by John Calian |
Topics:
Apple |
Blackberry |
Nokia |
RIM |
Symbian
Zach Epstein, on the BoyGeniusReport blog, notes that Nokia/Symbian has a lot of catching up to do with Apple, despite the fact that Symbian is the world's dominant smartphone OS.
...Despite the fact that Symbian has gotten pretty gray up top over the past few years, it is still the world’s most popular smartphone operating system by a huge margin. S60 is incredibly capable and versatile, and Nokia has consistently pumped out solid hardware to carry it. That being said, it is hardly the most exciting mobile OS on the block these days...
Read the full post here (BoyGeniusReport.com)
In the article, Mr. Epstein discusses one developers method of launching applications on Symbian in a similar way that the Apple engineers do on the iPhone: have a JPG be shown while the application is loaded, so that the user does not see a blank screen.
I am often talking about Symbian as something that has simply not a made a dent in the US, and it has not. My research indicates that Nokia is not allowing the top end S60 devices to be heavily discounted, and thus drop their perceived spot in the elite spot of phones, phones that command the biggest outlay of cash.
Meanwhile, Apple has established itself as the OS of choice in America for the smartphone marketplace. Blackberry certainly has a lot of users, more than Apple, but it has taken years to get that lead. Apple should pass RIM this year in users, and will do so in a quarter the amount of years their iPhone has been in the market place.
But Symbian is a real laggard here in the States. I would love to be a fly on the wall in the executive offices of Nokia, to hear them debate the importance of being a major player in the US. It would be great to see them enter here with an iPhone killer this year, in time to double up on the iPhone with the launch of the Palm Pre.
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