The latest Canalys figures reveal that Nokia shipped almost 5 million smartphones in Q4 2004. Symbian OS now accounts for 53% of the mobile device market (up from 50% last quarter) thanks to sales from Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Fujitsu, Motorola, Siemens, Sendo, Panasonic and Benq. The full year numbers can be see in this WSJ article.
Nokia have published their Q4 results (and summary for the year) and it includes some interesting numbers and a summary of what has happened. Nokia had 32% market share for the year, 34% for the last quarter and increased sales, although operating profit is down by around 200,000 Euros The Nokia 9500, and 7710 well received, and their key N-Gage titles are now available.
On first glance, Handango are everywhere in the software market for Symbian OS smartphones (they even help out with the AAS Store). Ewan managed to catch up with their Vice President of Marketing, Clint Patterson, to find out more about Handango, what they do well, and where they think they could improve. Read the interview...
Cory Doctorow talks to The Feature on his views of the DRM debate going out right now. The short answer is that protection for old business models because a new one has arrived have never worked, and digital media (especially on handsets) is no different. Worth a read alongside our previous interview with Cory.
This month we want a chain reaction of Bicycle photos (taken on a Symbian Phone). Please upload your photos to the Photo Contest 20 page. Vote will start on 6th February 2005 to pick a winner. Winners Photo is displayed on Main Gallery page and can select next category.
PalmSource has Hot Sync and Palm Desktop. Microsoft has Active Sync and Microsoft Outlook. Symbian has… a reputation for not being reliable with your data when synchronising. Yes, moving data around from your PC to your PDA/Smartphone is one of those areas where Symbian has a major problem. It may be a connected and online device, but does anyone truly trust a Symbian device to sync to his or her PC in the same way that the other major Operating Systems do? Ewan takes a closer look.
Then Steve Litchfield wants to talk to you. He's offering to stand in a room, with three Symbian devices in 'discoverable' mode. If you can infect his phones without his knowledge, then " ...I'll hand over an obscene amount of money." More details, along with four key facts on Symbian 'Viruses' can be found here.
Another week another virus to scare the living SIM card out of your phone. Gavno pretends to be a patch file for a Symbian process... but obviously not coming directly from the Nokia Series 60 website, you'd be suspicious and not install it, wouldn't you. Thanks for the heads-up, Tarek.
Of interest to 9500 owners and those considering the new Communicator, 3-Lib now has a page listing known 9500 bugs, another describing how to create a free encrypted document store and one proclaiming the Nokia 9500 to be their sole A-list winner.
iAnywhere, owners of AvantGo (the offline, web style syncing news and article service),have launched an updated version of the service. Available for Palm OS 5, Pocket PC (2000, 2002, 2003), Symbian UIQ and Symbian OS v.6.1 Series 60, you can find more details in their press release.
Yesterday's MacWorld Keynote from Steve Jobs (I mean, a 512mb MP3 Player and an ITX Mini Clone... where's the iNewton?) has got me thinking - why do Apple have such presence, even with non-Mac fans? Is this something Symbian are missing out? Read on...
It's now time for you to pick your favourite photos from the 4 displayed * here *. This poll will close on 23rd January 2005 & Good Luck to all taking part.
A spokesman at Sophos, the largest anti-virus company in the world, was quoted yesterday: "Some of the anti-virus vendors have been very busy hyping up the Symbian virus threat. The simple fact is that Sophos has never received a single report from any customer hit by one of these things - it seems they're mostly spreading by anti-virus researchers sending them to each other."
Handset manufacturers will pay $1 per device that has the OMA DRM standard installed on the handset (which is pretty much every single Symbian handset) and when you purchase any locked-down music, video or media files from your operatoir, they'll pass over a percentage to the OMA (reports The Register). The Register have explained the OMA DRM in depth previously - refresh your memory.
