Report: Worldwide Smartphone Market Soars in Q3
Analyst firm Canalys is reporting that global shipments of smartphone devices are up 75% year-on-year in Q3 2005. The report claims traditional handheld shipments dropped 18%, while converged devices more than doubled in volume. They are also reporting that shipments of Treo's overtook all Palm handhelds combined for the first time.
Nokia
Nokia maintained its huge lead, with year-on-year growth of 142% being almost twice the market average. Particularly successful were its 3G Symbian Series 60 based smart phones, including the Nokia 6680, 6630, N90 and N70, but older devices, such as the 6600, continued to contribute to shipments, particularly in developing regions. Nokia’s overall global market share position remains supported by its strength in EMEA, which Canalys estimates accounted for just under 70% of the vendor’s smart phone shipments in Q3.
Palm
The Treo 650 smart phone has now become a key part of second-placed Palm’s device portfolio. For the first time, shipments of Palm’s smart phones overtook those of all its handhelds combined. Smart phones represented 53% of its shipments globally, up from 40% in the previous quarter. Palm has of course announced a Windows Mobile based smart phone for the US market in 2006 and the next six months are likely to see more changes in the vendor’s product mix. Its overall shipments fell 2%, despite smart phone growth of 71%, due to a 34% fall in handheld shipments, but it is still the only vendor other than Nokia shipping more than a million smart mobile devices each quarter.
RIM
RIM, in third place, narrowly missed joining the million-unit club this quarter, shipping 978,000 devices globally. The vendor’s year-on-year growth, although impressive over the past two years, slowed again to 58%, from 84% last quarter and 100% in Q1 2005. “Despite pioneering the market for enterprise push e-mail solutions and doing a great job of signing up new operators in many countries the company is coming under increasing pressure from a number of hardware and software vendors, all chasing this lucrative segment,” said Canalys analyst Rachel Lashford. The proportion of its device shipments accounted for by EMEA rose from 17% in Q2 2005 to 24% this quarter, meaning that North America represented 74% of shipments, down from 80% last quarter.
By far the fastest growing vendor in the top five was fourth-placed Motorola. Its smart phone volume rose to 694,000 units, helped significantly by shipments of the company’s Linux-based smart phones in China, where their handwriting recognition capabilities have proved popular.
Despite an overall year-on-year drop of 20% in its device shipments, sequential growth of 22% was enough to put HP back into the top five. Like Palm, HP is seeing a shift to converged devices. The hw6500 series wireless handhelds with integrated GPS did particularly well in Q3 2005 and HP continues to benefit from the demand for navigation solutions in EMEA, a region which now represents more than half of its global smart mobile device shipments.
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Cobalt (and Be) may have killed the PalmOS platform.
Symbian should be removed from these reports - its numbers are falsely elevated through the inclusion of Symbian on phones that aren't really "smartphones". Smartphones should be by definition phones sold for use performing other tasks beyond simple telephone conversations. Does even 25% of those Symbian sales represent sales to people who plan to use their devices as anything but a basic phone?
Here's a lineup that might keep Palm alive:
1) $199 - Treo 200 (basic phone-centric phone running PalmOS)
2) $399 to $599 - Treo 650, Treo 700w, Treo 700p
3) $99 - Z22
4) $199 - TEł
5) $299 - TX
6) $399 - LD˛ (integrated keyboard, OLED screen, the kitchen sink)
And if Palm starts offering non-Treo devices with Windows Mobile, it's safe to assume the Palm Board of Directors is STILL on crack.
Hoping to connect a traditional form factor PalmOS PDA to your Bluetooth phone-du-jour? Get a European CLIE TH55 off eBay. Palm only cares about big profits + sales with Treos and has abandoned the power/business user PDA market. Get used to it. Solly Cholly. Cobalt's failure to materialize as a real OS set off a complex chain reaction that fatally wounded the Palm eCONomy. Way to go, Palm!
TVoR
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: The writing's on the wall...
Nah, there will always be a niche market for traditional non-phone handheld devices. The difference is that while smartphone shipments are booming and will continue to grow, the tradtional pda market is matured and stagnant with approx ~10-12 million annual unit sales. This is of course puny in comparison to the mobile handset market and future projections of the smartphone/feature phone segment. However, there is still a lucrative niche market for pda's and OEM's like Palm, HP, Dell etc still can make money here...
