The $1 business model

There are two kinds of developers: those who want to sell their programs and those who write software for fun and/or for fame. The latter type is happy with writing freeware, most probably open source software. This article is about the former.

Of course, most developers want to get paid for their programs. As much as possible. The wiser usually analyses the market first:

• Would people be interested in the program?
  
• Would they be willing to pay for it?
• How much will they think the program is worth?
• What about competition, would our program fill a gap or it would just be one of the many?
• How can I sell my program, what distribution channels are available, what is the revenue share, etc?
• How much do I need to invest in writing the program financially, in terms of effort, etc.?

And the list is not over yet. But it contains the most important question from this article's point of view: how much is a program worth, how much can we ask for it? Note: the answers to these questions are not necessarily the same.

It is very difficult to foretell how much a program is worth for the users. The answer depends on so many factors, such as target group, their spending habits, type of software (e.g. leisure vs professional), what other programs with similar feature-set cost, etc. Naturally, price calculation is so often affected by that how much a developer appreciates his/her own software ("I put so many hours in creating it that it can't be cheap!") - and the expectations and the reality are not always in balance.

The available distribution channels also influence the final price: what they demand from the developer, what they offer to him, their revenue sharing model, etc. As to the latter, for example, although the 70-30 revenue share wasn't typical 1-2 years ago it is now becoming a standard. Apple's App Store, OHA's Android Market, Nokia's soon-to-be-opened Ovi Store all offer 70% off the revenue to the developer. Revenue share is not everything, though: for example, App Store is such a place where it's not uncommon to hear success stories and big earnings, whereas Android Market's community prefers free software. If you follow the news, you might have heard of the coming BlackBerry App World. I found it very interesting that they set the minimum price for a paid-for application to be $3. They said any software that is not worth this amount shall be freeware. I think it's ridiculous: these guys are not aware of how many developer they will alienate from themselves with this approach. Do they really want developers to sell BB apps or not?

The typical revenue models for developers are as follows:

• Release free application first with limited features and make it paid when it really gets traction (thousands, tens of thousand downloads per month). The application is available either for free or as paid-for (exclusive OR). Question: won't people turn away from your application once they have to pay for it?
• Write an always paid program, which means that your application must be really cool and advertised so well that despite the price (i.e. that it costs money) people buy it. Question: can you compete with free programs with similar features?
• Make a Lite and Pro version of your program, Lite being free and Pro paid. The free version supports a subset of Pro's features making it compelling enough to purchase the paid version. It is a very typical approach among developers. Notes: increased maintenance efforts + separation of free and paid-for features must be well thought-out.
• Free program with ads. Notes:
• Not all people like ads
• You need to find a good ad provider
• It is challenging to implement a good advertising solution on mobile devices, and there is no good framework available.
• Change model dynamically on an experimental basis: see if you can make it with paid version, if not then make it free, then make it paid again when it becomes popular (this is the path iStrip followed, actually). Question: when will people get bored with this behavior?
  

Please note that I did not include that model in the above list, where the client program is free, but it is essentially a light-weight interface to a server solution, which is exactly what your customers are paying for. Opera Mini's business model is based on this, for example: Opera Mini, the application, is available for anyone as a free download, however, it's Opera's customers (i.e network operators), who pay the price. This article is simply not about this model.

It's also worth noting how important user ratings have become recently. Some developers faced that ratings can kill: unhappy-uneducated users gave low ratings just because "game was too short", they "expected more", "it was free not too long ago", etc. Perhaps these users are not aware of how much power they have in their hands when they rate. Applications written for Android platform and distributed on Android Market are especially vulnerable to this effect. 

Finally, getting closer to the point: how much can we ask for a program? Even though this habit is changing, it's still quite typical from people that they think that "cheap cannot be good" or "if it's good it can't be cheap". However, App Store's success stories have proven right the opposite: developers claimed that their revenue had become much higher when they lowered the price to $0.99. You know, this is such a low price that basically anyone can afford around the world even for the silliest program. Developers are now facing the fact that unless they sell their software at the lowest price there will be others who ask less than them. This basically forces them to sell their apps for $1 from the beginning.

Is it the final price, though? Can a $1 hit be sold for $2, too? No-one knows. It's all about making experiments. If I were to sell my app that I think is worth more than being distributed as a freeware, I would ask $1 for it. If people don't buy it at this low price, then I saved the hassle of price calibration. If it gets successful and my program is (one of) the best(s) in its category, then I would increase the price gradually until the download rate gets stabilized and I couldn't expect more revenue from making it even more expensive.

And actually this is what I call the $1 business model.

Looking forwad to your comments,

Tote

Smartphone market share, 2008

Gartner released their statistics about worldwide smartphone sales, which contains useful information not only the previous quarter (Q4 2008), but the whole past year. I'd like to share the following two figures with you:

Comments:

• Nokia is still #1, but it's market position is seriously challenged by RIM, Apple and HTC.
• Even Apple is suffering from decreased sales in Q4, but that didn't prevent them from being ranked as the third vendor by sales.

Comments:

• Symbian had lived better days a year ago, but it's still a bit more than 50% of smartphones that runs this operating system.
• RIM and Mac OS X performed exceptionally well even during the tough economical situation.
• Although the share of Windows Mobile shrank a bit, it still maintains its third position. Only blinds can't see that not for long.

Finally, some words on regional sales:

• Dramatic increase (69%) is experienced in sales of smartphone in North-America, which now accounts for 20% of mobile phones in this region. Carriers are agressively pushing data plans that is beneficial for vendors, too, offering vertical mobile solutions from hardware manufacturing to providing developer SDKs to cloud services.
• While overall device sales dropped, Asia/Pacific recorded a 2.3% growth in smartphone sales.
• EMEA region were up by only 2%, Western-Europe sales increased by 9.6%. Samsung drove sales in 2008 with Omnia as its most successful product.

Tote

Mobile advertising - An experience

Background

I decided to give a try to a Reversi-like game found on the Internet just the other day. There was a link to an installation package, which I downloaded and manually installed on my Nokia N95. Even though there was nothing mentioned about that the application is ad-supported, I found the name of the program suspicious since it revealed something about this fact. Never mind, I thought I would still give it a try even though I don't like suprises that come in the form of embedded installation packages (for non-Symbianers: an installation package can contain other 3rd-party software, too, which the main application depends on - these additional programs are referred to as embedded installation packages). Nevertheless, the complementary software has become so intrusive during the installation process and wanted to know such information about me (surprise: it gave me a default birth year, which was exactly the year I was born in - was it an accident or it could find it out somehow?) that I was unwilling to give. Finally I gave up the installation with some bitter taste in my mouth. That was my first experience with Adtronic.

