More stats in: Symbian sales way up, share slightly down

Highly encouraging, expected and welcomed by those of us who actually *understand* Symbian and the smartphone market, and a slap in the face for those who seem to think Symbian is any way on the way out (the reverse being true). And remember, this sales growth is in the context of S60 5th edition allegedly being uncompetitive and the N97 etc being some kind of major doom for Nokia. What a joke!

Samsung BADA is NOT a smartphone

Bada is a smartphone OS, as it allows the development of native applications and provides comprehensive support for all of the standard smartphone use-cases.

It's a mimetic smartphone os

Yes - but it remains to be seen whether that's a barrier to consumer uptake. My bet is that Samsung will simply swap out Bada for it's 'dumbphone' OS. In case you haven't noticed, Samsung dumbphones sell VERY well.

I think it would be interesting if the average unit price was also shown alongside each OS.

I would expect Symbian sales to be up given the emphasis on the low/mid market handsets Nokia has been releasing over the past 9 months.

Figures that show share by volume tell one story, figures that show share by value tell quite another.

Really curious: what is included in "Linux", and specifically, is Maemo included and how big a share of it would Maemo possibly be? Or is Maemo still in "other"?

I agree with the above statement, these stats tell very little of the story behind market share and growth.

The avg unit price sales and a further analysis or breakdown of what phones are being sold would help to shed better light on how these different platforms are doing.

Symbian phones are shipped in all different form factors and I don't think it's fair to compare people for example buying Iphone OS and Android OS to people whom buy regular candy bar, slider phones, flip phones, etc.

Knowing average selling price would be helpful. Symbian seems to be fueling its growth mostly by replacing S40 on low-end phones. Saying Symbian is #1 is a bit like Motorola crowing that the PowerPC outsold the x86 line in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While it was true, it was mostly because of low-margin embedded chip sales.

I guess it depends on whether you're interested in sheer numbers sold (I am, for example, I'm interested in numbers of people owning devices for each platform, so that I know how many potential readers I've got) or profit made (investors and analysts like these figures better).

Steve, would you know the answer to my question?

Numbers are also likely more relevant for developers of apps and the rest of the ecosystem. My guess is that Symbian will come back in that regard with some force.

> Symbian phones are shipped in all different form factors and I don't think it's fair to compare people for example buying Iphone OS and Android OS to people whom buy regular candy bar, slider phones, flip phones, etc.

What!? What utter nonsense. Seriously, I can't believe the lengths some iPhone and Android apologists will go to in a desperate attempt to make their VERY minority platforms look more important than they actually are. What on earth difference does case size or shape make? Because that's what we're talking about.

To be clear: ALL Symbian smartphones are competing with ALL iPhones and ALL Android phones. Not just ones with only touch screens, or measuring X inches by Y inches, or released in the last X months, or bought on days of the week including the letter 'u' where no rain was forecast. Etc. ;-)

ANYTHING running Symbian is a smartphone, and is competing with an iPhone/Android. So yep, a £79 5230 is competing with a multi-hundred pound iPhone. You can't say otherwise because no one knows the decision making process each buyer goes through. It is NOT the case that people considering an iPhone would only consider rivals costing the same amount or with exactly the same features. A 5230 (or any other 'low end' (but strangely more capable in many ways) Nokia handset) could easily be bought by someone instead of an iPhone if it offered what they want. And I know people that have made that decision because cheaper Nokias were better for many things than pricey Androids/iPhones - camera being one, free sat nav (proper sat nav, not the failed attempt that is Google Nav) being another.

Also, Samsung's BADA is def. a smartphone. A smartphone is ANY phone that can install 3rd party apps that address the native OS.

BADA os is a sort of Touch Wizz (3 whatever). It is not a smartphone os

You are right, nobody knows the decision process one goes through to buy a phone, but I'm going to take a wild guess here that someone who doesn't like touch screen phones would probably never consider an Iphone or Android. Similarly someone who's only willing to pay 79 pounds would not consider a phone that would cost 200 pounds. Therefore, form factor and price matters. If this was such nonsense, than I urge you to please email Nokia to stop making an N-series phones, E-series phones, Express Music phone, C5, etc....they can just have 1 super smartphone to compete with all smartphones out there at a great price.

That's a pretty tenuous series of connections you make. It could almost be called utter nonsense. In fact I'd say absolute bollocks.

