Mobile platform war

I was presenting the following stuff on Hungarian Free Software Conference that took place in Szeged last Friday. The pre-defined 20-25 minutes presentation time was a serious constraint that didn't allow presenters to make lengthy presentations.

You know, I believe in a presentation style where the presenter doesn't simply read out his/her presentation in front of the audience, but completes it with meaningful and useful information. I'm sorry for not being able to do the latter this time, yet hope that the material alone will be readable and useful.

Enjoy,

Tote

Smartphone OS market share - 2012

Yes, you read it right: it's 2012. Gartner published a report (link: Computerworld) in which they forecast the following smartphone OS market share for 2012:

We could all see the trend which players remain, disappear or gain strong foothold for a while by now. Nokia has always been the strongest when it comes to smartphones and they will be able to keep their position according to Gartner. They have a huge loyal user base and Nokia as an Internet company and phone manufacturer in one will probably be able to fight successfully against its competitors.

Apple has great technical innovations (form factor, made touch trendy with multitouch, etc.) in addition to the ability to sell (how easy it is to forget about this!). Their tight control on most parts of the mobile value chain is very different compared to what their competitors do, but it has proven to affect user experience in the right way and made this business very profitable for the company.

Google is a goliath in Internet business with huge influence on people's lives already. They use this power to become successful in mobile business with a great strategy: cost reduction for everyone, let it be manufacturers, network operators, developers, users, etc.

All these companies are able to make people passionate about their devices. The term, convergence, has been already accompanied with smartphones in the past few years, however, it's always been about integrating something into the device: MP3 player, FM radio, digital camera, GPS, etc. This time it's different: we're living the age of integrating the mobile phone into an even bigger thing, a cloud called Internet. It's no surprise why Google is successful with Android: people are already dependent on their services and they "only" had to provide the means for mobile users to access these services via their beloved gadgets.

It wouldn't be surprising if these figures became true by 2012. All the remaining players are less innovative (Palm Pre is a copy of iPhone), struggling with finding their identity (M$), are not offering a portfolio that is wide enough (BlackBerry is a business phone), etc. It might be worth noting that data communication will be dominant by 2012 and will drive the growth of MID-market. Wonder if Gartner has reckoned with this, too.

Tote

Ps.: Google Chart API is our friend. :)

Fate of Symbian C++

Historically, Symbian OS has evolved from EPOC, a mobile operating system written originally by Psion. The foundations were laid down in the 80's and a lot of work had been done to it while it became EPOC32 in the late 90's, the direct predecessor of Symbian OS. Also for historical reasons, the developers of Symbian decided to deviate from standard C and not-yet-standard C++ and create their own flavour of programming language. They thought their own exception mechanism (aka leaving), string handling (alias descriptors), naming conventions (C, M, R, T classes), etc. are better than anything else and make it the most appropriate tool to write an entire operating system and related frameworks for resource constrained devices.

They were probably right. But since it was a deviation from "normal" it was a question of time to turn out if people tolerate the difference. People, also known as developers. Through developers the whole market. Small and big players alike.

When Nokia acquired Trolltech speculation started. About Nokia's real reason, I mean. A lot of people didn't believe that it was "just" about making a common framework for smart- and feature phones + desktop computers. Personally, I thought it was a really valid reason alone, though naturally wondered how it would affect the future of Symbian.

People also speculated if not only will Nokia replace Avkon (the UI framework for Symbian S60) with Qt, but change from Symbian to Linux, too. Time has proven that it was not the case. Symbian OS was - and it still is - so valuable that it wouldn't have made sense to throw it out. Nokia has achieved so much with this operating system, put so much money in the development of it and most importantly the system has proven that it DOES work so that it is reliable, secure, can be customized, etc. It simply made sense to keep it.

The latest news about Qt vs Symbian C++ is that "Qt will take over the application layer on Symbian devices, among others, reducing Symbian development to under-the-hood core programming at best" (from El Reg). At best. So finally it seems the market (again, through developers) didn't tolerate the afore-mentioned deviation. Not as if developers didn't have a bunch of alternatives to develop for Symbian devices: Flash, web run-time, Java, Python, .NET, etc. Still, the programming language that offered the most freedom to developers has apparently failed to attract and keep the masses. It is now time to retreat in the wings.