As to mobile advertisement

It's a cliché that there are three-times more mobile devices than desktop computers. If people believe that desktop computers are the homeland of Internet and advertising they will soon have to realize that the transition has already begun from one to the other. Undoubtedly, a device that is always with us is much more compelling platform for advertisers to reach their audience. Their are challenges, though:

• Generally the 'context' is an invaluable piece of information from advertising's point of view:
• What is the user's location so that those ads will be shown first that are more relevant at that place.
• Any kind of information can come in handy regarding the user's social network (gender, age, habits, relation to user, etc.) for better targeted ads.
• What the user really wants to do in the given moment, such as browsing to a car rental web page, calling a carpenter, receiving a status report SMS from the bank, etc.
• Mobile phones has different characteristics as desktop computers: one of the most notable differences is that they have smaller display giving less room for nice ads that can easily capture the user's attention.

Questions to the 'Audience'

There are couple of things that even I, as a advertisement target, have to answer. The root question is the same in all cases: How much am I willing to give up from my freedom when using my beloved gadget?

• How frequently may ads appear without disturbing me?
• How much should I let the ad-provider know about my context?
• What can an ad do without being too intrusive?
• Is it a single application that is 'ad-aware' or I let my entire phone user experience be 'ad-driven'?

Adtronic

Based on what I wrote above you can imagine that I classified Adtronic software as 'suspicious'. But I was surprised to read Forum Nokia Newsletter this morning giving fame to Adtronic. Was it early to judge this software, I asked. A brief summary to those not wanting to visit Forum Nokia:

• Adtronic offers advertising solution for S60 devices.
• Ads are shown upon new/missed calls, SMS, MMS. Ads usually appear above alert dialogs covering the majority of screen real estate.
• How many ads are shown a day can be limited by the user - one must not count on a lot of earned points if it's severely limited, though.
• Earned points can be used in various ways
• For reduction of phone bill (who will take care of this?)
• Points can be used to purchase other applications at a discounted price
• Or can be redeemed for GreenPeace, Unicef (nice feature)
• The whole solution relies on a working network connection resulting in some data traffic (how much?).

Adtronic offers better monetization to developers should they allow their applications to be bundled with this service. May I ask, though: is it really the price users (not the developers!) have to pay to use applications at a low price? Am I wrong with that selling $0.99 programs also works in Apple's App Store and I bet it will soon work on Android Market, too? Do we really need this?

Another question I'd like to be answered, too: where can I use my points to purchase applications? Is it Adtronic's own store? Or an operator store? How does the whole idea fit into the model of unified content store that all device/platform vendors are pushing lately?

I'm sure I've missed a lot of points with regards to the topic. Could you please make the picture clearer? Thanks!

Tote

Nokia should buy Yahoo?

It's already known to most people that Yahoo! is in big financial trouble. Even worse, they were tried to be bought by a company (Microsoft) they didn't want to sell themselves to. They successfully fought against that attempt, however, their value was much higher at that time than what it is today. They were even "helped" to survive by a company that they normally call a competitor (Google). But this help didn't last long as Google was afraid of the consequences of a deeper relationship with Yahoo! (i.e. antitrust).

Now Yahoo! has an even bigger problem with much lower valuation. That, among others, inspired telecoms.com to speculate on whether it would be worth for Nokia to buy Yahoo!. Besides the fact that financially it would be a good deal for Nokia, they would even win a very popular brand (especially in the US!) for themselves. And all this along with that Yahoo! is very strong in (web) services would make their position much stronger against Google, Microsoft, Apple and the likes.

Putting aside the negligible fact that there's a world-wide financial crisis lately is this option not worth considering?

Tote

Update: El Reg reported that Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo had answered this question during MWC 2008 saying 'no' to a possible acquisition of Yahoo!.

Random thoughts on recent news

Hi,

So many things have happened in mobile world recently that I can hardly cope with their sheer volume. This time I would just add my quick thoughts to some of them, one-line comments that I would like you to comment, too.

Let's start with VirusGuard Coming to Android Market in 2009: yeah, a clear disadvantage of full openness coupled with user-controlled security policy is that such a software is necessary. Remember that famous anti-virus software vendors also tried to gain a foothold on mobile phones based on Symbian OS, too? Unfortunately, Symbian's security mechanism works so well that there is no real demand for such software on these phones. Note: since Android Market is  only for free software (yet), this commercial software can be purchased from Handango.

I've read two interesting reviews on the user experience of T-Mobile G1 and Nokia S60. In fact, these two were compared to each other. It was funny to read how two people with different needs could come up with contradictory results. Whilst Matthew from Darla Mack's blog found Contacts, Syncing, E-mail support and a "lot of other things" being superior on G1 he confirmed it too that there are many things that need improvement in upcoming Android-powered devices as well. Chris Walters from TheNokiaBlog, on the other hand, found just the opposite: he thought he could at last forget about S60 and can enjoy all the things Android can provide, but realized that S60 is still superior to Android in many aspects: build quality of device, camera, not being locked to any carriers, etc. There are two immediate conclusions I drew from these (and other) reviews:

• Don't believe to any reviews, but make your own decision based on your own needs. For example, how would you decide based on these two reviews cited above when they both claimed that G1/S60 was superior to the other platform in Syncing?
• Nokia had been the king of user experience on mobile phones until iPhone and G1 appeared on the horizon. The structure of menus, applications, settings, etc. were logical, consistent and compatible across a wide range of devices. It was engineering-driven so it couldn't be in any other way. Following an engineering-driven approach, however, is not enough anymore. In my opinion these companies could learn a lot from each other. It's not a sin (well, generally) to copy one's idea if that has proven whereas ours has not stood the test of time. The point is better user experience, which is better both for users and vendors.

The third thing I found worth being mentioned is Nokia Friend View. This beta software is similar to IYOUIT (for example) that I've already given a try to and liked much. I can see this kind of software being useful from another point of view (than what they advertise), too: I'm a family man and although my kids are small I know that the time will come quickly when I will let them hang around but still would like to know where they are. The wide-spread of such a software (and hardware!) will hopefully keep me relaxed in those times.

Finally, Nokia has made a very important announcement in the past week: they introduced Nokia Life Tools along with 7 new models under €100 price range. According to the press release, Nokia Life Tools is a range of innovative agriculture information and education services designed especially for rural and small town communities in emerging markets. Knowing that the opportunity at the bottom of the pyramid is huge, and handset manufacturers and network providers alike are working hard to fill it with phones (this time cited from PCWorld) it's no wonder why these new models can be purchased at never-seen prices. Nokia has finally entered the war fought for phone owners with thin wallets with the introduction of Ultra Cheap Phones.

Tote

Transforming mobile industry

I read the following quote from Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, Nokia CEO, in InformationWeek:

"The industry as whole is in the middle of a transformation, and it's a very exciting time," said Kallasvuo. "It's moving from a device industry to an experience industry, and we're making a conscious long-term effort to capitalize on that."

