Today Series 60, tomorrow the World

[slitchfield]

In which Steve Litchfield enthuses on ultimate integration, in which he finally gets the point of Series 60 and in which the world finally becomes a happier and safer place. Read it here.

[bertq60]

Shameless plug for the Joe Average that read Steve's collumn...

OggPlay is a Open Source Music Player for Series 60. It plays .ogg files (which have smaller size than mp3 at same quality). On some phones it also plays mp3, aac and mp4. It is skinnable and easy to use.

Have a look there : http://symbianoggplay.sourceforge.net/

PS. Soon to come, support for SendoX, WinAmp playlists and Series 80.

[Rafe]

And that why it comes down to numbers in the end. The smartphone market is not the PDA market.

Features, software etc. will only take you so far, indeed put too much in and you risk alienating the average user, but put little in in at its not good enough. Simplicity with complexity perhaps?

The smartphone is a very different market to the PDA and I think that is what Symbian and its licensees have realised. But then again no one has really nailed it yet.

[Jj03]

rafe, your right...the smartphone market is entirely different to the pda market...i maange a triple a carphone warehouse store, and generally we sell alot more smartphones than pda's...yes, they are alot less complicated than the average pda..and thats a good thing...when demo'ing a smartphone, i usually get asked...what else can i do with it...i explain what is possible with certain devices, and ease of use...be it a sendo or a nokia...alot of people aren't even aware of these handsets are capable of, and i think thats the thing that needs to be put out there...as well as price point and ease of use...ive had the entire range of nokia smartphones, right up to my current 6630...and they have all been easy to use...putting this across to the customer is never that easy, but i believe in the next 3 or four years things will change...prices points are a reacurring topic, but, with smartphone prices, especially sim free, being not alot higher than the average handset, i think things are spot on..price wise...we get alot of buisness users who come in for upgrades who want a bit of everything in their handsets, and im able to offer smartphones as that ideal device that isn't to complicated, yet reasonably easy to use...and 9 time outa 10 they leave with my recommendation...but...and this is where carphone and almost every retailer gets it wrong...smartphones in general, arent advertised as such...hell, even the staff who work at these stores, generally don't even know what a smartphone is...things need to change, and alot more product awareness advertising needs to be done.....