Where's Symbian's 'One More Thing' CEO?

[Raven]

Originally Posted by martinharnevie

The 9500 and 7710 do not entirely fulfil this role for a couple of reasons. The cancelled 9700 (?) might have had. (Series 90 based on Series 60 is not good news from this perspective, one would have wished it's the other way around, but of course I haven't seen the end product so I shouldn't say.)

Series 90 isn't based on Series 60 though, it has more similarities with Series 80. But from now on there wont be any more Series 90 devices, as the UI is to be merged with Series 60 (http://www.series60.com/?action=show...ive=true&hot=1).

There is still a rumour floating around about a Communicator with a 640x320 pixels touchscreen based on this new Series 60 platform. Which might be named 9700 (there never was one officially that got cancelled). I doubt we'll see it anything this year though.

If we can't get Steve Jobs to buyout everything Psion and Symbian (I wrote about this a few years ago and still think it could have produced far advanced Psion products and the synch factor between Psion PDAs and Macintoshes could be blissful) then I vote for Steve Litchfield as chief evangelist.

Apple itself never would have made it without Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki leading the way as smoke and mirror evangelists when there was little product to back it up. I am waiting for Nokia 9300 to ship, not because I so much want a phone/PDA but because of the clamshell form factor and the (regretably now "dumbed-down" but still better than most anything else) Symbian/Psion OS.

We need a "Steve" of our own. Pay him well and get him on the road somehow.

J

[martinharnevie]

Originally Posted by Raven

Series 90 isn't based on Series 60 though, it has more similarities with Series 80. But from now on there wont be any more Series 90 devices, as the UI is to be merged with Series 60 (http://www.series60.com/?action=show...ive=true&hot=1).

I'm of course aware of that. I was referring to recent statements from Jorma & gang that Series 90 might be merged with Series 60 using the Series 60 code base rather than the Series 90/80 code base. This would mean Ckon influenced extensions to the Avkon library rather than moving Avkon stuff over to the Ckon library.

[Raven]

Well, it might not be such a bad thing if you consider application compatibility. It'll certainly be interesting to see the end product of the merger though, and if they will in fact continue with the communicator form factor or go with the usual tablet mode (a la 7710).

[martinharnevie]

Originally Posted by Raven

Well, it might not be such a bad thing if you consider application compatibility.

That's a good point. Difficult one overall. Ckon is more straightforward than Avkon - the underlying reason for instance why OPL is in full release on Ckon (and almost full release on Uikon) but not on Avkon - but on the other hand Avkon has more applications running (and certainly an order of magnitude more devices sold).

They needed Hans Snook, back when Levin took over from Colly Myers. I seem to remember the name being booted around at the time but it never came to anything....Snook would have been perfect, a CEO with a genuine industry track record, but also a figurehead/personality......someone who your average Sun reader could identify.......

Symbian has always appeared confused as to how it markets itself as a company,
admittedly within the constraints of its ownership structure its must be a political minefield to navigate, and one which has probably lost a few folks their jobs.

However in the recent past there has been no big picture vision to the company , the Smartphone show despite becoming increasingly slick in how its run as an event, was really very hollow in terms of the big message it put across this year. The key Symbian news seemed to be a few more phones are out there and we wrote a booklet with the carphone warehouse - both interesting, but hardly the drumbeat to rouse the industry.....