It is so true that it inspired me to write a summary on how things have changed in the "smarter" segment of mobile sector (read: smartphones) lately. Let me recap what was the situation in the near past and then talk about how things are changing recently.

In the classic device manufacturer - network operator - user triangle the roles were as follows (simplified version): user purchases mobile phone from network operator (or elsewhere) and uses those services that are primarily provided by the network operator. The manufacturer never gets any money after purchase and the user  is often unhappy with the content/quality of provided (value-added) services.

This is now about to change. The two most important changes (as I see it) are that 1: the above triangle is "rectangularized" by an old/new member of the value chain, a separate content/service provider and 2: that device manufacturers such as Nokia and Apple OR operating system vendors such as Microsoft and Google want to get money after sales, too: they'd like to enter services business. As to point #1, not as if content providers hadn't been present so far, however, the means to access content and the capabilities of devices have not been ideal so far to say the least. As for point #2, there are two reasons why manufacturers would like to enter services business (take it over from operators?): first, there's a great demand from users to consume content that operators have not been good at providing and second, there's great money in it. Apple and Google are very good at providing services now they'd like to be involved in adding new means (i.e. phones) to accessing their services. Whereas Nokia and Microsoft are both in a strong position in smartphone market and naturally they'd like to get more money out of the whole business.

Another aspect in the new business model is whether or not shall mobile OS vendors require license fee for their software to be included in shipping devices. I'm talking about free and open-source mobile OSes, like mobile Linux. Although mobile Linux stacks have not gained so much popularity in the past years, they still do attract manufacturers wishing to lower their bill-of-materials (BOM). Google Android and the new Symbian (Foundation) OS are another two good examples for "license-fee-free software stacks" and Windows Mobile is for fee-based. iPhone's Mac OS X cannot be mentioned here, since Apple doesn't allow anyone to license their software stack, but make everything on their own.

How do mobile OS vendors pamper their developers?

• Of course, with a free SDK to develop on. Most of them can be used only on Windows (except iPhone on Mac OS X), true emulation is available on Windows Mobile and iPhone, where development is done on the same platform as the target platform,
• Free tools for development. Unfortunately not everything can be done with these tools, but you have to pay for their fee-based version should you need to use more advanced features (e.g. on-device debugging in Carbide.C++),
• Signing your own installation package is mandatory for both iPhone and Nokia S60 phones, but not on Windows Mobile and Android. Latter advocates that the user is always capable of making proper decisions on security-related questions and it does not restrict the availability of 3rd-party applications by requiring signature. As Symbian's David Wood put it: let's see what operators will say on it.
• As to developer support, old players are in the best position here: there's a great community support for Windows Mobile developers as well as materials to train themselves. The same is true for people who are developing for Nokia phones. Whereas the first non-beta Android SDK has just been introduced (you can imagine the level of support Google provides at such an early stage), not to mention Apple who wanted developers to sign an NDA that essentially prevents free information flow, writing books on development, etc. This has changed recently, since Apple finally scrapped their iPhone NDA and promised a new contract with less restrictions. Note: if Apple hadn't made this step they would have lost the majority of their developers.
  
• Developers reward programs (MVP from Microsoft, Forum Nokia Champion program from Nokia), fee-based support for ISVs willing to pay for advanced services, webinars, trainings, books, etc.
• Stores to capitalize on applications, themes, etc.

As to the stores mentioned above,

• Apple's (in)famous App Store acts as a central distribution channel for 3rd-party applications. Unfortunately, Apple keeps this place under such a strict control that bitters lots of developers' life who simply don't understand why their programs can't be sold just because they're similar to the built-in applications. On the other hand, Apple keeps only 30% of revenue making App Store more compelling than lots of rival portals, such as Handango.
  
• Having introduced T-Mobile G1 a few weeks ago, Google has also thought that it was a wise idea to create their own Android Market, a market place for downloading Android applications. What is surprising, though, is that Google is not planning to capitalize on sold applications, but expects mainly freebies to populate this place. It wouldn't be Handango if they didn't make the best out of this situation: why not use Handango to get some money for your Android app? It's also worth noting that Google, similarly to Apple, will be able to remove any 3rd-party applications (downloaded from Android Market) from Android-powered handsets if those applications turn out to violate developer distribution agreement.
• Nokia already has their Software Market, however, things might change with the start of Symbian Foundation next year: as Antony Edwards from Symbian put it "[they're]  pushing hard for a ensuring a zero, or a close as possible to zero, cost to the software vendor: so no cut of revenue for the Foundation".
• Finally, Microsoft hasn't maintained their own single portal that ISVs could use for selling their 3rd-party applications, but people had to (and still have to!) use other providers. This article shows what one can conclude from job postings: with the coming of new devices based on Windows Mobile 7 a new portal, SkyMarket will also come in Q1 2009.

Nokia is very keen on transforming from being a device manufacturer to an "internet company". Their Ovi and Mosh are two examples of already launched services, which they just want to further improve with Instant Messaging (by buying OZ Communications) and Comes with Music. On the other hand, whilst strengthening their services portfolio they restructure their businesses so that they focus less on own product development (selling Nokia IntelliSync). Sometimes lowering the prices raises the revenue - wonder how the recent price cut will work out. It's especially important that since  more and more people own Nokia devices, it increases after-sales revenue, too.

I've been already thinking on what Microsoft's reaction will be to open source and then found the answer: Steve Ballmer doesn't understand what's good in open source for Symbian and Google and anyway they won't get into handset business as long as they can make a lot of money from software only.

What they've started to work on lately, which you might have already heard of in the news, is 'Windows Cloud' OS. This idea is not new at all, however, it might affect the way how people use their mobile phones today: all you need is a portable device with a tiny display, some computing power and a good browser (you can call it 'smartphone') plus a good connection to the "cloud". Data, business logic, resource intensive heavy computation - all done on remote server(s) and you get only the result to your handset. I wrote 'this idea' was not new, however, what is new is Microsoft's patent on sharing device resources. Now this one is really new, but I don't know how much I can expect from it in real life - what it shows you, though, that it would be too early to write Microsoft off. Side-note: let me recommend you Ajit Jaokar's thought-provoking blog on how network operators could make use of cloud computing.

One more point to add to why M$ is not to enter the handset business today: HTC, designer & manufacturer of feature-rich phones, says that although they can see the potential in Android devices they do belive that Android and Windows Mobile complements each other.

As to Android, it's amazing to read about the ambitious plan to reach 4% US market share by the end of 2008. If that's so easy with a single device, a not perfect software and hardware AND suppose that they will achieve it - may I ask how on Earth Nokia could not do the same?

