Gabor Torok's Forum Nokia Blog - Smartphone OS market share in 2007

I would agree with your last comment

2009-03-23T12:08:18Z

I would agree with your last comment and suggest it's a little short sighted not to imagine a day when smartphones are more common and better supported than PCs. Who makes the hardware will be about price, style & branding while you'll be free to flash whatever OS you want to run, Symbian, Windows, Linux etc. As much as I don't like Microsoft smartphone products now I wouldn't bet against them gaining significant market share in the long run. As phone hardware gets closer to PCs in power the easier it'll be to move stuff over from the desktop.
tower defense

touch ui

2007-12-13T21:54:52Z

Nokia already has a fine touch UI with N800/N810, just finally slap a 3G modem to it. As for mobile/web services and beating iphone, nokia needs to start caring about quality and finish touch. There are dozens of other wma webshops and wma music players and they all suck. They are buggy and littered with usability quirks. Just like nokia phones... Do less features but do the few features *well*. Things like "10min to FIX" gps on N95 only make customers angry.

Symbian figures too high also

2007-12-12T10:51:57Z

Note that Symbian also includes millions of Japanese phones as smartphones which are locked to only allow a type of Java application to be developed by 3rd parties and installed. So those aren't smartphones either really.

True, iPhone is not a smartphone, but still

2007-12-10T22:58:47Z

Hey, Yep, there are many people who argue that iPhone is not a smartphone at all. Actually, I agree with them. However, it's a better feature phone, I would say (although it has a touch screen, for example, which is usually part of smartphones). But, as we all know, Apple is planning to introduce their SDK for developer to make apps for iPhone. So it'll be officially a smartphone shortly.

What is a "smartphone"?

2007-12-10T15:35:02Z

It's funny that they monitor smartphone marketshare, when there is no clear definition of the term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone One definition is any phone that can run native apps that don't run in sandbox (i.e. any S60 phones in Nokia's case), but the iPhone would actaully fail that test :-D

Random points of view

2007-12-09T10:46:16Z

Microsoft has LOTS of money. When they seriously want to expand outside closed USA market, they will do it. They can compete with lower price longer than anyone else (except google). Also their developer support is THE example for anyone else. Key point in Apple iPhone is that it's very simple on purpose. The feature set is limited and, partly because of that, it's very easy to use. Check any Nokia/SE phone and spend next 15 minutes just trying to figure out how to do anything (like swithing from Hungarian to English language :). Usability is a strong selling point. Blackberry RIM is still hanging on in USA, please remember that. They have faithful customer base. Android is very attractive to developers, unlike Symbian OS. Possibility of EASY application development will create a big supply of 3rd party sw, which in the end will allow operators and OEM to offer different kind of devices. Also some users like to have possibility to personalize their devices - including sw they want to use. However this will take some time. My foretelling is that Symbian is close to it's peak. Truly open sw development environments like Android and truly usable devices like iPhone will gain ever bigger share. I would also bet that Nokia Maemo will get more important in not-so-far future. Also I foretell that Nokia will stay on top no matter what happens.

Choose your own OS?

2007-12-08T15:31:45Z

Interesting post as usual Tote! Thanks. I would agree with your last comment and suggest it's a little short sighted not to imagine a day when smartphones are more common and better supported than PCs. Who makes the hardware will be about price, style & branding while you'll be free to flash whatever OS you want to run, Symbian, Windows, Linux etc. As much as I don't like Microsoft smartphone products now I wouldn't bet against them gaining significant market share in the long run. As phone hardware gets closer to PCs in power the easier it'll be to move stuff over from the desktop. They just have so many resources to throw at this market I can't imagine them failing forever. As for Apple, it'll be interesting to see if the iPhone is just a one off overhyped iconic product that is actually rather rubbish (a lot like Motorola's RAZR) or if they can follow up with more of the same or possibly even something rather better. Mark

Let me disagree

2007-12-08T13:28:36Z

Hi kcomex, First off, thank you for commenting. However, let me disagree with your findings. Microsoft has never been a manufacturer - neither desktop, nor mobile. But yet, as we all know Windows has the biggest market share among desktop operating systems. Although that's true that mobile and desktop markets are very different in many respects, however, I can't see that it would be THE key factor *who* manufactures the actual hw. As to Google: I did not mention the name of the company on purpose. You know, it's just one thing that the initiative (i.e. OHA) is kicked-off by Google, it's a much larger group that we're talking about with regards to OHA. Thus, it doesn't count, again, that Google is a software company or not - there are lots of other companies also member of OHA that are from different areas: ranging from operators to device manufacturers, sw vendors, etc. Finally, I think the key factors for successful products are: user appeal (form factor, easy of use, etc.), provided features and of course price. Having this list, iPhone is in a very strong position in user appeal, Symbian and MS phones in provided features and finally Android phones (when they'll be available) in price. Tote

more practical

2007-12-07T17:01:57Z

thanks torok, for your thoughts:) i will share some of mine which discussed in IM with my friend just yesterday about this topic:) i showed my points that mobile phones(both feature phone and smartphone) industry is a bit different than software and any other market. M$ could beat Netscape and Palm and Real media and some other players in the computer, but within mobile phone industry his chance is different and very small. because one of the practical reason is the gap between manufacturer and the software vendor, the gap is made by both technical and business. This point could also apply to google, which i categorize him to software vendor cause google's core product is software/algorithm. Also i had said the consumer electronics industry is more closer to mobile industry than software. so a big market sharer might be apple more than M$ or google. they got the key to sell something to customers, but not the key to improve the speed of window resizing :P