In the closing words, let me chew upon how much marketing could have supported this programming language to become more popular. Take, for example, the "official" language of iPhone development: objective C. Is it a deviation from standard C? Yes. It's not even C++, if that counts at all. Is it easy to learn? Personally I didn't have the chance to study it, but my ex-colleagues did and they told me that it wasn't that difficult as they had anticipated. Admit that they had a decade of experience in mobile sw development that most people don't. What I'd like to point out, though, is that there are languages that are much easier to learn and use in practice, such as Java, Python and the likes. All in all, I think Obj-C is at least as much deviated from the standard as Symbian C++.

Then why is it so popular in contrast with Symbian C++? Perhaps it's because of the tools - compare the two emulators, for example. Or is it the processes - there are pros and cons on both sides: Symbian Signed has received much criticism, but Apple approval process is not much better, either. Or is it the hype that surrounds iPhone devices and related development environment that made developers to forget about the imperfection of this language? I think it's pretty much that case. What made the hype? Innovation and marketing, i.e. that Apple could find out something new and they could sell it, too.

Symbian C++ could have been saved with a bit more selling power, in my opinion. It is not going to disappear, just less apparent. And I don't cry for it, because I know it's called evolution. I just wonder what those years will be worth of that I had spent with it.

Tote

A book on porting to Symbian

Let me be proud for a moment: I've co-authored Mark Wilcox's great book, Porting to the Symbian platform. I've written the part the describes what is worth knowing for an Android developer when porting to Symbian C/C++. What makes me even prouder is that one of my ex-colleagues was also involved - Gabor Morvay wrote the section of iPhone to Qt porting. It's great to make use of knowledge in such a way!

Great work, Mark, good luck with the sales! :)

Tote

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

Mobile Monday Budapest - Great success!

We held the second Mobile Monday Budapest event yesterday evening. As I already wrote, the topic was mobile software development: Android and Symbian in particular. My colleague gave a great presentation on Android and I talked about Symbian. Unfortunately, the third presenter was not able to come, thus we didn't have a presentation about iPhone development. Nevertheless, we still tried to cover as wide range of platforms during the free Q&A session as possible.

There were something like 50 engineering-minded people (like us:), brave enough to ask smart questions, eager to learn from the others (not only from presenters) and willing to network. The event was sponsored by Forum Nokia (event site is available at bantora.com) and my employer, Agil Eight. Thanks for both!

I'm so happy that this habit slowly becomes a tradition - it's exactly this what we need in our small country. Looking forward to the upcoming MoMo Budapest even in April!

Tote

Mobile worm, Yxes.A - an analysis

F-Secure and FortiGruard both reported that a new worm, Yxes.A, is spreading on Nokia smartphones based on S60 3rd Edition platform (and probably higher, too). According to FortiGuard:

• "It gathers phone numbers from the infected device's file system, and repeatedly attempts to send SMS messages to those. The messages feature a malicious Web address (URL); upon "clicking" on the address in the received message, the recipients will download a copy of the worm (provided their phones/subscriptions allow for internet browsing)." That is, it's a Trojan.
  
• Beyond propagating to as many users as possible via the strategy mentioned above, the worm's aim is to gather intelligence on the infected victim (such as serial number of the phone, subscription number) and post it to a remote server likely controlled by cyber criminals.
  
• It's also noted that  worm can mutate easily: "As far as our analysis goes, the worm currently does not take commands from the remote servers it contacts. However, since the copies hosted on the malicious servers are controlled by the cyber criminals, they may update them whenever they want, thereby effectively mutating the worm, adding or removing functionality." It's not that simple, though. It's not like download a new EXE from the Net and it will just work. No new EXE or DLL (a plug-in, for example) can be installed without the assistance of Application Installer, which will eventually require user's attention and approval. Some files that don't have to be installed can be downloaded, though, containing instructions for the worm to execute, however, it's becoming a science fiction if we think that any malware author will put THAT much effort in developing such a system. I'm highly sceptical on that it would be a real threat and refuse to be threatened by that.
• It's also reported that "On launch, the worm executes as the process 'EConServer.exe', which is likely meant to camouflage alongside the existing legitimate system process 'EComServer.exe'". This simply doesn't mean anything: if a process name is only similar to another (system) process name then it doesn't imply anything. And anyway, EComServer.exe is never launched by hand (but by the system upon device start), consequently it's not a valid scenario that the malicious EXE gets launched instead.
• It's a very agressive application, since it "will also automatically run every time the device is rebooted / power cycled. Further, it bears a destructive nature and will kill certain processes such as the application manager (AppMgr)." If that's true then the program must hold very strong capabilities that cannot be granted by a self-signed certificate.