Anyway, I found a great analysis over at Telco 2.0 on the strategic impact of Google's first handset on the mobile industry. I especially liked the statements, such as "increasingly intense competition with new entrants who are willing to change the rules" and "the world in which handset manufacturers crammed the latest technology into devices simply for the sake of having the best specification sheet and operators flogged them to consumers on the basis of megapixels and memory is changing" and finally "it has been fascinating to watch ‘old school’ industry commentators pick apart the technicalities of the G1 spec sheet and Android platform, all the while forgeting to look at this announcement through the customer’s eyes".

Finally, some words about other members of the mobile industry whom we don't hear much about (well, at least I haven't lately).

• Sony Ericsson has rationalised their R&D investment recently. This move, however, didn't prevent them from announcing a new run-time environment, called Capuchin, mixing Java ME and Adobe Flash Lite technologies. SE is eyed-up on Android, too, not only Windows Mobile (Xperia X1) and Symbian so this along with Capuchin will make their way to follow Nokia's approach by offering lots of alternatives for mobile software development.
• Motorola is also interested in Android, so much that they are building-up a team of 350 people to develop on Android.
• Samsung is not interested in anything else but manufacturing. This will not make their position stronger in today's competing market.
  

That's all for now about mobile industry news, thanks for reading so far!

All comments are welcome,

Tote

Brief status report about smartphone market, mid-2008

Having followed the news of mobile industry in the past week, I thought it would be worth collecting some articles in a single post to see things from a bird's view, thus having a better overview on what's been going on lately on smartphone market.

RIM has been getting stronger in US market and Palm is unhappy with that. Although Palm's popularity had started to fall even before Apple entered mobile phone market, the new iPhone has just "helped" to boost the process. As to Apple, new countries have confirmed August launch enabling iPhone (3G) to gain bigger popularity and increasing its market share in other countries than US. In addition, the name of iPhone Nano has appeared again whispering words about the introduction of this device still this year. Apple is on its way to become stronger and stronger, but they're still in the "Other" segment of mobile devices according to ABI Research. And if Apple is making tsunami "from the bottom", Nokia is doing the same from the top with their price cut - I wouldn't like to be the stuffing in this sandwich.

It seems that we're living the time of foundations: this time it's LiMo that has picked up 11 new members to become stronger in the fight against Google OHA and Symbian Foundation. With the first LiMo handsets out, I wonder how they can catch up with industry leader Symbian, the also very powerful Windows Mobile and the likes. I did not mention Android deliberately, because to me it still exists only on "paper".

As to the creator of Windows Mobile, it's already well-known that Microsoft's Silverlight will come to S60. What is rumoured now, though, that Zune would also be available on Nokia devices. Zune clearly a competitor to Nokia's Ovi - will M$ and Nokia ever join their forces to fight against their newest pretender? I bet Apple will never open MobileMe to non-Mac device owners.

A new feature has been introduced on Ovi.com, namely file sharing, a fee-based storage option. Files on Ovi is a similar service to MobileMe's iDisk. As to MobileMe, the transition from .Mac to MobileMe was not as smooth as Apple had hoped. As Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, said "It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store". Well, although lots of people already think that Apple can only teach things to other players in mobile arena, I stronly believe that the opposite is also true.

Finally, let me recommend an article that well-deserved the title of post of the week at Carnival of Mobilists. The great post written by Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile was definitely a very useful foundation of this article.

Interesting times we're living,

Tote

Symbian and Nokia wrestling about voting rights?

It's obvious that it's not in everybody's interest to let Nokia gain more control over Symbian - not the OS, but Foundation this time. It's a fact that Symbian was (or still is?) owned ~48% by Nokia. As part of the announcement of making Symbian OS open-source it also came to light that voting rights will be according to the number of Symbian Foundation-based mobile phones shipped. And since Nokia has shipped more than 70% of Symbian-powered devices so far, it puts them into a more powerful position than they've been before.

As I said it's obvious that not everybody likes it from those companies who are on the same ship with Nokia. The surprising bit is that even somebody at a power position at Symbian thinks this way AND make comments on this in public. John Forsyth said that he's "worried this asymmetry will mean the community doesn't grow in the appropriate way." His suggestions include "clean-room culture" and a one company-one vote system. Naturally Nokia won't accept latter after spending lots of money on Symbian - they made Symbian successful, they invested the most in it and now at the turning point of Symbian's life they'd like to take the opportunity to increase their influence on it, too.

Wonder what John thought about this when sharing his opinion in public. Perhaps we can read something about it in his blog in the future...

Tote

Collection of great materials on Symbian going open-source

My regular readers may wonder why I've been silent on the great news of the mobile industry: Symbian is going open-source. The reason is simple: I was so shocked to hear it in the news that I just sat back watching the flood of new blogs and comments trying to digest this new information. But I've been digesting it, too. Other people whom I respect and think knowledgeable in this area have written their opinion and I'm now about to collect some of them in a blog and share it with you.

Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile was one of the fastests in commenting the news. He concluded that it was a logical move from Nokia (and Symbian, etc.) both from technical and business point of view:

• " ... [Symbian] was crippled without control of the UI, application stack and the core OS under the same entity"
• Eclipse (EPL) license is a weak one, which will make it desirable for OEMs to choose it.

He was also the first to point out that this move would cause lay-offs and some hard times for the following industry players:

• SonyEricsson and Motorola: they will eventually have to give up with UIQ, since S60 will be the dominant UI and ecosystem and S60 will basically swallow both UIQ and MOAP(S).
• Android's royalty-free, open source business model is not the only compelling alternative for OEMs, operators, etc. On the contrary, Symbian has already proved whereas Android has not yet.
  

Simon Judge over at Mobile Phone Development comments that " ... full access to the platform code allows for much more innovative applications using facilities that are currently hidden" and all this "only" for $1.500 is definitely a step forward.
He also cleverly notes that "Nokia and Symbian now see licensing the OS as a dead end" - I wonder what Microsoft will comment on it?
Finally, he raises his concerns on a technical question, backward compatibility: "... [the announcement] doesn’t explain whether this is source code, binary or application compatibility" - we wouldn't like to face with such a big break as what we did with the introduction of Platform Security, would we?

Mobile Opportunity's Michael Mace hails Nokia for their courage. He suspects, though, that "... the announcement is actually half cleanup and half power move: ... The power move is that it challenges Android ... The cleanup is that the ownership situation of Symbian was unstable and had to be changed eventually, and SonyEricsson clearly wanted to get out of the UIQ business".
He also asks what will drive Symbian developers after this change? While he believes that developers "respond to user excitement and the chance to make lots of money", he fails to see how the new Symbian strategy drives either one.
Finally, Michael points out that the longer it will take for Symbian Foundation to kick off, the bigger the advantage for Apple and Android. What about Microsoft? "This is Microsoft's ultimate open source nightmare, becoming real.