--------------------
Gaurav
RE: The writing's on the wall...
1) $199 - Treo 200 (basic phone-centric phone running PalmOS)
2) $399 to $599 - Treo 650, Treo 700w, Treo 700p
3) $99 - Z22
4) $199 - TEł
5) $299 - TX
6) $399 - LD˛ (integrated keyboard, OLED screen, the kitchen sink)
Yeah, that sounds about right to me. I especially like your Treo 200 idea. I think something like that could do very well.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: The writing's on the wall...
If you have the Treo 200 and 700x, do you really need the 650 around anymore? I'd probably recycle the 650 design for use in the 200, save some engineering cost, and let the 700s carry the upper and mid-range.
RE: The writing's on the wall...
Really? When you take into consideration the percentage of Communicators and Sony Ericsson P-Series which are sold as PDAs, plus the fact that the number of Series 60 users who are aware of what their device can do, I'd say the number's at least 20%, probably more.
RE: The writing's on the wall...
Also, is it me or does anyone else see a problem with palm selling a winwob phone and a palmos phone, people will say I want software for my treo and they won't know which os it uses.
As far as pda-'only' devices I just can't see a future outside niche markets. Its all going to be phones.
Fish
RE: The writing's on the wall...
So I assume you've been at least paying passing attention to the follies I've been experiencing trying to get the TX to connect to various BT phones? You think conspiracy on Palm'
s part, the carriers (Sprint, VZW etc) or otherwise? At any rate, the Treo in its current form is too low resolution, too small of a screen, MUCH too little RAM, and lacks integrated Wi-Fi (please, no Enfora case suggestions!). For the forseeable future (1 year+) a dedicated PDA is still the only option for me.
Nice list. I'd not want to see a keyboard on the LD2--it'd add even more to the bulk--and there really needs to be a $100 cheap-o model in there....remember Palm's trying to target the MILF market! A $100 unit with an SD slot and a headphone jack would be very good for retail impulse purchases, all while making the pricier flash-based MP3 players look bad. I don't know why they didn't just simply repackage the Zire 31 instead downgrading to the Z22.
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX
RE: The writing's on the wall...
phew... very old discussion ^^
RE: The writing's on the wall...
I don't see why you feel that a "Treo or any other smartphone is no option for me as a classic pda user", since modern smartphones offer everything a normal pda has. The XDA Exec that I use has 128mb flash, 64mb ram, wifi, bluetooth, qwerty keyboard, VGA screen, GSM and 3G. It has everything a modern pda has and more.
Fish
RE: The writing's on the wall...
It has everything a modern pda has and more.
"And more" is right. Like 3 times the size and weight. At least read the guy's post if you're going to argue with him.
RE: The writing's on the wall...
I said that a modern smartphone will do everything his pda will do and more, which is perfectly true. Now, you could argue that what you want is pda and phone because you don't like carrying a pda all the time, but that is very different from the statement "Treo or any other smartphone is no option for me as a classic pda user", if you don't like the bulk of a pda all the time then it would be better to say 'I don't like/have to have my pda with me all the time, and that's why two devices are better' not to imply that combo devices are inferior to the pda literate.
Now about a smartphone (pda equiv.) being bigger than a small drinking phone, well of course, it's a pda, I didn't talk about that. I personally take a small phone out with me when in pubs.
So when you say 'At least read the guy's post if you're going to argue with him.', then look at what I had written and since I had quoted him, that there may be a possibility that I had read what he said. I was just answering one point, not all the points he raised, since the one he mentioned about phones and drinking was perfectly valid.
Fish
RE: The writing's on the wall...
Cobalt was also a victim of the idiotic PalmOne/PalmSource split. (If you go back and read my posts from a couple years ago, my message has not changed) There was nothing gained by splitting Palm except that the hardware half could report profits by hiding losses in the software half and the execs could take their bonuses home. Meanwhile the software half suffered because it was cut off financially and technically from the hardware half.