You can see from the list above that the worm can be malicious, indeed. Following from the last point we can conclude even more:

• The program couldn't be self-signed, since the program requires such strong capabilities that the Application Installer will never grant to a self-signed installable.
• It couldn't be signed via Open Signed Offline*, either, since that would limit the spread only to max 1000 devices with given IMEI numbers.
• It couldn't be Certified Signed*, either, since that requires a thorough test done by an official Test House. Even if they hadn't done a thorough test, such a behavior must have turned out very soon.
• All that means that it was Express Signed*. You know, one characteristic of Express Signed is that they do occasional testing, which means that there might be some malicious apps that can go through this filter.

What counter-measures can be taken? First, the certificate of the malware author must be revoked. That means that whenever they will try to publish another application, whatever it will do it will not be allowed to be distributed, but will be filtered out automatically. This doesn't comfort any victims of this virus, though (hmm, are there any?).

Second, it would be just great if OCSP-checking was enabled on every phone by default. OCSP is a protocol that allows the Installer to check it in a database that a certificate is revoked or not. Although it is available on each S60 phones, it is disabled by default. But I go even further: it's not only the Installer that should use it, but other components of the system, too. In fact, the system itself should perform such a cross-check at regular intervals if any of the installed applications have become undesirable for the user (i.e. the certificate used to sign that application has got revoked) in the mean time. I'm unsure as to why this mechanism can be disabled at all, probably because it requires a network connection and data exchange with a remote server. But I think this should be something that operators shouldn't charge for - isn't it in their best interest, too, that the devices using their network wouldn't get infected?

* For more information on various signing schemes, please visit Symbian Signed.

Any thoughts are welcome,

Tote

Mobile Monday Budapest - Mobile Software Development

It's time for the 2^nd Mobile Monday Budapest event! This time the topic is mobile software development and we selected the three hottest platforms: iPhone, Android and Symbian. I wrote 'we', because I'm among the organizers as well as one of the presenters: my presentation will cover Symbian-based development.

Some information on the event:

Date: Feb 23, 2009

Time: 18:00 - 21:00

Venue: BUTE, Magyar Tudósok Körútja 2, Room 019

For more information, please refer to Nokia's new web service, Bantora, or Mobile Monday Hungary.

Everybody is welcome!

Tote

Thoughts on Palm Pre

Of course, I've seen Palm's keynote from CES 2009. I've also read quite a few blogs, comments on the topic and now would like to share my impressions about it.

First of all, I liked the device! It looks great, the addition of a QWERTY-keyboard makes it even more complete. The UI looks intuitive, I pretty much liked the introduced card system, where you could switch between running applications. In general it's a fancy device with a high WOW-factor.

Then, what else? Well, my first impression was that it's a copy device, an iClone. It's just a better iPhone, not as if it was not a remarkable thing alone. Nevertheless, I have a few questions on copying a bestselling device in general:

• Is that allowed to sell a very similar device with some enhancements? I'm pretty sure that Apple patented a lot of things and I'm surprised to see the same multi-touch functionality to be present in Palm Pre, for example.
• Is that nice? Does it make good to Palm's reputation that everyone knows that "iPhone was the first"? I'm pretty sure, though, that Palm will not feel sorry if it's profitable and legally okay.
• Will this strategy work at all? As Michael Mace greatly puts it: "... Pre is a better e-mail device than the iPhone and a better consumer device than a Blackberry ... [but] it's probably a worse entertainment device than the iPhone (because it doesn't have iTunes) and probably a worse e-mail device than RIM (because it doesn't have RIM's server infrastructure)." The thing is that we don't know too much other than a technical specification. How much will it cost? What services will be available for the user? In general, why users will want to buy Pre instead of other competing products? And lots of other questions, partly covered below.