Rafe Blanford from AllAboutSymbian has written about Symbian Foundation unwrapped. He says that the tranformation of Symbian OS to a royalty-free, open-source system is according to today's industry philosophy and whilst it's a logical move forward it would not have been possible 10 years ago, since "...companies would have been unwilling to let Nokia or anyone else have such a dominant position". The new Symbian OS will challenge LiMo, Android and the likes on their own strength and "negates their key advantage". Apple's iPhone might be not affected, according to Rafe, since "it is difficult to see how Apple will expand to become a significant overall player in mobile space (rather than an individual niche player with lots of press attention)".

The hypothetical ("10 years old") problem Rafe was referring to is supported by The Register, too. They say, "the most damaging problem is that Symbian's licensees may have no desire to make Nokia stronger now that it owns the operation 100 per cent".
They also worry about that "the 'Foundation' may also prove to be an expensive liability for Nokia".
Finally they write that "it's largely Nokia that must be blamed for failing to make Symbian phones remotely 'enchanting' ..." and "... today it's the iPhone which has the enchantment factor. ... Symbian has done everything its original designers asked of it - a twenty year lifespan is not bad at all. But it's now Apple's business to lose."

Apple and world dominance. What about Microsoft? They're still bigger than Apple at least in terms of mobile OS market share, aren't they? Well, we've already got used to the style Microsoft comments similar announcements, thus it must not have come as a surprise that they have welcomed this move. To be more accurate, they have "welcomed the transformation of the Symbian mobile-phone platform into an open source project, because the software giant contends the change will create a host of new problems for the Symbian community." Sweet, isn't it? They use FUD referring mainly to the big 'F', fragmentation, saying that "there are more Linux consortiums that come and go than there are Linux phones".

Which might be true, actually. But don't lump Symbian and mobile Linux together. David Wood, EVP of Research at Symbian, has written a lengthy article about how he (and Symbian) sees this problem. He argues that 1: fragmentation really is a problem, 2: Symbian has the experience and ability to handle it. As opposed to Google, for example, says the side-note. :)

Finally, it's worth paying attention to Ajit Jaokar's article, who warns that "it is not possible to compare Symbian vs. Android; or Symbian vs. iPhone .. because it is not possible to mix operating systems with ecosystems". These are like "apples and oranges" in terms of "iPhone, Ovi and Android are ecosystems. In contrast, Symbian and Limo are operating systems or Operating system consortia". It's another lengthy article that is worth reading.

So I've been silent and haven't commented this news yet. Why? Because there are so many people to listen to ...

What about you?

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iPhone for 1 Euro?

Reuters reported that T-Mobile will sell Apple Inc's new iPhone for as little as 1 euro ($1.54) for the 8-gigabyte version together with a 69 euro monthly contract in Germany. I've already had a conversation in a Hungarian blog's post, in which people convinced me that the most important number most buyers look at is the entry fee that must be paid at the time of entering into a contract. Aftermath (i.e. how much it will eventually cost) is of less importance.

Could someone enlighten me why the (new, old - the same) iPhone makes people go crazy? Why do network operators contend for selling it? Besides the UI (which is very compelling & user-friendly, I admit), what else is in it that is not available in other high-end devices? What could Nokia and others learn from Apple so that people would fight for their devices, too? Or is this just another bubble that will explode when other phone manufacturers catch up soon?

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Pay or not to pay for incoming calls and messages?

Hi there,

This is going to be a short post. I was just amazed by the fact that the same topic was discussed in two different blogs coming to totally different conclusions. It inspired me to write about it briefly.

IntoMobile's (and also Nokia's) Stefan Constantinescu, an American blogger living in Finland, blamed Apple why they had started negotiations with network operators and why not tried to sell their handsets unlocked and unsubsidized. He explained why the "American model" sucked (people have to pay even for incoming calls and short messages, they're usually bound to contracts, there's big burocracy, etc.) and praised the freedom Europeans and basically the "Rest-of-the-world" enjoy.

On the other hand, it was shocking to read it from El Reg that an EU commissioner Viviane Reding would let mobile operators charge subscribers to receive calls". Back to stone-age, ehh? It's the very reason why Europe and some countries in Asia are ahead of the US in this area: the burden coming from having a SIM-card + mobile device is not as big here as in the US. American carriers demand too much from users (burocracy, long-term commitment, etc.) while provide too little (poor services, strongly controlled activities [in terms of used services, installable programs, etc.]). I think it would be a huge step back if this idea came true.

I promised that I would be short,

Tote :)

eyePhone - Your tourist guide

I've stumbled upon this article recently and thought might be worth sharing with you.

If we put the name of this software aside a bit (it obviously tries to ride the waves of iPhone), the idea is great. Take a smartphone being able to

• take good quality photos
• use GPS
• communicate over Internet

and you have your on-line tourist guide always at hand. It doesn't require too much from the handset, no? I bet even a good feature phone would do.

Of course, the client software shall not be too thick, most of the business logic is on server-side, right? An average (phone) camera quality should be enough, a Bluetooth-attached GPS is sufficient and basically every mobile phone can transmit data over the net lately. Okay, if an angle sensor is also part of the phone, then the client can gather more data that eventually makes recognition more accurate.

As opposed to the client-side, the server must be very intelligent. Image recognition can be very complex, since poor image resolution, distant objects, pictures taken from different angles, etc. can make it very-very tricky if not impossible. Yeah, I know that the article mentions that the concept was proved, but I believe it only when I see it, you know. Obviously, the solution must be community-driven - you cannot expect any service providers to maintain such a big database alone. And I'm sure that from business point of view it's the server-side software that one can license, whilst the client software would be available free of charge. At least, that would make sense.

Finally, it's very interesting that others are also making experiments in this area.

• Android Scan is an application written for Android Developer Challenge that uses camera and mobile processing power for barcode recognition and scanning for metadata of CDs, DVDs, books on the internet.
• Nokia also develops navigating system based on image recognition, where you can just "take a picture of a nearby landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge, with the camera in your mobile phone. Then, Nokia will match your photo with other landmark photos in its mapping database, and tell you where you are."
• J-MAGIC is a Japanese company that "sees market for picture-based search", too.

And the list is by far not complete. I wonder who will come up with the most innovative idea bundled with a sustainable revenue on the service so that both sides (i.e. consumers and providers) get what they want.

Any thoughts?

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Apple as an MVNO

Very interesting patent from Apple (thanks to Unwired View), I wonder how it would work in practice.

Generally I can see it's a viable idea, however, also wondering how roaming charges can compete with any networks' own tariff. I understand that there would be a competition between available network operators, however, roaming charges still remain roaming charges.