Cobalt was a step in the right direction. The PalmOne guys failed because they didn't take it to completion. Cobalt was not a bad thing.
RE: The writing's on the wall...
So I assume you've been at least paying passing attention to the follies I've been experiencing trying to get the TX to connect to various BT phones? You think conspiracy on Palm'
s part, the carriers (Sprint, VZW etc) or otherwise? At any rate, the Treo in its current form is too low resolution, too small of a screen, MUCH too little RAM, and lacks integrated Wi-Fi (please, no Enfora case suggestions!). For the forseeable future (1 year+) a dedicated PDA is still the only option for me.
I believe the crippled Bluetooth is a conscious decision to force users to buy expensive hardware. The carriers and Palm aren't stupid. Even the Treo 650 initially came with a crippled Bluetooth, preventing users from using the phone as wireless modem for laptops. Carriers feel full Bluetooth and Wi-Fi implementations give users too many options/too much flexibility and that costs carriers money.
Nice list. I'd not want to see a keyboard on the LD2--it'd add even more to the bulk--and there really needs to be a $100 cheap-o model in there....remember Palm's trying to target the MILF market! A $100 unit with an SD slot and a headphone jack would be very good for retail impulse purchases, all while making the pricier flash-based MP3 players look bad. I don't know why they didn't just simply repackage the Zire 31 instead downgrading to the Z22.
I'd like to see a LD-like device with a dual CompactFlash/SD slot and let users buy a MicroDrive if they want to. Take the money spent on the MicroDrive and put it into an OLED screen, slick keyboard + better software. If Sony could make a tiny model with built-in keyboard 2 years ago (UX40/50), there's no reason that Palm can't do the same in 2005-06.
The Z22's iPod-like styling is probably a better choice for appealing to the huge MILF demographic that Palm is targeting and the SD slot adds an extra layer of complexity (and cost) that would hurt Palm's bottom line. Yes, a $99 Z22 with an SD slot would be an amazing value, but there probably wouldn't be much incentive for those users to upgrade to higher-level models. You can't have it all in the sub-$100/bottom-feeder world...
TVoR
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: The writing's on the wall...
Look at a Treo 600. Look at a Tungsten T (roughly the same under-the-hood specs despite being a year apart in release). Which would you prefer to read an e-book on?
Look at a Treo 650. Look at a T5. Which would YOU prefer to read an e-book on?
240*240 on the 700w isn't going to help matter any. A LARGER size 320*320 on the rumored 670p/700p will help a bit but it's still a SMALL SQUARE SCREEN!
When I go out drinkin'/honky tonkin' I leave the PDA behind and bring just the cell phone. I'd never risk a Treo in a bar/club/concert/party type environment
Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX
RE: The writing's on the wall...
Until we see something like LiveFaith's Treo 800g, I won't be biting on the smartphone as PDA replacement mantra.
http://churchoflivingfaith.com/images/treo800g.jpg
A lot of people would probably find the combination of a tiny phone running PalmOS with Bluetooth + a full-featured TH55/Tungsten T3, T5, TX. Use the PDA + phone during work, use just the phone when going out places that a traditional PDA is too big to carry. I'm truly baffled why Palm STILL has not released the Treo 200. (Sony Ericsson could produce a basic PalmOS phone in less than 6 months using off-the-shelf parts and casings.) Had Motorola bought PalmOS we might hav finally started to see some decent phone designs running PalmOS...
TVoR
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: The writing's on the wall...
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: The writing's on the wall...
quote "Conventional aka "stoneage" PDAs will ALWAYS surpass smartphones in screen size, resolution, and general usability."
My phone has a 3.6 inch 640x480 vga screen (Dell X50v and Asus A730 are 3.68 inch VGA, so pretty much the same) and is just as usable as any other winmob pda (which is not saying that winmob is as usable as palm, by the way).
I think many people on this site have to get over this irrational believe that smartphones are going away because vanilla pdas are superior and always will be. Also, this utterly bizarre idea that MILFy soccer moms who just need a list of contacts are going to put them in their pda rather than store them in their phone is crazy to the point of dillusion.
