I recently met David Wood (pictured on the left) in Vienna. David currently works at the Symbian Foundation on all things developer, and has been at the company for more than ten years. David is a very smart and motivated person…but I nevertheless fear that he is on a very difficult mission.
The issue of platform ignorance is not new to Symbian (it was first covered on TamsPalm in 2005). Nevertheless, let’s look at the core problem once again:
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A stock T68i ran on some kind of Erricson IOS that was extended to do java and 16bit color later on-it could do almost everything Series 60 v1 does now. … They actually run on the very IOS that powered the T68. Ridiculously, the IOS powered phones don’t exhibit mayor deficiencies when compared to a Series 60 phone!
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Now, these dumb phones are sold to users. These users don’t realize what they are running. They don’t buy the phone for its OS, but rather for price and integrated features.
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While the T68i is now hopelessly outdated, the situation outlined has not changed much from 2005. Most owners of Symbian devices still don’t know that their device runs Symbian, and Nokia/Samsung are not likely to put a Symbian splashscreen into their phone’s startup sequence like WM licensees are forced to.
As long as customers don’t understand that they own a smartphone, they will not purchase advanced applications. This does not motivate developers to create advanced applications, and furthermore does not promote platform loyalty through investment lock-in.
While Symbian could have broken the chain in the past (when it still was a Kernel licensor), its new legal status as a foundation sees the company robbed of any way to enforce the (unpopular and annoying) splashscreen or any other kind of branding change.
However, this is not the only problem David has. Tune in soon to find out why more developers does not necessarily make a better platform…
What do you think?
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I can’t the more agree. Take Nigeria, as a case study for example. Less than 30% of the 140+ million population ‘know what’ Symbian ‘is’. The rest are just hyped about surface features. A typical example is this http://www.nokiaconnected.com site,. where people worship Nokia like their the best thing that happened since sliced bread.
I tell Nokia Nigeria that they should get their acts together..but do they listen – No.. their so much comfortable with making profit off Nigerian ignorant of their phone’s capabilities.
Many of the customers here,in Nigeria, Do Not ‘understand’ their phones. And as you said “this does not motivate developers to create advanced applications, and furthermore does not promote platform loyalty through investment lock-in” is quite true.
Nokia in Nigeria can make 5x more profit if they helped to establish a Symbian Community that sort to not only ‘raise awareness’ but created useful applications tailored for the environment – via local mobile developers.
But nobody here is listening.. its very unfortunate Nokia’s place in Nigeria,. where they have so much influence… they just mess it up everytime with irrational thinking.
My sister wants a new phone… because her current contract is ending. So I go and ask her what she wants because I’m determined that with a little help from me she can can get more bang for her buck and have a phone she likes more… The first thing she wants to do with her phone is make calls, text. It has to have nice ringtones and it has to look nice.
So, any phone can call and almost any phone can text and play nice ringtones these days. What I do is to show her a lot of phones and let her say which one she likes. I went throug h ALL phones which were released in +/- the last 9 months and are to be released shortly… from the ultimate ladyphone to the most “office guy” winmo querty device. This is the list I came up with of phones she likes (mostly by appearance, that’s her judgement). Oh, and she doesn’t want a LG, she has one now and is determined they are built crappy.
SE z555i (typical fashion dumbphone, black)
Nokia 7610 supernova (silver color)
Samsung Soul (gold or black)
Samsung Ultratouch (vanilla color)
Nokia 6500 classic (though even she thinks that one is realy simple, bronze color)
Nokia E71 (I was suprised)
Nokia N97 (white, and I was also suprised)
Anyhow… what a result. My sister does not want a typical ladyphone… they are girlish so manufacturers do your homework. She also really dislikes touchphones that almost entirely consist of a screen. The color is very important for her… anything blue gets disaproved and you typical black phone is “for men”.
In the end it seems she likes the samsung ultatouch best. But off-course the bottomline of my story here is that your typical mobile phone user gives a rat’s ass about what software the telephone is running. WinMo has found a office niche. The I-phone found the status/user-expierience niche. And symbian is still the smartphone OS with lot’s of user… no niche here. So is it so bad to not be in a niche? That means you are the major player. Ok… what I would suggest symbian to do really work on the GUI… make it even more easy, make it without lag. And make sure stability is good. And put the advanced functionality even deeper down in the menu structures. On all these point they are allready doing a better job than WinMo but they got to improve it even more because the average user should not have a reason to NOT WANT symbian. And if they fix this they will get it right. Symbian is free and open source now so if you don’t give manufacturers a reason to not use it they probably will. And remember, Android is looking around the corner, but it’s more smartphonisch (meaning a OS the average user might not want to use). The I-Phone OS is to restricted by Apple and tied to much to it’s brand to really diffuse widely so that’s no competition.
Hi Folks,
very valid points!
Will send them to David in a jiffy!
All the best
Tam Hanna