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iPhone SDK and Business Model - only kids get too excited

I think it's a good idea to wait a bit with commenting the announement of big things. You might not be as fast as others, but at least will have a broader view to the whole picture. At least that's what I did with Steve Jobs' announcement about the iPhone SDK (official press release is here) and developer program. Having read lots of articles written about it (by writers faster than me:), my remarks are below.

App Store
This is the place, the only place, where people can download 3rd-party software from, let it be commercial or freeware.

• Making it centralized is a good idea, better than having to look for something at lots of places. Especially if Apple undertakes lots of tasks, like distribution, advertising, content filtering, software update, etc. On the other hand, it will naturally result in that the control will be kept in one hand - it'll always be up to Apple to decide what is porn, illegal, etc. Is that good for us? Also, it doesn't help too much in pushing down the prices (I mean, interest rate) if there is only a single point of sell.
• I've been already thinking about that reselling applications should be done by device vendors themselves in order to keep the price at a more bearable level than it is at now. For example, Handango's 40-50-60% is something I call unabashed. However, it's understandable that they keep interest rate at that high level: it's their main (only?) income. Whereas for device manufacturers it would not be. Okay, I understand that they've been trying to keep themselves away from this part of the business so far, but nowadays that Internet is everything and if you don't provide a service that your competitors do, then you lose. For example, Nokia now offers Mosh and Ovi, but I can't remember if they offer App Store-like service, too. If they don't, I'm sure they will soon.
• One more thing: I think Apple is now bargaining. They announced a 30% interest rate from the price that developers will be able to sell their apps at, however, that's still too high. Never mind, let's check what people say about this rate, if the opposition is too big than we can offer less. From 30% you can do that.
  

Development
Apple announced that developers can download the SDK free of charge, bundled with source editor, debugger, interface builder (= UI designer), project management and integrated version control software and lots of other stuff.

• However, doing that require paying $99. It's a one off cost and in fact sounds reasonable for "standard" developers ($299 for enterprise developers) - it's mostly for signing, though freeware app developers will also have to pay this fee - for traceability purposes. In this respect (i.e. traceability), it's similar to Java certification and Symbian's Platform Security.
  
• Only platform is Mac? Sounds like a joke, look at the figures how many people/developers use this platform compared to Windows, Linux. I read it in Paul Todd's article that the SDK offers true simulation, not only emulation, which is fantastic. I wonder how VMWare would perform in iPhone development, though: people could install a virtual Mac machine on their operating system for development. Even more, it would make sense for Apple to create freely downloadable VMWare images for developers having everything pre-installed on it.
• Let me talk about the programming language developers are supposed to use, Objective-C. To be honest, I don't "speak" this language, but I have seen code written in it. I've been in "cross-platform business" lately and having said that I can see this language being more useful to our efforts than Java, for example (since none of the popular mobile OSes are built on non-C/C++). On the other hand, I'm afraid that Obj-C is too far away from standard C and C++ and one would need to make too big efforts to keep the codebase as common as possible.
• As for opening up 90% of APIs: it's nice, but a double-edged sword. First, Apple's got only one platform and one device (I mean, mobile phone). If everything goes fine with Apple's business there will be more platforms and more devices: the burden of SDK maintenance may grow to sky-high especially if you open up such a lot of APIs, taking care of source- and binary-compatibility, documentation, etc. You know, I would love to see Symbian/S60/UIQ to go open source or at least open up lots more APIs, too, but I understand why these companies decided not to do so. If Apple has the capacity to do it, then looking forward to it.
• As to $100M VC fund for 3rd-party development: it's obvious that newcomers have to say big, like this (remember Android's Developer Challenge?), I'm just hoping that others will do the same. Even if they're not newcomers, "just" founders of this industry. :)
• No multi-tasking: phew, it's really pain in the ... well, you know where. Although lots of things can be solved by storing state information when an application is forced to quit (heard that no 3rd-party app can run in the background! See Techcrunch for more details) and then retrieve that information on re-launch, this limitation causes lots of use cases not to work, like listening to incoming SMS, downloading/uploading/streaming content in the background, generally just hopping from one application to another where the soon-to-be-background app would still have things to do. I don't know why Apple has decided to introduce this limitation, but hope they will drop it soon.
  

In general, I'm happy that Apple has joined the mobile industry. As well as Google has or rather it just will. I always say that we can learn from anything, let it be good or bad. Life will prove that an idea or in particular an implementation of an idea is viable or not. The point is that we can all benefit from it: either by copying and making an idea better or avoid a mistake that has already been done once.

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Nokia to acquire Trolltech

Of course, I read the press release from Nokia. I even noticed that my fellow FN Champion, Paul Todd, was faster than me to write about it. Never mind, I knew it in advance that I can't be faster than AAS, nor Simon Judge, either.

What comes as a surprise to me, though, that no-one has pointed out to an important aspect of this announcement: am I alone to think that this is Nokia's answer to Google OHA?

Nokia already had a mobile Linux platform, called Maemo, but with this $153M acquisition it has now joined LiMo, too. See brief comparison between LiMo and OHA here. It's interesting to see how mobile phone manufacturers are committing themselves to different "open" mobile operating systems (e.g. Nokia to Symbian/S60, Maemo, LiMo; Motorola to LiMo, OHA, Symbian/UIQ) just to find the ultimate revenue source. If there is such, since who said that multiple mobile OSes cannot happily co-exist? Anyway, for us, developers, it might easily become the ultimate hell.

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Touch(less) UI + Accelerometer

We all know iPhone. Even though it's not available in Hungary as of yet, I've already had the chance to hold it in my hands and play with it. It's simply great. People say that it's because of the touch UI, but I don't believe that. It's not that simple. Lots of other manufacturers have already made phones with touch support, but for some reason the success of their products is not even comparable with iPhone's. I think it's because of Apple's approach to user interface, more importantly to user experience. They made it as simple as possible and it will be very hard for phone vendors to compete with it.

Motorola announced their ROKR E8 phone at CES 2008. It's a touch-driven phone, needless to say. The coolest feature that I found is that it doesn't have a physical keyboard, but it dynamically shows always the relevant keys based on what feature/program is being used at the moment. I remember of a patent that I have read about over at IntoMobile: Nokia had patented their invention of a dual-screen phone with touch support. My first reaction to seeing the drawing from the patent that the keyboard layout could be displayed on one of the screens and it could be dynamic: sometimes QWERTY, sometimes ITU-T, sometimes something else, something relevant. I'm very happy to see it to come true.

You might have already heard about that Nokia was planning to add tactile feedback support to their future phones, which means a little buzz when user presses one area of the (touch)screen. Very interestingly very similar to what Motorola has just come up with. You know, one of the biggest constraints of using a mobile phone instead of e.g. a laptop is screen size. And the size of the screen has so far been limited 1: by the device size (it must fit into one's pocket), 2: it had to have a keyboard. It seems that the trend for 2008 is that there will be no keyboard on smartphones at all. Ehm, I mean no real, physical keyboard - as opposed to virtual.