What palm desparately need is a well designed smartphone. The keyboard on the treo is great, the rest of the phone is pants. When I got my Nokia 7650, the 1st S60 phone out, it was the best smartphone around. When I got my Treo 600 to replace it, it was the best smartphone around. I did not replace the 600 with the 650, nor is the 700 good enough either. My treo got replaced by the Universal, flawed as a package but still in my opinion, the best smartphone around. Palm has nothing on the horizon to stand against the new winmob phones not even the 700 which looks pitiful in comparison to some of the competition (and the 700 isn't even out yet).....
Fish
PDAs are DEAD
How many times do I have to tell you dolts? Non-Cellular PDAs are DEAD.
There's no reason to buy/manage/charge/carry/sync/fight/fumble with 2+ devices when ONE Smartphone can do it all.
RE: PDAs are DEAD
http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8162#114425
--------------------
Gaurav
RE: PDAs are DEAD
nope - here's your future
low revenues, low margins, commodity
http://www.franklin.com/estore/dictionary/RT-8015/
RE: PDAs are DEAD
How many times do I have to tell you dolts? Non-Cellular PDAs are DEAD.
They're still almost half the smart device market and there are new and better ones coming out every few months. Why should the fact that sales are on a slow decline discourage anyone from buying one? More to the point, why should anyone who prefers two full-featured devices to one semi-full-featured smartphone convert to our religion just because you tell them to, Gekko?
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: PDAs are DEAD
low revenues, low margins, commodity
Well, there you're just flat wrong. Palm's low-end Zires have been the *highest* margin devices they sell, not the lowest. And that market has become less commoditized not more due to the departure of vendors like Sony and Handspring.
Stick to your toilet bowl comments, Gekko. That's where you're in safe territory.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: PDAs are DEAD
Yes, it's only 480x320 but it's a 3.5" screen, better than virtually all smartphones. And it's a decent GPS that helps me in the car or on foot in foreign cities.
Sure, I'd love to have an integreted device, provided that it has
1) palm PDA (a usable Windows might convert me, but so far I'm not impressed)
2) GPS
3) phone
4) decent screen
So far nothing convincing has come across..... so I'll stick with my dead PDA.
Garmin 3600 iQue
RE: PDAs are DEAD
If by "dead" you mean that there is nothing they can do that a smartphone can't do better, you're wrong.
Until they come out with a Treo with a 320x480 screen so I can write my reports with my full-size keyboard in comfort, or use 2sky in comfort, or watch a movie on a plane at a decent size, I'll stick with my LD.
Until they come out with a Treo that can hold 6Gb for my music, my 100 ebooks, my 100 documents, my 20 spreadsheets, my 500 photos and family movies, Wikipedia, and backups of my desk files, I'll stick with my LD (4Gb HD + 2Gb SD)
And until they come out with a Treo with wifi so I can move files around my home and work networks the way I do every day now, I'll be sticking with my LD.
But I'll keep in mind that my LD is dead and I should not be enjoying its advantages.
RE: PDAs are DEAD, just like Grandma
I'm still waiting for the mythical "color HandEra."
RE: PDAs are DEAD
RE: PDAs are ALIVE!
I wonder how much the addition of a certain former Palm exec to HP's corporate roster has hurt the HP. (But to be honest, most of their recent lackluster models were in the pipeline long before the arrival of you-know-who...)
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
Acutally, wince PDAs are DEAD: Palm's doing great!
My sources have led me to believe that as part of the winding-down process of the wince division, various subsidies and engineering support offered to wince licensees are being curtailed. :)
Clearly, dumping cash and engineering resources on Palm in order to gain access to their award-winning devices is not a sustainable business model for wince!
Coupled with the huge engineering investment Bill admitted m$ had made in Palm to get them to make a wince-Treo, I think we're seeing the death knell of the wince platform as a whole. :)
------
"People who like M$ products tend to be insecure crowd-following newbies lacking in experience and imagination."
Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
Put a nice Palm OS application stack on top of that instead of crappy QTopia, light the fuse and then STAND BACK! All you folks were in disbelief about what ACCESS paid for PalmSource, but Moto knows *exactly* why that was a sweet deal. They are p*ssed they got cut out of it.
