Nokia has commissioned a survey by Nielsen Entertainment which interviewed 1800 users of mobile phone games from China, Germany, India, Spain, Thailand and the United States. The results are available in a press release and suggest that people will enjoy using Nokia's Next Generation gaming platform which is due for launch in the first half of 2007. Perhaps the most interesting is the average gaming session length: 28 minutes, which is far longer than is usually thought the case on phone games, and implies that the average phone gamer plays with as much dedication as they would on a portable console.
You may know John Holloway as the guy behind ZingMagic (and before that Purple Software), but he actually goes back to the very beginning of the Symbian story, working at Psion. Ewan caught up with him at the Smartphone Show and covered a huge range of issues and anecdotes. Great stuff, catch it all in AAS podcast number 3.
The huge photo-sharing site Flickr is now properly mobile again. http://m.flickr.com/ now works from any smartphone, letting you browse photo streams without incurring huge bandwidth penalties. Well worth bookmarking from your smartphone browser. (Via SymbianOne)
OK, I said I was going to shut up about over-hyped security software, and judging from comments by one security developer on-camera at the Smartphone Show, it seemed that they'd learned their lesson. But here we go again... and again....
Nokia is going to be one of the main sponsors of GDC Mobile, the phone game part of the Game Developers Conference. GDC and GDC Mobile take place in San Francisco from the 5th to the 7th of March 2007. Nokia's Next Generation gaming platform is due to launch across a range of S60 3rd Edition smartphones some time in the first half of 2007, so a March sponsorship of a major gaming event would seem to be well-timed.
Symbian has released an official (video) webcast, in both RealPlayer and Windows Media format, with CEO Nigel Clifford talking about the significant '100 million smartphones' milestone. Here's the link.
Eagle-eyed observers may have noted the changed toolbar on the site, with 'Media' added. The new Media section houses regular and semi-regular audio and video content, all of which you can listen to or watch online, in your browser, or (if you prefer) use the provided RSS feeds to subscribe in iTunes or S60 Podcasting or similar, to make sure you never miss new content.
3, the 3G mobile operator, has announced the launch of X-Series. X-Series brings 'flat fee broadband access to mobile'. 3 is partnering with other companies to create X-Series services and applications, these include Sling Player, Google, Orb, eBay, Skype, MSN and Yahoo. X-Series will launch in the UK in December with other 3 countries to follow in the new year. The handsets that will feature X-Series include the Sony Ericsson W950 (UIQ 3) and the Nokia N73 (S60).
Symbian today announced, in their Q3 figures, that more than 100 million Symbian OS phones have shipped. There are over 100 different Symbian OS phones in the market from 10 different licensees and a further 49 are currently in development. In Q3 13 million Symbian phones were shipped, brining the total thus far to 37 million in 2006. Read on for more.
Sony Ericsson is to purchase UIQ Technology from Symbian. UIQ Technology is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Symbian. UIQ Technology will continue to operate under its current management as a seperate business subsidiary of Sony Ericsson. This reverses the purchase on the Ericsson Mobile Application lab by Symbian in 1999. More on this throughout the day. For now, the full press release follows.
