All About Symbian - Symbian, Nokia and S60 unwrapped.
Why do Symbian developers take the Fifth?
Published by Ewan Spence at 12:35 UTC, July 20th 2010
One of the interesting points made in this week's Insight Podcast was the large number of applications (primarily in the Ovi Store) that are only targeted at S60 5th Editon devices, leaving behind a large number of 3rd Edition owners. There are also a number of notable incidents where applications or games are even more restricted, to certain handsets. Read on for some thoughts...
There are a number of valid reasons for this decision, and it's not as clear cut as a developer ignoring part of the market.
The first and probably largest issue is money. When you follow the money, when you see who is buying applications and rewarding the developers, the majority of income is coming in from the 5th Edition devices (in Western Europe, at least). What is the breakdown when you have applications available for the two current Symbian platforms (and throw in Series 40 as well)?
The split is, collating info from a number of sources, roughly 90 / 9 / 1.
I.e. 90 percent of the app sales are going to S60 5th Edition devices, primarily the Nokia N97 range, the 5800 and the 5230. Next up, but with a tenfold drop, are the S60 3rd Edition devices, mostly in the Eseries range, with a small balance of Series 40 devices rounding out the numbers.
Where the Developer lives.
This shouldn't be a surprise, as the Eseries and 3rd Edition devices are mostly in the business sphere and only a handful of enterprise apps are needed to fill in some functionality, depending on circumstances. The Ovi Store is not being pushed as heavily on these devices.
It's the most recent phones that people are buying apps and personalisation for, so it's surely right to focus as much development effort there as possible. When third party development is already a bit of a gamble in terms of the return you can make (no matter the platform), spending time on the relatively small sliver of the market that will provide only a tenth of the revenue is a decision that few will make.
In addition, outside of some of the larger gaming houses, third party applications are worked on by boutique software groups and “hero” coders working in one or two man teams. These people are likely to be coding for their own devices, to add in a service that they love and want to have on their smartphone. If they're using the latest phones (and most smartphone geeks are going to be early adopters) they are naturally going to code for those devices. And every decent developer knows that you don't want to release anything until you have tested it on the actual hardware it is designed to run on. If you don't you are asking for trouble.
Those are the practical reasons why less development effort is aimed at the S60 3rd Edition platform. Alongside the developer choice, there is also the nature of modern smartphones and the perception of devices. With a big touchscreen being a feature on many high end (and perceived high end) devices, is the current impression on the High Street that this is a lead into third party applications and an app store economy? It's obviously true for Android and Apple, but I think that it's true for Symbian as well.
Gone, but not forgotten.
Everybody moves on – for example there are very few developers coding for the E90 communicators now, even though I suspect there are tens of thousands of E90's still in day to day use. With very few developers compared to users, once they move on, that's pretty much it for third party apps on a platform. Even though the users might be there, the market is mature – competent applications fill most of the gaps in the market, the developers have moved to new personal devices and there are few titles that can provide a solid return on investment.
That doesn't mean that a platform is dead – S60 3rd Edition is going to be around for a year or two more at least, but it is more like middle age. All the growing is done, whatever apps that are needed have been made, and short of the occasional Indian Summer application that arrives, there won't be any more applications from developers. Bug fixes and updates to keep apps running on later 3rd Edition devices for sure, but there comes a time to accept that you won't see anything new on your smartphone.
3rd Edition is now approaching that moment, and much as we'd like to see it continue to grow, we've probably seen every innovation we're going to see, at least in terms of third party apps.
-- Ewan Spence, July 2010.
News Discussion
I'm admittedly not a developer and if the revenue breakdown really is as you've reported then you can see the justification for what I would have otherwise called laziness.
And (according to the Wall Street Journal) with a likely new Nokia CEO within a few weeks, maybe even an American, coming in, who knows what the future holds for Espoo.
Many of the 'serious' apps do come out for S60 3rd Edition (e.g. Skype). What we're not seeing is the more frivolous apps and games. Put another way it is the different between productivity / function adding content and consumable content (games, small 'fun' apps etc.).
I would add that its mainly S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 devices that get supported - and I think a lot of this is down to the Nokia E72, which remains a very popular handset.
There so many devices with S60 3rd edition on the market that it is in fact strange that there are so many applications/games on the Ovi support that support only the latest devices. But don't worry, not all companies ignore users of very popular 3rd edition S60 OS. In our company, Trismer Technologies, we know how important this market is. Our latest app, SyncLion supports not only the latest devices, but also huge number of devices from the 3rd edition series, even the very old ones.
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Originally Posted by Jimmy1
A bit off topic but I have to say though, that if Nokia bundled in a Kinoma Play license for at least North American versions of the N8, I'd take a serious look at it, only because relevant content offerings for us here in the States from Nokia/Ovi are slim to none. It's why I was sold on the E71 even though it didn't offer a large touch screen.
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Originally Posted by andynugent
So the thing that'd get you to buy a $500 phone is a $30 piece of software? Why don't you just pretend the phone costs $530 and buy the app yourself?
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I didn't mean to derail the topic, BTW, sorry Rafe/Ewan.
Another critical thing for me now is an ereader with a modern, up to date ebook marketplace, along with e-magazines. Basically, I would need a Kindle app for Symbian.