2006 is going to be a very big year for mobile Linux.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Linux stumbles into limited success
Put a nice Palm OS application stack on top of that instead of crappy QTopia, light the fuse and then STAND BACK! All you folks were in disbelief about what ACCESS paid for PalmSource, but Moto knows *exactly* why that was a sweet deal. They are p*ssed they got cut out of it.
2006 is going to be a very big year for mobile Linux.
I agree that Motorola had good reason to want PalmSource, but I still feel the asking price was insane. And when you're starting out from next to nothing, percentages in sales increases are meaningless. I'd tend to lump the MotoLinux phones in with the Symbians: not really true "smartphones" and therefore unworthy of inclusion in these stats.
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
I have no idea why people don't consider Symbian OS phones (I'm guessing you mean Series 60) not to be smartphones. They're not feature phones: they are phone-centric, fully functional PDAs with a large number of 3rd party applications and specs that compare favorably with the Treo 650. If you don't consider a Series 60 phone to be a smartphone I don't think you can consider a Treo 600 to be one.
But in the case of the MotoLinux phones I'm inclined to agree since there isn't any 3rd party developer ecosystem at all. Without that you really can't consider it to be a mobile computing platform. So if mobile Linux is doing this well without any applications how will it do when it has the Palm OS on top?
Mobile Linux *did* start out from almost nothing in 2003, but it blew past Windows Mobile in Q1 by some counts: http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS8804000399.html.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
Well, if you count Linux used in that way, you should really count the RTOS used in non-Symbian Nokias, at which point you end up with 7 million Symbian handhelds vs 209 million Nokia handhelds shipped overall. Maybe that OS is the future?
http://www.compoundsemiconductor.net/articles/news/9/10/19/1
Surur
RE: Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
Well, if you count Linux used in that way, you should really count the RTOS used in non-Symbian Nokias, at which point you end up with 7 million Symbian handhelds vs 209 million Nokia handhelds shipped overall. Maybe that OS is the future?
Thank you for making my point, Surer. People are paying good money for Series 60 ("60" stands for "60% of the smartphone market") instead of taking one of those RTOS Nokias from their carrier for free. What are they getting for that money? A screen good enough to read documents and play games on (higher res than the Treo 600), decent PIM apps that sync with Outlook, an Opera HTML browser, a decent email client (ok, it kinda sucks), and all the phone niceties that you guys complain are missing from most of the Palm PDAs: vibrating alarm, voice recorder, profiles to adjust the phone's ringing and alarm behavior, and a nice Bluetooth stack with all the profiles you need. In other words, they're slapping down their $250 (or whatever) to get a smartphone instead of one of those cheap RTOS feature phones.
If I were Gekko I'd be saying "RTOS phones are dead" because they will be within five years or so. Linux on the other hand is already showing itself up as a very credible competitor for the phone-centric Series 60 platform. Once Palm Linux is out it will blow away not just Series 60 but the PDA-centric UIQ and Series 80 platforms as well.
Let's hope. C'mon PalmSource, do good work!
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Linux stumbles onto the scene like a drunken penguin...
Because most people using them are using them just as PHONES (as opposed to PDAs + phones). How many Symbian phones (besides the SE 800/900/910 and high end Nokias are actually used the way people use their Treos and Windows Mobile devices.
I would think this difference should be pretty obvious to you, Beersy.
TVoR
------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------
The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823
RE: Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
Says who? I'd like to see some hard data on this instead of people just repeating some meme they picked up from 1src. Series 60 dominates in precisely the global markets where mobile email and messaging have the highest penetration, for example. Until I see data to the contrary I'm skeptical that this is a coincidence.
How many Symbian phones (besides the SE 800/900/910 and high end Nokias are actually used the way people use their Treos and Windows Mobile devices.
Ok, then. I take it that since you ended that with a period it should be read in an exclamatory rather than interrogatory sense. In which case I agree: "My goodness, how many people use their Symbian phones just like we Americans use our Treos!" It just goes to show you how much smarter we are in North America!
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
RE: Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
I would be surprised if >5% of Symbian users sync with outlook. Nokia sync software is even poorer than hotsync, with poor field mapping and a primitive interface.
Symbian smartphones are like moose antlers and pea****s tails. The more it costs, the more people buy them.
