux. All About Symbian has reported that "Nokia's Chief Financial Officer said Nokia is considering manufacturing Linux-based mobile phones". This information is confirmed by Unwired View as well, although in a slightly different tone: they say "Nokia sees increasing role of Linux in handsets". Finally, El Reg is saying that "Nokia says no plan to switch phones to Linux".

Who to believe? Having read the comments carefully, people seems to have the following opinions/see the following options:

The biggest haters of Symbian say that it's natural that Linux will take over and this is exactly what they've always claimed.
According to a bit more careful opinion, these two mobile operating systems will co-exist. There are couple of arguments for this scenario:
- Symbian/S60 is undoubtedly the leader in smartphone market
- There's room for both OSes: Symbian excels in high-performance mobile phones, whereas Linux could be successful in mid-range feature phones.
- Nokia has already heavily invested in the development of a mobile OS and is a nearly 50% shareholder of Symbian these days - why would they ruin all this?
- The development of a smartphone running on Linux still takes a LOT of time.
Some more paranoid commenters say that "Linux is not really a threat for Symbian, but rather a motivation" to work & perform even better in today's extremely competing environment (i.e. mobile OSes and smartphone market). They believe that Nokia wants to make pressure on Symbian by announcing new Linux-powered devices from time to time.
Finally, there are those who don't give a sh.t to what OS is running on a phone, they "just" want their Flash/Python/Java/etc. applications (whether they wrote them or not) to run smoothly in the future, too. Some of these people also mention that it's the same if the OS gets replaced, the UI (i.e. S60) is what's important - and if it remains, nothing will change actually.

Personally, I think that Nokia is still making experiments with Linux. Don't forget that they already have mobile Linux devices (Internet tablets running on Maemo platform), though, those are not mobile phones, just sort of PDAs. In today's fragmented mobile Linux market, no one mobile manufacturers dare to commit themselves to take Linux as the leading operating system for their products - it would simply be way too risky. It's been also said numerous times that there are lots of factors that manufacturers must consider when selecting a mobile OS and Linux is definitely NOT the ultimate solution today. Nokia might abandon Symbian in the future, however, it's not time for that. Yet.

Original from mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com.

Any thoughts?

Tote

eyePhone - Your tourist guide

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:55:51 +0200

I've stumbled upon this article recently and thought might be worth sharing with you.

If we put the name of this software aside a bit (it obviously tries to ride the waves of iPhone), the idea is great. Take a smartphone being able to

take good quality photos
use GPS
communicate over Internet

and you have your on-line tourist guide always at hand. It doesn't require too much from the handset, no? I bet even a good feature phone would do.

Of course, the client software shall not be too thick, most of the business logic is on server-side, right? An average (phone) camera quality should be enough, a Bluetooth-attached GPS is sufficient and basically every mobile phone can transmit data over the net lately. Okay, if an angle sensor is also part of the phone, then the client can gather more data that eventually makes recognition more accurate.

As opposed to the client-side, the server must be very intelligent. Image recognition can be very complex, since poor image resolution, distant objects, pictures taken from different angles, etc. can make it very-very tricky if not impossible. Yeah, I know that the article mentions that the concept was proved, but I believe it only when I see it, you know. Obviously, the solution must be community-driven - you cannot expect any service providers to maintain such a big database alone. And I'm sure that from business point of view it's the server-side software that one can license, whilst the client software would be available free of charge. At least, that would make sense.

Finally, it's very interesting that others are also making experiments in this area.

Android Scan is an application written for Android Developer Challenge that uses camera and mobile processing power for barcode recognition and scanning for metadata of CDs, DVDs, books on the internet.
Nokia also develops navigating system based on image recognition, where you can just "take a picture of a nearby landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge, with the camera in your mobile phone. Then, Nokia will match your photo with other landmark photos in its mapping database, and tell you where you are."
J-MAGIC is a Japanese company that "sees market for picture-based search", too.

And the list is by far not complete. I wonder who will come up with the most innovative idea bundled with a sustainable revenue on the service so that both sides (i.e. consumers and providers) get what they want.

Any thoughts?

Originally from mobile-thoughts.blogspot.com.

Tote