Here's something to read over your morning coffee. Symbian tech supremo David Wood gave the opening address at the Mobile 2.0 event in San Francisco last week, in which he pondered the role of smartphones in 2013, looked at the complexities of modern phone OS and (not unnaturally) referred to Symbian's role in how the future will pan out. It's a lengthy but good read and it's now online in full on David's blog.
In All About Symbian Podcast 100 (Insight #47) we talk about recent device shipment and market share numbers from Canalys. Ewan has a bee in his bonnet with regards to N-Gage, Steve chimes in with his dislike of poorly implemented DRM, but Rafe thinks things might not be as bad as Ewan suggests.
With Sony Ericsson's and Motorola's decision to stop using the UIQ platform in future products the long term future of UIQ Technology, the company behind the platform, was thrown into doubt. As things currently stand the long term future of the company is not secure. As a result, yesterday, its remaining 270 employees were put on notice of dismissal. However Sony Ericsson has agreed to continue funding the company on a by month by month basis in order to allow the company to investigate options for the future.
Canalys latest stats are in and their commentary makes for interesting reading. Notable highlights are that the whole market rose 28%, year on year, not surprisingly, with smartphones now comprising 13% of the entire phone market. Nokia (No. 1 still) looks like it's got a fight on its hands generally though, with Apple being the big overall winner, up from 4% to 17%, thanks to the initial surge when the iPhone 3G was launched, while Nokia has slipped from 51% to 39%. Canalys believe Nokia will rally with the 5800 and N96 for Q4 though, and that RIM will rally back into the no. 2 spot with their Storm.
In All About Symbian Podcast 99 (Insight #46) we talk about the N96 which has received mixed reviews from initial users. In the second half the podcast Ewan provides his first impressions of One, the latest N-Gage game, before we move on to discussing manufacturer commitment to the Symbian Foundation and what the future may hold for UIQ.
Yesterday, in a third quarter earnings call, Motorola's CEO, Sanjay Jha, said that they would be streamlining their OS strategy to concentrate on three platforms: P2K (low end and feature phones), Android (consumer smartphones) and Windows Mobile (business phones). Motorola will no longer use its own LinuxJava (MOTOMAGX) or the Symbian UIQ platform. It also appears that several UIQ phones that are currently in development, which would have hit the market next year, will be abandoned. Read on for more.
The presentation that was held by UIQ Technology at the Symbian Smartphone Show 2008 in London is now available for download. It contains some interesting facts about UIQ Touch (err... I thought UIQ supported touch since day one?). Also some cool design concepts which will probably hardly see the light of day. Anyway, the Powerpoint file is available for download from UIQ.Com.
During the Symbian Smartphone Show last week we spent some of our time uploading images from the show floor. Here's the resulting Symbian Smartphone Show 2008 gallery along with a few additions and some extra commentary. Read on for a few highlights from day two of the show that you may have missed first time round.
In All About Symbian Podcast 98 (Insight #45) we are back from last weeks Symbian Smartphone Show at Earl's Court. There some discussion on the feel and size of the show, Symbian Foundation related announcements, and the start of our run through of some of the devices and demos we saw.