To use a metaphor, that going out to buy a Ferrari and coming back with Ford. Yes it could happen. But face it, the chances are damn low.

So no one knows/has any hunch on what the Linux category contains?

The relative price of phones is irrelevant. A smartphone is a smartphone regardless of whether is costs 1 cent or a million cents. Those low priced phones that Nokia are selling have GPS with sat nav, WiFi, play music, browse the internet, send and recieve email, post to facebook, multi-task and allow people to develop apps in a number of different ways (python, java, native etc). Yet Nokia can sell them for a low price. That's the power of Nokia that is reflected in their market share. The fact that most of the phones they sell at the moment cost less than the competition is their strength.

It would be interesting to see what Apple's market share would be like for phones that can multi-task.

Bada is a smartphone platform: http://www.bada.com/whatisbada/

My hunch is that it contains phones that run linux.

Yeah yeah whatever..you apologists (of Androids & Iphone variants) 'Symbian is doomed' argument thats been going on for two years have now changed to 'average selling price' argument. So is Symbian still doomed or not? These numbers are achieved without having anything to compete at the high end segment. That will come soon, and that too, still, at a cheaper price. The N8 is going to sell bucket loads, period! You sorry geeks arguing about about snapdragons are not in touch with the reality out there among the average smartphone users. And there'll be more to come after the N8 as well. If they can outsell everyone else combined with some 'crap' hardware, imagine what they'd do with the N8. Go on dreaming your wet dreams apologists!

Have you even reached puberty yet? Or suffer with a psychiatric condition and are off your meds?

Judging by your personal comments and ranting with expressions like "bollocks" you are saying more about yourself than anyone else.

Try some relaxation techniques.

No one is doubting Nokia's ability to sell massive numbers of phones. What's relevant to me as a user is not whether developers are writing the applications for it that I want. Steve was crowing about Opentable. It's been available for months on iPhone and Android. Will Kindle ever come to Symbian? What about other more complex applications?

ASP is indeed relevant. It means that the OS is not what is attracting people to the phones.
There really is no such thing as a "dumbphone" anymore. Symbian is Nokia's replacement for S40. As such, it will continue to have significant market share, but may still be "doomed" as a high end development platform. Consider that both iPhone OS and Android are now used or contemplated for tablets. That's a testament to their flexibility. Is anyone even talking about using Symbian for a tablet or any other non-phone device?

Symbian^3 looks decent, but about 2 years too late. For all their hot air about how important the US is to them, Nokia's market share in the US continues to plummet. Now their worldwide market share is starting to fall, despite Nokia pushing Symbian to cheaper and cheaper devices. So, yes, that is a sign that it could well be "doomed" to relegation to giveaway phones, just as PowerPC was relegated to ATMs, car electronics, and similar embedded applications.

The ASP is critically important. Nokia is in business to make money. If they could sell phones for $500-600 (before subsidies) they would. It seems people just aren't willing to pay that kind of money for a Symbian phone.

Also, just because developers can develop apps doesn't mean that they will. So far, they really aren't writing much for Symbian. With all the compatibility breaks, and the limited demand, why should they?

Really?

How many N95s were sold to people who never even used the smartphone capabilities? Symbian may be competing with iPhone and Android, but that doesn't mean the latter two are competing with Symbian.

Someone looking at a cheap phone "just for calling and text" who can get one with free GPS for the same price will likely go for the one with the free GPS. That person may not have even been considering an Android or iPhone.

Symbian has extensive reach (it extends into the higher-volume, lower-priced segments of the market). That gives it staying power, but doesn't mean that it remains relevant to the kind of people who follow tech blogs.

The N8 looks like what the N97 should have been. Whether it is enough to make Nokia relevant at the high end remains to be seen. For the last 3 years, Nokia has been a follower rather than a leader. The N8 screams "iPhone killer" at the top of its lungs, meaning that Apple was right and correctly predicted the future of mobile devices back in 2007. Does anyone here seriously think that the N8 would have ever been released or even developed had the iPhone series not blazed the trail?

Thanks Grunter, I will meditate on your sage words. Understood that in this day and age the words 'absolute 'bollocks'' are indeed a sign of ranting. If you can lend me you coffee table book of pap psychology I will be eternally grateful. :tongue: