Neutron :: Bomb

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3.15.2009

Symbian (Nokia) Still Top Smartphone OS; 53% Market share

by John Calian |
Topics: | |

Despite all the noise here in the US about Apple, Blackberry and the highly anticipated Palm Pre, it is still Symbian, the smartphone operating system owned by Nokia (Public, NYSE:NOK), that dominates the smartphone marketplace with a whopping 53% market share.


Looking at the chart above, from Gartner, Symbian was installed in an astounding 72 million smartphone units last year, 300% more than the next OS developer, Research in Motion (Blackberry).

Despite Symbian's (and Nokia's) strong position, "Samsung, RIM, HTC and Apple saw their volumes and share increase during 2008, thanks to their ability to offer compelling device experiences and touch interfaces.” Nokia is well aware that the competition is heating up, and that slick, consumer friendly touch screen devices will be to the next 5 years what the RAZR was to the last 5 years for normal consumers. I wold expect to see Nokia devices, running Symbian and sporting touch screens, to hit the US market in the coming 12-18 months.


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3.06.2009

Jailbrake Your iPhone, New App Stores Waiting

by John Calian |
Topics: | | |

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123629876097346481.html

The article is nicely written, and brings up an interesting concept. But, the number of people who jailbreak the iPhone and then upload pirate software is small. Jailbreaking is a pain in the ass; I liken it to installing linux on the desktop. Cool for a few days, but after that you want to go back to a system that just works without foolin' around with it.

More interesting is the idea of competing application stores for other devices. Who will run them (carriers or OEMS or content publishers), and what will Apple be doing to compete?

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3.01.2009

Asus Smartphones: Someone Please Tell Them That Names Matter

by John Calian |
Topics: | |

Asus P835 Smartphone PDA Mobile PhoneAsus, maker of computer hardware, is doing its best to muscle into the smartphone business with a big release of devices running Windows Mobile 6.5. A press release from Friday announced the arrival of the P835 WVGA PDA phone. Wow, what a horrible name!


From the release:
ASUS, a leading producer of innovative handhelds, today launched the P835, a PDA phone that delivers an Internet browsing and multimedia viewing experience without equal.

Asus has made PDA (personal digital assistant) devices for a while, using the Windows operating platform. It was a natural switch over to smartphones and is a good indication that most, if not all, Wintel OEMs are coming into the smartphone marketplace too.

The PR lists out all the goodies for the phone, but here is an interesting point, a list of add on software: Opera browser, Wi-Fi Access Point, YouTube, Flickr, ASUS Virtual Keyboard, Anytime Launcher, ASUS Today, EziMusic, EziPhoto, Google search and RSS Reader.

Interesting that Opera and Google get such placement.

ASUS P565 PDA Phone, 800MHz CPU, Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, Traditional Chinese

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