TamsS60 - the S60 Blog

It’s this part of the year again - today, two important parts of the Symbian Ecosystem have announced their quarterly results. Read on for a short summary, my interpretation and links to the full scoops:

Nokia
Nokia’s Q2 went very well. The company managed to raise its market share; and also increased its revenue. Nokia’s estimated market share is now 40% at 122Mio sold devices.

Nokia’s North American market share has risen and is now at 4.5%(about 3% in Q1). The average per-device price is sinking fast and is now at 74€.

Sony Ericsson
Sony Ericsson, on the other hand, has been heavily struck by “lack of demand for expensive handsets”. Even though the number of handsets stayed constant, the income dropped - this can only mean one thing: less expensive (UIQ) boxen sold.

For me, this is a classic example of the Osborne effect in action. Some eejit decided to announce a super product that won’t be live for another year…no wonder that the sales tank. Additionally, two former (UIQ-powered) sales getters haven’t received the necceccary updates due to SE apparently preferring to pamper its CyberShot phones.

SE’s demise can IMHO be blamed squarely on the management - I have rarely seen more dumb actions on a single spot…

More info:
Nokia results - PDF file
SE quarterly@CNN Money

We have seen images of Nokia’s Tube before - and wondered why the box was labeled “ExpressMedia”.

Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s head of devices, now offered a plausible explanation: the box is aimed at mid-range markets. This segment makes up more than 50% of sales…and focussing on it thus makes the most business sense.

This does not imply that Nokia will never release a high-end touchscreen phone. All it means is that mid-range units will be out first…which is good for developers needing to buy testing devices in platoon strength ;).

In case anyone of you still recalls Motorola’s latest, Asus-like attempt at resurrecting an overaged device via the Ferrari badge: should you feel like having the theme on your own Z8/Z10, go ahead.

The image above comes from moto-smartphones. The boys managed to get their grubby hands on an installer file that they claim to contain the Ferrari theme.

As the TamsS60 team doesn’t have such a device in-house, we can neither confirm nor deny this. If you feel like giving it a pop: please let us know how it went!