I wonder how it will work out that Palm is fighting against such competitors who have existing products in their portfolio. Pre is said to be available in H1/2009 in Sprint's network, but no news about pricing policy, international availability, etc. yet. If Palm will be able to ship this product with such a great technical parameters, their top-priority will (have to) be to build an ecosystem around it. That most importantly means services that 1: give Palm post-sales revenue and 2: tempt users to choose rather Palm's device than any other competitor's. In addition to that, developers must be inspired to make great applications that boost 3rd-party business, too.

In fact, development on Palm is a big question mark to me. You know, I've never been into Palm development, but what I've read from others on this topic was that 1: WebOS is a completely new software architecture, 2: with no backward compatibility. In other words, old applications will not run on the new device. I mean, it's not only that you have to make some tweaking on your existing software and then it will run in the new environment (think of the introduction of Platform Security in Symbian and what that meant to old software), but you have to completely re-write it and even then it's not guaranteed that it will work. Why? Because the keyword for the new SDK is that it's about web-development. Palm toed the line by supporting WebKit (their browser is based on it) and it's great that there's a common platform available on most smartphones by now. Well, Microsoft still resists and I bet that they will always do. In general that means that the boundary between mobile- and full web becomes more and more blurred, but that alone doesn't give you the promise of "Mobile development Paradise". Why? Because you simply can't solve everything with the HTML/CSS/JavaScript trinity. How will you develop your own VoIP, image processing, gaming, etc. application with this technology stack, for example? It's simply not the right tool for a lot of things in software development as in fact no one technology stack can be. But if you limit yourself to one then you eventually shrink your software market. I'm not saying that it will be the only way for development in the future, however, at least it was the message that I got from the keynote.

Finally, two features that captured my attention for different reasons:

• Multi-tasking, i.e. being able to run more than one application in parallel. Everybody is keen on that and points out that how great it is compared to the iPhone. And then what? I think it's not an innovation at all - I would say that what's the innovation in the 21^st century of NOT being able to do that. Damn, Apple was better again in doing that. :)
• Card-system. Everyone who's seen the keynote or any preview can tell that it's about accessing simultaneously running applications: different apps are shown in a list as playing cards and can be manipulated in a very intuitive way. No doubt, it's a great idea and I'd be happy to use it on other phones, too.

Comments are welcome,

Tote

Update: this post has been included in Carnival of the Mobilists 157. Check it out for other interesting articles about mobile topics!

The diversity of Symbian development

When talking about mobile software development lots of people forget about the fact that it's not only the native programming language that can be used on a given platform. I've read a lot of comparisons between Symbian/C++, Win32/MFC/.NET of Windows Mobile, Objective-C on iPhone, Android, etc. lately discussing the advantages and disadvantages of these options, maturity and popularity of the underlying platforms, probability of writing successful programs, etc.

The problem with these comparisons (in which Symbian/C++ is typically at the end of the list with its peculiarities and steep learning curve) is that they discuss only half of the picture. The more advanced a mobile platform the more you can do on it - which applies to software development, too. I strongly believe that one of the strengths of software development on Symbian platform is that it's not bound to a single programming language, SDK, etc. A lot of you might not know that for Symbian-powered devices you can write software in

• Java - Mobile Java (JME) has been available since the early days,
• Flash Lite - Adobe's Flash has been added to S60 phones 1-2 years ago,
• Python - Python for S60 is an open source initiative enabling rapid application development,
• Ruby - Ruby for Symbian is one of the newest additions to S60,
• .NET - Red Five Labs's add-on to S60 platform is tempting Windows Mobile developers to use their skills on another platform,
• NS Basic - Powerful development environment and run-time framework for programs written in BASIC (link),
• HTML using other web technologies like CSS, Javascript - Apple's WebKit rendering engine is becoming the de facto standard for mobile browsers making them capable of showing full web pages (i.e. not only WAP or mobile web). This enables widgets development for a range of smartphones like S60-phones, iPhone, Android, etc.

