 NMC was a great venue to to find out about the Symbian OS, Series 60 and what
we can expect in the near future. Ian Weston, VP Partner Support, Symbian shared
some facts and figures with us about Symbian, their market share, and the road
ahead.
First and foremost, some information about Symbian the company. They are of course
a for-profit company. Revenues are derived from every phone that ships with the
Symbian OS. There are a number of licensees of the OS including:
- Arima
- BenQ
- Fujitsu
- Panasonic
- Lenovo
- LG Electronics
- Motorola
- Nokia
- Samsung
- Sanyo
- Sendo
- Siemens
- Sony Ericsson
Image Credit: Symbian
Symbian has an ambitious goal to foster large-scale development with reduced
developer costs. With rapid uptake in 2004, there currently exists an installed
base of more than 15 million Symbian OS mobile devices (as of Q2 2004). Currently
there are 23 devices in the marketplace and some 34 products are currently in
development.
Breakdown of owenrship stake in Symbian
Symbian OS defined - an open OS designed for use in enhanced, data-enabled mobile phones.
The benefit of the Symbian OS
An open environment, the Symbian OS is widely regarded as a stable platform with
a rich programming environment. The UI framework is such that it enables development
for a variety of devices and form factors - this addresses the needs of lots of
different markets. Standard UIs supported included UIQ, Nokia Series 60, 80, 90,
FOMA, OMAP, and others. A plethora of open APIs provide access to a large pool
of developers - all Symbian OS platforms share 80% of common APIs with the other
20% for optimizing applications and devices for a specific market segment.
Pros of the Symbian OS
According to Weston, the Symbian OS provides tools, lower development costs,
a fast time to market, interoperability, and increased revenues. Developers are
eager to create applications for Symbian devices and have done so in masses thanks
to the support provided for most common programming languages including: VB .NET,
OPL, C++, Java, VB, Python, XML, and others.
Some of the numbers:
- Symbian OS apps are the most downloaded smart phone applications from leading
content provider Handango
- Symbian applications command a 32% price premium according to Handango
- There currently exist more than 3000 commercially available applications
- 500+ Symbian signed applications - 100+ are currently in the pipeline
- Productivity applications are the most widely sought after (i.e. MobiMate and
other PIM apps)
- Games command the lowest price
Series 60 and the road ahead
Much hoopla was made recently about the Nokia 7710 widescreen device. This unit
will enable users to experience widescreen mobile communication optimized for
full web browsing, video messaging, and streaming mobile entertainment (video).
With support for pen input this form factor should also be highly suitable to
enterprise applications, email, and personal information management. Based on
Series 90, we've been told that much of the functionality enabled by S90 will
be rolled into Series 60 (likely sometime in 2006). Factor in the idea that in
the very near future mobile devices will be shipping with a hard-disk as well
as support for MMC cards that will hold 2 GB of data... you now begin to see where
things are going.
Series 60 - the numbers
Series 60 had more than 50% share of world wide smart phone shipments by Q3 2004
Nokia has sold 15 million S60 phones (Oct 2004)
There are currently 7 S60 licensees shipping 18 devices sold by some 100 operators
The smart phone market is expected to double in 2004 compared to 2003
The future Series 60
- encompass a wide portfolio of devices including high-end and mid-range categories
- support for single and dual processing architectures
- widescreen 640x320 resolution display
- support for pen input
- enhanced platform security
According to executives from Nokia, Series 60 is going into the "categories that
matter". The mid-range (affordable) and high-range products which typically account
for much greater revenues - Note: in 2005, the high-end $400+ device will account
for 10% of market volume but 25% of market value.
Related weblinks
All images/graphics unless otherwise specified are credit Glenn Letham, SymbianOne
- reproduction or retransmission without permission is prohibited. |
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