So Stephen Elop has taken the plunge. The chief executive of Nokia has just announced a “broad strategic” tie-up with Microsoft on phones and said it would make Windows its main smartphone operating system.
It’s a bold move for the Canadian and investors haven’t greeted the news that well. Shares were down as much 12 per cent in early morning trade.
Nokia’s designs on Apple
Nokia‘s latest restructuring, announced yesterday, is just one aspect of its many-fronted smartphone war.
As Nokia’s senior vice president of design and user experience, Marko Ahtisaari is the man charged with leading the software and hardware designers who must craft the challenger to the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices that the Finns have so far lacked.
Nokia + Symbian ^3 = N8 smartphone
Nokia and Symbian appear to have finally come up with a respectable response to smartphone competition from Apple and Android in the shape of the N8, announced on Tuesday.
The handset is the first to adopt Symbian’s latest ^3 operating system and will be available in the third quarter in “select markets”.
Symbian plans fightback as phone share slumps
The biggest losers in Admob’s latest survey of smartphone usage, released on Thursday, were Symbian operating system phones, with their share falling from 43 per cent to 18 per cent over the past year as iPhone and Android traffic boomed.
But don’t write off Symbian just yet. Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, gave a glimpse of two forthcoming revamps that could revive its fortunes when he visited us en route to the CTIA show in Las Vegas.
Windows Mobile back in the limelight
It’s easy to forget about Microsoft’s mobile phone efforts, given the buzz around Apple’s iPhone and the growing number of slick smartphones based on Google’s Android operating system.
But Windows Mobile is likely to grab back some of the limelight next week with the introduction of new phones based on its 6.5 operating system at an event in New York, along with the launch of its Skymarket “app store.”
And, as the iSuppli research firm says in a new forecast, “Reports of Windows Mobile’s death are greatly exaggerated.”
The news from the Symbian smartphone show in the UK was that Lee Williams (pictured) was announced as the new head of the Symbian Foundation, the provider of the mobile software platform supported by many industry players.
But the recent annoucement of iPhone App store rivals by RIM and Google makes the European side of the mobile platform market seem a little behind the curve. While the US is making a marketplace for developers, questions over the Foundation’s independence are still being raised.
Williams is from Nokia, the company which of course bought Symbian with the grand gesture of turning Symbian OS and S60 open source. So let the conspiracy nudge-nudge wink-wink suggestions start: is he too close to the mothership? And is Nokia really going to make this open?
The question of independence was raised at the press conference by Nomura’s mobile analyst Richard Windsor, and Williams took it in his stride, saying he had given up any equity or interests in Nokia and had always operated independently. Later when I spoke to him, he put it rather more prosaically:
“I was only at Nokia for two years. I haven’t been drinking the Kool-Aid for that long.”
One analyst said to me that the question of where Williams was from would be forgotten in a few months. The key question is when and to what degree will an open operating system be released. And on that question, Williams was unequivocal: first half of 2009.
But questions over whether being open source is more of a marketing badge or a means of differentiating your platform to Windows, Apple et al, is irrelevant to many developers. Open or not, they just want the tools to get their application to market. And on that front, Symbian has its work cut out. Every developer I spoke to said developing for Symbian was harder. “Challenging” was a word frequently used. Another word was “money”, highlighting the obvious attraction of the iPhone app store as well as the new marketplaces from RIM and Google.
According to Williams, “challenging” goes hand in hand with capability and an appreciation for complexity. But he admits that “serving both the developers who want to create a full-blown office-type app and those looking to create a quick widget is the conundrum”. He hasn’t got long to solve it.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