Surur
RE: Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
I would be surprised if >5% of Symbian users sync with outlook. Nokia sync software is even poorer than hotsync, with poor field mapping and a primitive interface.
You know, I agree with you. It does suck and I would be surprised if many Symbian users bother syncing with Outlook. But I think you'd be surprised how few Treo users ever sync with Outlook either, just because Treo users have expanded into a class of people that never use Outlook for anything but email. At any rate, are we saying that people who have completely untethered themselves from their PC and made their smartphone their primary computer are not really using it as a smartphone?
What makes something a smartphone are the things people will pay for so they don't have to accept a free dumb phone. A large screen that you can read emails, web pages, photos, documents with. Integrated messaging. Usable PIM apps. A music player. One or more of these things is worth a few hundred bucks to every person who buys a Symbian phone or they wouldn't put their money on the table. In droves.
Even if you don't agree with me here, you still have to admit that Series 60 is serious competition for Treo and even more serious competition for WM Smartphone OS devices (which likewise lack touchscreens). Ask yourself: if Series 60 went away tomorrow what percentage of Series 60 customers would start looking at Treos? If the answer is even as small as 1%, that 1% would represent about a 25% increase in Treo sales. For Windows Smartphone that percent increment would be even more.
Series 60 is relevant in a big way. Whether you or I consider it to be a smartphone or not, it is what the general public currently considers to be a smartphone.
David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog
What the Symbians boards say.
The same conversation is actually going down on the Symbian boards. My view is encapsulated by this quote:
Comment: Oh come on. Whilst I agree that the US Market (amongst others) seems entirely blinkered to the sucesses of the Symbian group, your comments concerning "what the majority of people actually want" aren't entirely accurate either. When someone buys a Windows Mobile or palm powered device they are buying them to use as a PDA\Smart device with comms. How many sysmbian powered devices are ever actually used as smart devices? Whilst no-one can know for certain I'd be willing to bet good money that it is significantly less than 10%. Most people get symbian smartphones, not because they want a smart device, but because it was the most expensive phone they could get "for free" with their contract renewal. They have no idea what it can do and are not interested that it runs Series 60. Perhaps it would be more interesting to hear from the likes of handango as to which group of users buys the most software? Whilst still not accurate, it would give a better indication as to which devices are actually being used as smart devices and not just phones. I don't think anyone would be surprised if the ratio was miles away from the ratio of windows devices sold to those of symbian. Yes, Nokia have sold 7 million smart devices in 3 months and well done them. But lets not start deluding ourselves that the public have BOUGHT 7 million smart devices. In the majority of cases they've just bought a new phone.
But there is a very convincing counterpoint, that all these 7 million s60 devices are just sleepers, that are just waiting to be activated to rise an an army and engulf all other smartphones. All they need is awareness and a few killer apps. Encapsulated in this quote:
Comment: First of all, you're wrong about insignificant numbers buying Symbians for the smart features, the sales of Nokia Communicators alone are the same as Palm or PPC/MSS. No one would buy a Communicator and not want to use it as a PDA, it has a full keyboard for heaven's sake! Add in the minority of smartphone enthusiasts from all the other varieties of Symbian (S60, UIQ, MOAP) and it's clearly the biggest mobile computing platform even if you only count people who actually use their device for its PDA functions and are aware of what OS it's running. Second, you're missing the point if you're saying "what percentage bought a smartphone as a smartphone?", for several main reasons: 1. Percentages mean less than numbers. Even if 100% of Palm users bought their device as a PDA, that isn't as big a number as those that bought a Symbian as a PDA. The manufacturers (of both the device and the operating system) make almost all their profits from the sale of the device. Once the sale has happened, they've succeeded. The sale then provides the money to cover the cost of making new models and developing a better OS, so there'll be an even better iteration soon with even better hardware and software features. If PDA sales (or even market share) are going down, it doesn't matter if 100% of their customers bought it for "smart" functions, they'll simply have less money than their smartphone rivals to create better devices and a better OS. The bigger selling OS will (probably) get better and more numerous models than the lower selling OS, so both the OS enthusiasts and those totally ignorant about OSes will get something out of those bigger sales. The enthusiasts would be riding the coat-tails of the "ignorant masses", which has been the case in computing for a long time now. Many, if not most, PCs now seem to be bought largely as a way of accessing the