You can see from the list above that Symbian development is much more than native application programming. On the contrary, I dare to claim that native programming is becoming less and less relevant over time. Of course, each option has its strengths and weaknesses (as well as native programming) the point is diversity, the possibility to choose. This (among others) makes Symbian OS's position stronger than its competitors': if you can develop for one mobile platform it's almost sure that you can use THAT knowledge for Symbian development, too. One exception for this might be Objective-C on iPhone, but I wouldn't be surprised if that became a reality on Symbian in the near future, too.

By the way, Simon Judge made a quick comparison between different platform development options - it's worth a read. As well as Andreas Constantinou's  post at Vision Mobile - a well-written article about mobile application runtimes for better understanding this world.

Any comments are welcome,

Tote

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.

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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,

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Samsung Mobile Innovator - Yet another Symbian developer site

You might have heard of that Samsung has just kicked-off their new portal for mobile application developers. It's advertised as a great entry point for Symbian developers wishing to develop for Samsung devices based on this operating system. I'm not sure if other platforms will be covered by this site, too.

What I'm asking now, however, is if it's really worth increasing the fragmentation of Symbian development portals that are already present today. You know, I recall when I was involved in a cross-platform mobile development project and it really frustrated me that I had to check Forum Nokia, Sony Ericsson Developer World, uiq.com and Symbian DevNet to see what people said about nasty problems, their solutions and be sure that nothing has escaped my attention (well, I could never be sure about that).

I can see that Samsung might come out with such great features and services that will be very useful to the developer community in general. What I don't understand, though, is with Symbian Foundation (SF) starting early next year why doesn't SF kicks-off their own developer portal into which Samsung could integrate its own services. In an ideal world Symbian developers would just remember a single URL where they could find answers for all their questions. A powerful search engine could do magic, you know. Symbian Foundation gives a good opportunity to unify existing resources into one and I can't see why Samsung didn't realize this.

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Silicon Valley doesn't respect Nokia

In response to the article I found on Forbes.com, Nokia Software Problem, let me collect my remarks on the statements in a single post. The list of statements below simply follows the same order as they appeared in the original article.

"Nokia sells close to half of all smart phones worldwide"
Well, around 70% would be more accurate, but then it couldn't have been said that "close to half".

"N95's only edge was in watching video"
Hmm, let me smile at it. I think GPS, 5 megapixel camera, WiFi, etc. also come in handy every now and then. These things were all new in a Nokia device at the time when N95 was introduced and although Nokia might not have been the first in introducing them, the point is that video was not the only thing users could enjoy.

"Symbian is not dead, but it has a limited amount of time to act to capture developer mind share before it is too late,"
I don't know how many times I wrote this on various forums: developing for a Symbian-based device does NOT mean pure Symbian/C++ development. On the contrary, the range of possibilities is much wider: you can program in Flash (Lite), Java (Mobile), Python (for S60/UIQ), (Open) C, Widgets, .NET, NS Basic, etc. My question is not solely addressed to Apple: is there any other manufacturer in the world who can compete with this at this very moment? Is it the not-closed-but-not-too-open-either Apple who although enables Objective-C development, but nothing else? For example, Java, which is not only available on all other platforms, but also the primary language for 3d-party development on Android? Not as if I had heard too many good things on iPhone developer support, but are they really the ones who will save the world?

"Applications written for the iPhone, by contrast, will run on every iPhone."
Ehh, typically naive, beginner approach. I wouldn't write an article if I were such a beginner, though. How many iPhone models can we talk about at the moment? Two. There's a rumour on Apple introducing iPhone Nano still this year and I bet that that device would introduce variation both in hardware (e.g. screen size) and software. And having spent almost a decade with mobile software development, I can tell you that software development becomes exponentially more complex with the introduction of variations. I think we should get back to this question in 1-2 years time-frame and then we'll see how programs written for old models will work on new ones and vice versa.

"Carriers here have been loath to give Nokia much love over the years"
Yeah, this one is a hit on the nail. I find it very interesting how much North-American carriers favour US phone manufacturers (Palm, Microsoft, Apple) and Canadians (RIM). It is one of the root causes (if not THE) why Nokia has failed to successfully enter North-American market.

As to developing software for mobile platforms, it's worth noting that it's becoming more and more popular to rely on a thin client software responsible mainly for the User Interface, while storing data and implementing heavy business logic on a remote server. So often, the thin client is a browser or an application capable of providing "browser-like" behavior. This is something iPhone, the latest Nokia S60 phones, Windows Mobile are (and the newcomer Android will be) good at. And lots of people say that this architecture is the most suitable solution for cross-(mobile)platform software.