Have you heard that Nokia recently submitted another patent application for touchless UI? See Unwired View for more details. The basic idea described in the patent is that there would be sensors arrayed around the perimeter of the device capable of sensing finger movements in 3-D space. The user could use her fingers similarly to a touch phone, but actually without having to touch the screen. That's cool, isn't it? I think the idea is not only great, because user input will not be limited to 2-D anymore, but that I can use my thick, dirty, bandaged, etc. fingers as well (as opposed to "plain" touch UI). I'm a bit sceptic, though, how accurate it can be, whether the software will have AI or the user will have to learn how to move her fingers. We'll see hopefully very soon!

Finally, there is one more thing I'd like to mention here. It's the built-in accelerometer. I'm pretty sure that most readers have already heard of that the newest Nokia smartphones have built-in accelerometer. It's sort of a motion sensor that actually hasn't got so much publicity so far. I was always wondering why Nokia has not announced, advertised, etc. this piece of gadget. I mean at all. I can't remember if I have ever read any articles, blogs, etc. from Nokia about that they have put this extra hardware in their phone. You know, an accelerometer in a mobile phone is unusal. Not only to me, but to other people as well.

Why did Nokia not advertise this? If it's expensive, it doesn't make any sense not to advertise it. If it's cheap (I bet it is), then it doesn't have to be advertised, but then why add it to the phone at all? Just to see what the (developer) community thinks about it? What kind of applications can they make out of it? Although it's a good idea, I don't think it's a valid business reason. And you know, it was also unusual that Nokia published an API for developers to use this feature - but it was an R&D API! Knowing Nokia and using their SDKs for ages, I would say it's, again, very unusual. It's like "Let's publish this API so that we can see what others can find out with it, but doing it so that we don't have to announce it".

I wouldn't be suprised if the accelerometer eventually had something to do with the touchless UI. I have the feeling, since I'm a programmer, that even with the array of transducers (see the patent) it's not trivial to figure out what the user has done with her fingers. For example, it might be very important to know in what angle the user's hand is to the device ... and this is the point where the accelerometer comes in handy. It helps to know how the user's one hand holds the phone while making gestures with the other. And this altogether is the new thing.

Can't wait to read your comments,

Tote

Predictions for smartphone industry in 2008

I've read the recent blog of my fellow Forum Nokia Champion, Paul Coulton, with great interest. Similarly to Paul, I'm not an experienced fortuneteller, but after reading his article I thought I would give it a try, too. You know, what can I lose other than being not right? :)

Let me comment some of his findings, first. Although I can't foretell how ad-driven content will work out in mobile space (since it's simply not trivial how to advertise on mobile devices), I can say the biggest supporter of this model (their name starts with G if somebody didn't know) largely depends on operators' support. If operators (aka carriers) do not make it cheaper for customers to download data from the Internet than it is today, then the success of this model is very questionable. And actually this mostly applies to widgets as well: although they can work with local data, too, the most popular use case of widgets will still involve transferring data over the net.

As to NFC (short for Near Field Communication), although I strongly believe in the future of this technology, it's still in its infancy and I don't think 2008 would bring the break-through in this area. NFC-enabled mobile devices might appear in people's hands in 2008, however, it would only be one part of a larger ecosystem: the wide-spread use of RFID tags in various places (movie posters, business cards, etc.) + the introduction of accompanying services (such as a bus ticketing service) will still be the question of later years. I think.

Paul's list could be completed by the following things in my opinion:

• Touch UI: it's a MUST HAVE feature for every serious phone manufacturer in 2008. We have seen lots of patents from various manufacturers that had something to do with screens, how they will look like and we can guess how they will work. There's already lots of effort put into working out the ultimate touch-based user interface and the success of iPhone has already shown us that it's not something in vain.
• Java: the language and its development environment will be more and more popular again thanks to the introduction of Google-phones. As we all know, the programming language and libraries used in Google's public SDK is not Java (neither ME, nor SE), but something else that allows Java developer to re-use their existing knowledge in a slightly different environment. Anyway, I believe Java will only profit from this thing.
• Awakening of (North-)America to the world of smartphones thanks to iPhone + gPhone. It seems that American companies can convince American people more easily that they need smartphones. And you know the reason why Nokia is happy seeing the huge success of iPhone? That's why.
• Most innovative players in mobile phone industry (Nokia, Apple, Google, others?) will introduce their internet services designed for (their) mobile phones. Google is an internet company and just about to enter the mobile market (700 MHz frequency auction, gPhone, etc.). Apple has had very popular internet services (e.g. iTunes) for years by now and they now feel the taste of success on mobile area as well. Nokia has always been a mobile company, but they've decided to open to internet services and have already introduced a few popular services (MOSH, Ovi, etc.). Why do they do this? Because pulling money out of customers' pocket once (i.e. when they purchase mobile phones) is not enough - why not getting more money from them? Who will suck from this? Of course, the operators. I would even call it "double-suck", since not only will they suck thanks to people using e.g. VoIP over WiFi (in other words, not using operators' network), but they will suck because people will turn to internet services provided by others (e.g. Nokia, Apple), not their operators.
  

I'm sure that I've missed a few things that could have been added to the list. Could you help me?

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Tilt-O-Mania, also known as Nokmote

Have you ever felt that your idea is stolen and "Damn, I wish I had been faster in doing it"? Now I feel exactly that way.

The first time I heard that another Nokia phone, N95, has a built-in accelerometer I started wondering why on Earth? Why on Earth is it worth for Nokia to put such a device in their phone? Has Nokia 5500 Sport (first Nokia device with built-in accelerometer) proven that it's worth making further experiments with? I haven't seen any analysis telling so, although I admit that it doesn't mean anything. Why on Earth has Nokia kept it secret that there was such a gadget in their hottest device? Is it a secret? Isn't it something that makes the device even cooler?

Then I started to think about what we could do with it? First, I thought RotateMe was a great software, I really liked the idea. But I felt something was missing. Then I found it: why not simulate joystick key presses (i.e. left, right, up, down + press) by tilting the device to the right direction? Since it's fairly easy to simulate key events in Symbian C++ just as if they had really occured, I thought it was easy to implement. The good thing in this idea that it works with existing software, no need to re-write or adapt anything: applications will not notice the difference between real keystroke and simulated.

