Quoting Geek.com quoting PMN (refering to Nokia 3510i)

"Hopefully for Symbian, the entry-level phone will also include a Symbian OS, as PMN News reports that the company needs 15-20 million licensed users to break even!"

15+ million to break even. Sound like huge target.

What do you think, is this viable, realistic, just a FUD statement ?

Assuming £5-10 per user thats around £100 million earnings before profit.

How many phones are sold each year anyhow ?

Zuber

I'm cautiously optimistic of Symbian achieving this target, but it'll only happen when Symbian phones are seen as being as obtainable as the current 83xx range.

The 7650 is a step in this direction, and the 3650 is a step further. SonyEricsson are yet to make any steps here, but with Matsushita and Samsung on board, Symbian could achieve this.

But although these phones will be Symbian, I don't expect them to be marketed as such. Can you see the name "Symbian" on a Nokia 9210 or 7650? The man in the street won't care about whether or not it is Symbian, and that's probably good or else he may expect compatibility between Nokia, SonyEricsson, Philips, Siemens and Samsung phones - something which is not yet likely.

Anyway, I think that Java is going to be the driving force for the consumer market (Java games), and the platform will be irrelevent (though I really don't want to see Microsoft hog the market with it's .NET crap).