In my opinion, it's too early to talk about the dethronement of Nokia by Apple and RIM. Just count the number of phones sold, how many models various manufacturers have on market, how long has a manufacturer been on market, etc. and we'll have just the right amount of information ... to be silent. The author of the article fails to see that global market is not equal to American market, over-emphasizes the importance of Silicon Valley and can't think of the possibility that these platforms, devices, manufacturers can co-exist with one another.

Otherwise the article was good,

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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...

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Static vs active application icons

I found an interesting blog about mobile interaction design at Sender 11 (whatever that name means). The point of the article is that in order to make application icons more attractive and provide a better user-experience, the icons should refresh their content from time to time and show "relevant" information to the user instead of being passive and showing only static information.

I like the idea. As one of the comments says with Nokia S60s you can now build interfaces wiht live icons like these in web-run-time and create a whole menu as a widget. Well, I don't know much about widgets, but I can imagine that it would work. For example, the whole Application Shell could make use of Web run-time and show application entry points (i.e. icons) as widgets with their always-changing behavior. Even more, the idea of Active Idle could be replaced by an active Application Shell, too. Some pixels could also be saved from precious screen real-estate (e.g. unread messages) by letting the application icons show information.

What could different applications show to the user? Here's a by far incomplete list out of my mind:

• Calendar: indication about events nearby
• Messaging: unread messages (sms, e-mail, etc.)
• Bluetooth connectivity: enabled vs disabled, transfer in progress
• WLAN connectivity: enabled vs disabled, number of hotspots nearby
• Maps: known (i.e. pre-recorded) locations nearby
• Clock: time
• Music Player: some information about tune being played (with scrolling, for example)
• RSS reader: new, unread items
• etc.
  

Could you add more?

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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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Nokia stirs water with mobile Linux

It seems it's time for another round to discuss about whether Nokia will abandon Symbian OS in favour of (mobile) Linux. All About Symbian has reported that "Nokia's Chief Financial Officer said Nokia is considering manufacturing Linux-based mobile phones". This information is confirmed by Unwired View as well, although in a slightly different tone: they say "Nokia sees increasing role of Linux in handsets". Finally, El Reg is saying that "Nokia says no plan to switch phones to Linux".

Who to believe? Having read the comments carefully, people seems to have the following opinions/see the following options:

• The biggest haters of Symbian say that it's natural that Linux will take over and this is exactly what they've always claimed.
• According to a bit more careful opinion, these two mobile operating systems will co-exist. There are couple of arguments for this scenario:
• Symbian/S60 is undoubtedly the leader in smartphone market
• There's room for both OSes: Symbian excels in high-performance mobile phones, whereas Linux could be successful in mid-range feature phones.
• Nokia has already heavily invested in the development of a mobile OS and is a nearly 50% shareholder of Symbian these days - why would they ruin all this?
• The development of a smartphone running on Linux still takes a LOT of time.
  
• Some more paranoid commenters say that "Linux is not really a threat for Symbian, but rather a motivation" to work & perform even better in today's extremely competing environment (i.e. mobile OSes and smartphone market). They believe that Nokia wants to make pressure on Symbian by announcing new Linux-powered devices from time to time.
  
• Finally, there are those who don't give a sh.t to what OS is running on a phone, they "just" want their Flash/Python/Java/etc. applications (whether they wrote them or not) to run smoothly in the future, too. Some of these people also mention that it's the same if the OS gets replaced, the UI (i.e. S60) is what's important - and if it remains, nothing will change actually.
  

Personally, I think that Nokia is still making experiments with Linux. Don't forget that they already have mobile Linux devices (Internet tablets running on Maemo platform), though, those are not mobile phones, just sort of PDAs. In today's fragmented mobile Linux market, no one mobile manufacturers dare to commit themselves to take Linux as the leading operating system for their products - it would simply be way too risky. It's been also said numerous times that there are lots of factors that manufacturers must consider when selecting a mobile OS and Linux is definitely NOT the ultimate solution today. Nokia might abandon Symbian in the future, however, it's not time for that. Yet.

Any thoughts?

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