One of the problems with predictions is that, unless you are plain lucky, whatever you say can come back to haunt you. Symbian's Q4 results did that for me at day 2 at WMC.
My prediction of Symbian reaching 200 million devices by the end of 2007 proved to be a little optimistic. However, cumulative shipments have now reached 188 million, with some 77 million devices shipped in 2007. This equates to a staggering 1 device every 3 seconds, which a little simple maths suggests means the 200 million mark has probably been passed by now.
Picking out the highlights from day 2 – or at least my day 2 – is ultimately unfair to some great Symbian based technology I saw yesterday, but a pick has to be made.
Location based services are undoubtedly one of the significant growth areas in mobile. A significant portion of Symbian devices now contain a GPS and that portion is only likely to grow. From a developers perspective LBS creates a huge potential development hurdle, rendering maps is not a trivial exercise.
With this in mind Carmenta, a Swedish company that until recently specialized in GIS applications for the military, has released an SDK to enable map rendering on both S60 and UIQ. The video below offers a demonstration of the capabilities of the SDK. The visualization is quite stunning and makes Nokia's current Maps application look altogether pedestrian. From a developers perspective Carmenta can offer a turnkey mapping component solution; supplying mapping data (as a reseller of the well know map data suppliers), offering hosted services for off-board mapping application in addition to the SDK. The mapping formats supported by the SDK includes maritime and topographical maps, not just the standard road and landmark map data seen in the majority of mobile mapping applications. This opens up a huge range of possibilities for hitherto unexplored LBS and mapping applications on Symbian OS.
Unfortunately I got so absorbed in the show and looking at some really great Symbian based technologies that the promise of offering more photos and videos on onsymbian.com and my Y ouTube channel proved to be somewhat hollow. Sorry about that. Day 3 promises to be no less hectic, so don't expect too much by way of updates.
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One of the problems with predictions is that, unless you are plain lucky, whatever you say can come back to haunt you. Symbian's Q4 results did that for me at day 2 at WMC.