internet, and bundled pre-installed software like word processors might get used too, but a lot of people are totally uninterested in installing anything themselves. My parents for example had a broken CD drive on their last PC but they never noticed, it was only when I visited them once and tried to install something myself that I realised it didn't work. Had I not tried, they might well have had the PC for years and never known about the broken drive. Does that mean the PC format isn't a good one for software developers? Of course not, it just means that those who make full use of their PCs are being subsidised by those who don't. The enthusiasts are getting better and better machines partly because non-enthusiasts are buying them too. 2. Just because someone buys something without realising its "smart" doesn't mean they aren't potential customers for "smart" software. There's already a mass-market for Java games and apps, and I've seen an increasing number of mainstream smartphone titles sold in exactly the same way (UltraMP3 for Symbian was being advertised by Jamster/Jamba in TV commercials on MTV, for example). It's a proven business model for Java, why wouldn't it work for the even more impressive games and apps you get on smartphone OSes? Note that none of these Java-style downloads would be via complicated sites like Handango.com where you're required to know the operating system (including its version) that your phone uses. None of these Java-style downloads require you to transfer a program to a PC, then to a memory card or wireless connection, then to your phone. This has been a big barrier for a lot of smartphone users, that you have to mess about with a computer (and many of them don't have a computer believe it or not, or don't have a card reader or wireless adaptor) rather than just entering a simple phone number or web address into the phone itself. I know this because when Nokia gave away the Snakes game for N-Gage, the instructions only covered transferring it by memory card or bluetooth. Loads of people asked about how they could transfer it straight to their phones like Java games, they couldn't transfer it by computer (some of them didn't have a computer!). In the end I set up an unofficial site myself, and it got hundreds of downloads despite a big warning saying they'd have to pay GPRS charges. They mostly didn't care, the convenience was worth more than the few dollars the download would cost. As GPRS charges go down, internet speeds go up with 3G, smartphones become wi-fi capable, and smartphones make up an increasing chunk of the general phone market, Java developers can transfer seamlessly to the smartphone market and publish Symbian/Windows/Palm games instead. Instead of saying "do you have a Symbian/Windows/Palm" they just list compatible models of phones and the number you text or site you have to go to to get them, no one has to even know they have a smartphone for this to be a viable business model. They might even carry on calling them "Java" games and apps even though they're not, because that's just the common word for a program you download onto your phone. 4. Smart features don't have to be advertised as smart in order for them to be appreciated by the customers and the manufacturers. Smartphones let you have 3D games, let you have high quality photo and video editors, or high quality MP3 player software. Smartphones let operators or even individual retailers pre-install features to add value to a device, in exactly the same way PC shops do. If there's a particular niche market, they're very easy to cater for simply by installing the right software, and if the market changes you just change the software. If you say "this phone lets you do word processing and email" or "this phone works like an ipod" or "this phone works with instant messages" or "this phone lets you shoot video, edit it and publish it on the internet" or "this phone lets you do all these things at once", at least one of those things would probably interest someone who wouldn't have been interested in mobile computing in general. -"Would you like a pocket computer?" -"No." -"Would you like an ipod phone that lets you buy music straight onto it?" -"Yeah!" The two things are essentially the same device, yet their appeal is totally different. One is aimed at technophiles, the other at music lovers, and music lovers are a far far larger group. Customers don't have to know it's a smartphone, all they have to be told is how the features would make their life easier or more fun. How many people would buy a PC if it didn't come with a pre-installed word processor and browser?
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/Nokia_hit_7_million_smartphones_per_quarter.php#comm
Sorry about the lenght, but he makes some good points.
Surur
RE: Linux roars onto the scene like a lion
Symbian "smartphones" may be used for PIM and so forth, sure, but any cheap mobile phone can do that these days. The real test is how much people use them beyond standard phone functions like PIM, text messaging, and midget WAP pages.
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The writing's on the wall...
TVoR
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Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
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The Palm eCONomy = Communism™
The Great Palm Swindle: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7864#108038
NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823