The thing is, it requires a total redesign of many game concepts to make it work on both touch AND non-touch. Some genres are impossible to do with only a D-pad for example (of course, the opposite is also true..) and that combined with the sales ratio - it not really worth the effort for the majority of the games.
S60 5th and it's Symbian^3 and ^4 and Meego successors are what will drive the gaming/entertainment segment for Nokia, absolutely no doubt about it.
I'd also like some more info on where you get this from.
Jan Ole recently tweeted the top 5 phones by Gravity sales:
Nokia E71, N97, 5800, E72 and N95 8GB.
Three of those are 3rd edition, only two are fifth edition.
The latest Ovi stats for Mobbler I have show the top 5 phones by free downloads:
23.8% - 5th - Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
14.7% - 3rd - Nokia N80 Internet Edition
13.2% - 5th - Nokia N97
07.3% - 5th - Nokia 5530 XpressMusic
07.1% - 3rd - Nokia E71
These top five account for 66% of downloads, 44% for 5th and 22% for 3rd, a 2 / 1 split.
Andy, can you share any interesting figures from your Ovi downloads?
Still using a N86 BTW.
The games and entertainment things sell a LOT more on 5th Edition than on 3rd for us.
However I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers where reversed when it comes to productivity apps.
When you think about it seems logical. Users who prioritize a, say QWERTY keypad over a big touch-screen, tends to go for the serious stuff, and a person who wants the big touch screen propably wants to be entertained. Of course not all can put in such strict terms, but the tendency is there.
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Originally Posted by kin869
Well, if the majority of the apps on Ovi are for 5th Edition, then logically they'll have more sales for them. I personally find it hard to believe there's such a big gap between 3rd and 5th Edition users.
Still using a N86 BTW. |
Not a great propesct for those who aren't touchscreen fans?
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
N86 is a great phone, yet it doesn't get a lot of support. Where's the Facebook app for N86???
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But anyways, I do see your point. The N86 has a bug where the camera app doesn't fully close after you exit (therefore draining the battery) that still haven't been fixed for the past few firmwares.
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Originally Posted by kin869
But anyways, I do see your point. The N86 has a bug where the camera app doesn't fully close after you exit (therefore draining the battery) that still haven't been fixed for the past few firmwares.
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http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/...te_End_of_.php
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Don't expect that bug to be fixed anytime soon as according to Steve the N86 will no longer be receiving any new firmware updates according to his latest article. You can find the info halfway down the page:
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/...te_End_of_.php |
Changes are that the reason 5th ed sells more apps than 3rd ed is that the latest 5th ed phones have the Ovi client on board, and the 3rd ed devices do not.
That means that 3rd ed users have to download and install the client themselves, and most people won't do that. Hence the differences in sales.
We have already seen that ease-of-use is the main reason most people will use an App Store,and this means we can put a number on ease-of-use, it gives you ten times as many customers.
Problem is, I don't see a mechanism to get these 3rd ed devices on board too. If most people are not installing the Ovi client, even more of them won't flash a new rom, especialy because PC Suite doesn't tell you there is a new and better one available.
I think nokia need to make a roadmap of the device+OS.
Why? Because nokia still churning out the S60v3FP2 devices such as Nokia E5, X5, C5. If this platform were deemed absolute by software developer, then this platform will be surely take a big hit like a palm or MS kin platform.
Or maybe.... nokia need to make the Symbian^3 backport to the non-touch screen area for the devices without the touch screen.
I'm one of nokia fans that have been been putting my money on hold for buying new devices. I was about to buy the Nokia E71 then E72, but then think that I should instead buy the S60v5 devices, but then hold to buy N97/mini because I think the performance over price is not worthed, and chose to wait for S^3 devices instead. With C6/N8 were comming into horizon, the S60v3FP2 devices will surely take a hit even further, as more and more developer and people with money will buy the S^1/S^3 devices over the old v3 devices.
So, if nokia really want the old v3 devices still considered a good platform, nokia need to think a strategy for it. Or maybe stating that the S60v3FP2 platform would will be used 'forever', and will be scale down to cheaper devices over time. (I know this is what they did, but developer need nokia to write down this).
You see this no problem between different os versions (where it is maybe understandable) but this a general prob of symbian.
But i also have to say this prob is not one of symbian alone. Also winmob has a similar problem (software often hast to fit special screen sizes to run correctly) and android has even the same prob. Many different os versions makes consistent software developing difficult.
If you think Symbian is fragmented, try take a look at Android devices, now that is a catastrophy!
Try upgrading your Nexus One from Android 2.1 to 2.2 and watch half your apps crash after that! Or take some apps tested on the HTC Hero and try to run those on the Nexus One or Desire - BAM! Crashes half the time.
On Symbian at least it is only a few and far between S60 5th apps that have incompatibilities between Nokia/SonyEricsson/Samsung i8910.
The 8910i's original firmware have some crappy bugs, but sorted out with one of the HX firmwares and you have rather decent compatibility on that device as well.
Symbian is actually quite consistent. The few times when there are incompatibilities, it is usually because of the chipset and driver being different, which can cause some games that makes certain assumptions on the graphics system to fail on other phones with other chipsets.
Good example of this is the Polarbit games that only seem to work on Nokia S60 5th devices and not the SonyEricsson and 8910i S60 5th Ed ones. The main difference here is that the SonyEricsson and the 8910i have different graphics hardware.
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