Remembering Michael Mace's excellent generic positioning (in the handheld industry) diagram from last year, I wondered where the current and upcoming crop of Symbian OS-powered hardware might sit in his Entertainment/Communications/Information chart. Comments are welcome as always.
If you've gotten a bit jaded with all the new handsets and press releases, take a stroll back through the last four days of mobile mayhem with Symbian's official 3GSM blog, a.k.a. William and Freddie finding off the wall pictures and stories which didn't make the main news sites.
Nokia has apologised officially for the three day delay(!) in availablility of its rather splendid Smart2Go software system, citing higher than expected interest requiring adding extra capacity to its servers. Over 30,000 people have downloaded Smart2Go for S60 3rd Edition or WinMob 5.0 in its first two days. Other versions are planned. Full press release below.
Bewitched by the new Nokia N77? A fabulous use of ultra converged high-tech? Or a restrictive, distracting and debilitating waste of time? In this editorial, I put forward my own opinion, m'lud, the case against mobile TV.
Nokia's free Smart2Go maps and routing service for S60 and Windows Mobile smartphones has finally gone live, only 3 days late and it would be churlish to complain too much. There will be a review along fairly shortly, I'd expect, once any of the AAS team get a chance to draw breath...
SanDisk, the most respected manufacturer or add-on flash memory for smartphones and handhelds, has just announced the first 4GB microSD card (staggering, if you've seen the size of microSD media) and has also announced the first multi-adapter SD kit, the likes of which we'll be seeing more and more of in shops. Details below.
Symbian's press briefing in Barcelona featured the latest round of financial numbers. The headline numbers they want you all to know is that last year there were 51.7m Symbian OS powered phones shipped; a grand total of 110 million devices since Symbian was formed; and 6896 third party applications available (all numbers as of Dec 31 2006). I always find it interesting that Symbian, as a private company, does not have to release these numbers, but they continue to do so. As CEO Nigel Clifford said at the Smartphones Show, it keeps everyone on their toes. And it also helps to remind everyone that Symbian isn't just another commodity on the 'parts required' list in Finland.
The ease of mobile data could be the big talking point from Barcelona, so the announcement of Opera 9 Mobile is very timely. Promising widgets, multiple views of web pages (full screen, smart rendering, or intelligent zoom on a selected area), Java and Ajax support, the Norwegian company will be hoping that their browser is considered by all the major manufacturers. No release date has been given.
If you want to follow the Nokia launches this morning live, here's the web address to visit at around 9.50am GMT. We'll be putting up news and analysis during the morning, of course.
What a busy time (but perhaps an appropriate one) to divulge a mass of stats from the smartphone world. Canalys' latest report shows that 64 million smartphones shipped worldwide in 2006. Symbian's world market share was up to 67%, of which Nokia accounted for 50% and Sony Ericsson 5%.
And with energy levels rising round the blogosphere we come to 3GSM 2007 at last. So many things we've not been allowed to talk about but which will be announced at 10am GMT on Monday... Watch this space for analysis, photos from the launch events and more... Rafe's in the thick of things in Barcelona - wish him good health and plenty of bandwidth!
Remembering Michael Mace's excellent generic positioning (in the handheld industry) diagram from last year, I wondered where the current and upcoming crop of Symbian OS-powered hardware might sit in his Entertainment/Communications/Information chart. Comments are welcome as always.
