Fujitsu has been appointed to the board of directors of the Symbian Foundation. As a result, Fujitsu will, as an OEM Board Member, contribute to the funding of the Symbian Foundation and take an active role in all four Symbian Foundation councils (features and roadmap, architecture, user interface and release). Fujitsu have more than 8 years of Symbian experience and have released more than 20 Symbian handsets, second only to Nokia, including the first videophone.
Qualcomm Innovation Center (QuIC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm, has joined the Symbian Foundation and been appointed to the Symbian Foundation board of directors. By joining the board of directors, QuIC will be taking an active role in the governance of the Symbian Foundation and will likely join a number of the Symbian Foundation councils. The announcement represents a very significant endorsement of the Symbian Foundation by a key player in the mobile space.
Taking to the stage in an open necked shirt and faded blue jeans, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, opened this year's Symbian focussed show, the Symbian Exchange and Exposition. With a nod to British sensibilities, he did throw on a casual sports jacket, but Williams was in an animated mood.
Nokia today launched the Nokia 6788 - a TD-SCDMA Symbian phone. TD-SCDMA is a China-specific version of 3G, which is used by China Mobile. The Nokia 6788, which runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, has a vertical slider form factor, a 5 megapixel camera, and 2.8 inch QVGA screen. The phone is expected to become available at the end of December 2009.
Nokia today announced that it is suing Apple over patent infringements. Nokia says that Apple's iPhone models infringe on Nokia patents relating to GSM, UTMS and WLAN standards. Nokia has one the industry's strongest and broadest patent portfolios (10,000 patent families). The patents in question are considered essential to industry standards and as such are licensed on the principle 'fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms'. However it appears that Apple has chosen not to license the patents.
Yesterday the Symbian Foundation announced the release of the EKA2, together with supporting development kit, under the Eclipse Public License (EPL). This marks a major stepping stone is the process to opensource the entire Symbian platform, which the Symbian Foundation is currently undertaking. The microkernel is the heart of the operating system and comprises of a 'robust, fully multi-tasking architecture', which 'manages all system resources and frameworks necessary for the co-existence of the processes and applications that make up the complete system'.
Spotify, the music consumption service, has made another move into the mobile space. Following on from their iPhone app (and tantalising hint they are working on a Symbian version) their next move outflanks Nokia and their plans for music yet again. The launch of a monthly tariff and handset (HTC Hero), which has Spotify bundled, is going to be attractive to music lovers – not because it's better than Nokia's Comes With Music, but because it is more loved online, so the passionate users will do the evangelising.
In All About Symbian Insight 91 (AAS Podcast 153), Steve expands on his N97 camera and GPS experience from last weeks podcast. Rafe and Steve then discuss Nokia's Q3 2009 result in details, before Steve asks Rafe about his initial N900 versus N97 impressions. Our final topic is Steve's experience with Ovi Suite 2.0. You can listen to AAS Insight 91 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Nokia has released their Q3 2009 results, reporting an operating loss of EUR 426 million, but this was primarily due to a write down in the value of Nokia Siemens Network. Nokia's device and service division's profits were EUR 785 million, up 3% from the previous quarter, but down 50% year on year. Converged devices sales (smartphone) were down slightly (though up year-on-year) at 16.4 million, compared with 15.5 million units in Q3 2008 and 16.9 million units in Q2 2009. As such, converged device volumes were, perhaps, lower than expected.
The annual Symbian show kicks-off in just under two weeks. This year’s event promises to be busier than ever, with more demands on the time of attendees. To help you figure out your priorities, I will be highlighting a few key exhibitors and speakers over the next few days. Today, Accenture.
There's a saying that gamblers will trust everybody, but they still cut the cards. No matter what the other side says, you should never rely on them. As the mobile world is moving towards a “cloud computing” solution for storage and access, the problems of Microsoft and the Danger/Sidekick product are a salient warning to back up your data or risk it being lost forever through no fault of your own.
It's been some time now since launch, so how well is the Ovi Store doing for Nokia? Is it providing enough applications for end users and a good user experience? Are developers knocking down the web-doors to get listed in the store? Or is it all being hushed up because it's not gaining any mind share at all? I wonder aloud what's going on...
In All About Symbian Insight 89 (AAS Podcast 151), Rafe and Steve talk about the recent release of version 20 firmware for the Nokia N86 8MP. Rafe and Ewan report back from Over the Air (OTA) where they listened to presentations on Symbian approach to evolving UI and Nokia's Qt strategy. There's also discussion about Nokia's acquisition of Dopplr. You can listen to AAS Insight 89 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Juniper Research, a telecoms analyst firm, recently released a report on Mobile Open Source Operating Systems, which predicts open source platforms will remain predominant and that, by 2014, Symbian handset shipments will increase from 87 million to 180 million per year, with Android and Limo adding 40m/year extra and taking the open source total to 220 million/year. Such analyst reports are educated guesses, but it does provide an antithesis to the 'Symbian is doomed' line that was popular, in some quarters, earlier this summer and a good jumping off place for some further platform thoughts. Read on for more.
Rafe and I attended the Over the Air mobile developer conference this past weekend (expect to hear more about this on the next Insight Podcast) and a number of the presentation made are now online. Scott Weiss of the Symbian Foundation talked about "Open Source and the User Experience" which can now be found here.