Tilt-O-Mania

That would have been the name of my software. R.I.P. Now it's called Nokmote and it's not mine at all. :( Sorry guys behind the "sad smiley", I'm happy that you'll come out with an implementation, but I must tell you that I'm unhappy that you'll come out with it. :)

To be honest, I was always wondering why nobody had ever discovered the opportunity in writing such a software. As more and more S60 devices will come out with built-in accelerometer this feature could become such an integral part of user experience that even Nokia might want to use it. I dare to claim that even the joystick could be replaced by the accelerometer + this solution in the future. Not only could Nokia save some money by removing some existing hardware (i.e. the joystick), but they might even be able to use the new spare space for other purposes. Isn't it so cool?

And you know what? The solution is not Nokia/Symbian specific: any (mobile) device having a motion sensor could do on-screen navigation like this. Another Symbian phone, iPhone, gPhone even a laptop, though it would be funny to see a businessman tilting his computer at the airport just for the sake of navigation. :)

On the other hand, I was shocked to find that my(?) idea was not original at all. I mean not that now somebody has come out with an implementation for S60, but this idea was implemented years(!) ago on another mobile phone. You know, some of my colleagues have worked with a MyOrigo device and when I told them my idea they enlightened me that it had already been implemented. Check out this article from The Register and you'll see that such a device is already on the market. Okay, it is a not-really-famous mobile phone and perhaps it doesn't even make use of accelerometer data, but still the idea is theirs: user tilts software navigates.

Never mind, although I'm sorry to see that I can't be THE pioneer in this area, I'm happy to see that it'll be available to us soon. Good luck for writing the software!

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Join Forum Nokia LaunchPad - 25% discount

Nokia is famous and well-known of their developer support. Forum Nokia is a portal for anybody interested in tools, documents, techniques and insights to developing solutions running on Nokia devices. The recently renewed site now contains a very popular community-driven forum, Wiki, blog, etc. for everybody's use. All this for free.

However, sometimes even this extensive support proves to be not enough. There are cases when you need more information from a more reliable source in shorter time. In other words, more support. And this is when professional support comes into play. Something that you don't get for free, something you have to pay for.

What is this professional support and what do you get for your money?

Whilst there are many kinds of professional support provided by Nokia, I'd like to talk about two of them: Forum Nokia PRO and Forum Nokia LaunchPad. I'm pretty sure that you have already heard of Forum Nokia PRO, available for professionals for years by now. The benefits of this program is well-described here, it's worth noting that it is invitation only. As opposed to Forum Nokia LaunchPad, which is available for everybody, individuals and companies alike. Benefits include free copy of Carbide tool, discounted tech support, application signing, books, early access to technical information and lots more. Although there is a clear difference between services provided for PRO and LaunchPad members (former naturally gets more), I believe it's worth joining either program if you're a serious developer/company.

And here comes the deal

As a Forum Nokia Blogger and "self-appointed LaunchPad ambassador" I am entitled to offer you €200 off the price of Forum Nokia LaunchPad's (otherwise) €800 membership fee. Yes, that is 25% discount! If you have been thinking about getting more from Nokia and joining LaunchPad program, this is the right time to do it!

How does it work?

I give you a promotion code, namely LP600 (short for LaunchPad for €600), that you can use when applying for Forum Nokia LaunchPad membership and that's it! You just need to enter the above code (in Promotional code field) right before pressing Submit and you're done, you pay less.

Convinced or eager to know more? Just visit Forum Nokia LaunchPad for more information and apply for membership!

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Time of competition - a peaceful summer?

Summer is hot, silent and peaceful in Hungary. I can just sit back and watch/read what's happening around the world. And in mobile space, of course.

Well, it's not that silent as I expected. In the past few days I have noticed new signs of a tough competition between mobile- and consumer electronics device manufacturers, internet service providers, mobile operating systems. Let me go into the details!

Although Nokia is clearly a market leader, they have to listen carefully to users' demand. On smartphone market, for example, there's a new challenger who demands everyone's attention. There's been a lot of discussion over whether iPhone is a smartphone or not, but that's not my point now. They clearly showed people how easy to use a user interface (UI) can be (I also happen to know how an iPhone blends, but that's a different topic:). However, the UI is not everything: there must be great (and well-implemented) features in the phone, too. You know, just in order to make a phone smart - if that's Apple's intention at all. It's not obvious as the mass market (=biggest revenue) of mobile phones is NOT smartphones.

These times everyone is trying to imitate iPhone's behavior on their phone; even one of my friends has put a new "iPhone shell" on his Windows CE phone - just for the feeling's sake. :)
Other people, on the other hand, wonder if iPhone is really selling at the same pace how Apple claims to be. You know, it's just one thing, they say, how many phones Apple and AT&T could sell so far (not to mention how many have actually been activated), it's just the hype that keeps selling at this level. Sooner or later, however, everything (and everybody) will calm down and we'll see how successful Apple is. Let's see!

Another company is also trying to expand into this new area - at least new to them. It's been announced several days ago that Google invested in cellular technology. No surprise, we already knew they're interested in this technology area (i.e. mobile), too. What might be a sign of a new aggressive campaign is that Google makes the conditions to FCC for a wireless spectrum auction. You know, I pretty much sympathize with Google in this case and hope that not only will the rules change (free download of any applications, services or content), but the list of operators will be refreshed, too.

By the way, Russell Beattie is back. In case his name doesn't sound familiar to you, he's an American blogger (one of my favorites) from the Silicon Valley full of great ideas. This time he shared his opinion with us how he sees the future of Nokia S60 UI. He's not alone with the vision that Nokia will change to Linux from Symbian, what he adds, though, is that he expects (or rather suggests) Nokia to revolutionize their UI, too. Neither would be an easy change just a side-note.
On the Linux issue, it's been already told that royalty-free doesn't mean entirely free at all. There must be (lots of) people who customize Linux to the needs of manufacturers, operators, follow market demands, adds features to Linux that have never been implemented since Linux originally has not been a mobile OS. The interest of all the possible players is very fractioned, there're already several interest groups who are doing their own design, following their own desires, etc.
On the other hand, there're lots of things Symbian (Nokia, UIQ, etc.) could learn from Linux, especially from their developer community. For example, I'm not sure if you've heard about the service outage of Symbian Signed that happened recently. For example, one of my fellow Forum Nokia Champions, Antony Pranata, was in trouble due to this. There are other people, too, who are not too happy with the current situation and think Nokia and Symbian could make it better.
Finally, as to the UI revolution: I'm pretty sure that everybody at Nokia has already drawn the conclusion from iPhone's success. I bet they've even already started to design the new approach of a touch-based model from Nokia. I'm really looking forward to it. And finally, a side-note to Russell: not as if it was a trivial step for Nokia to get rid of their "old" UI design in a jiffy. The UI (believe it or not:) is one of the core features people love the most in their Nokia phone. They might interpret a radical change in the user interface in a way that would make Nokia, khmm, unhappy.

That's it for now, I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts!

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