“The number of operating systems in the handheld market will increase next year with the release of the much-anticipated Symbian-powered devices. But, while Symbian was set to dominate the consumer space, analysts said, it would be a while before the operating system posed a real threat the dominance of Microsoft and Palm in corporate computing.” Read the report at AustralianIT.
Symbian No Threat to Microsoft
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It’s like saying that the Kia Magentis is a threat to Microsoft. Nonsense.
Microsoft has an embedded OS running on PDAs and smartphones you know.
“THE number of operating systems in the handheld market will increase next year with the release of the much-anticipated Symbian-powered devices.”
Well Symbian is out there already. Nokia 7650 is running Symbian’s OS. Is it a PDA? Well, yes. With that in mind, Nokia already got roughly 50% market share in PDAs in Europe this autumn. With this one single smartphone. And more models will come next year, much more.
Not a threat? Think again.
of course symbian is a threat to MS. It threatens their position in PDAs and potential position in wireless. You have to dig a bit further to see just how full of it MS is.
Why is MS in the cell phone and PDA markets anyway. They don’t make MS money. two reasons
1) MS obviously hopes to make money there
2) MS wants to dominate every platform where computing (even handheld) could occur
Look out 5-10 years from now. every cell phone will have a os and enough processing power to do simple things like word processing and web browsing and a lot more. What happens if people get sharp and they start connecting their cell phones/pdas to an external screen, keyboard and wired lan source (say a cable modem). Good bye MS desktop monopoly is what happens.
The processing power and OS will be there in phones to do about 90% of what the average joe does today on the desktop. That is a threat that MS knows is there and they won’t leave that without a response.
net: symbian is a huge threat to ms, and MS knows it. watching MS go up against fellow monopoly-like boy nokia will make for fun watching. Yeah yeah i know nokia only holds 37% of the market but they still play a lot of the same “games” as MS.
As far as I understand that article the author talks only about business software, which is already available on PocketPC and Palm platform but not on Symbian. Without this software these devices are useless for enterprices. I can only partly agree on this point. This is fact that there are much more developers who develop for Palm and PocketPC, some of them even develop business-relivant software, but don´t forgett JAVA MicroEdition. I suppose most programms for Symbian are written in JAVA and not in C++. And there are many people who use this platform and there is already business-relivant software available. JAVA 2 Me knows XML and SOAP, so even WebServices as the last hype are available. I never heard that Palm haas anything to do with WebServices. So Symbian devices are very ready for the enterprice and they are a great threat to Microsoft and Palm.
Greetings from Anton
Now Nokia is a monopolist, even though it has about 34% of the market?
And what games would Nokia be playing? Like, strictly adhering to open standards, always working with their competitors in standards bodies and associations (like the WAP organisation, the GSM organisation, Symbian itself that was founded together with Motorola and Ericsson)? These are all known facts, I’m not saying anything new here.
But perhaps you meant something different, something evil and obscure, hidden behind those quotes surrounding theword “games”…
RE: which is already available on PocketPC and Palm platform but not on Symbian
Eh? I guess you mean Symbian does not have a word processor/spreed sheet and db. It does, but the so-called smartphone and Palm devices are more PDA than phone, thus ship with this, MOST of the current phones using Symbian are more phone than PDA, thus do not (imagen tring to use a Word Processor with a standard phone keyboard!). Not all are, the newest Nokia 9xxx is based on Symbian (or EPOC, might be a little too old for Symbian).
This is fact that there are much more developers who develop for Palm and PocketPC
This will change over time, but it is more likly that developers will move to J2ME, so the developers application will run on all three main devices (J2ME implementations exist for both WinCE and Palm).
JAVA 2 Me knows XML and SOAP, so even WebServices as the last hype are available.
I wish, while 3rd party solutions exist, it is not in the MIDP 1.0 API’s
“And what games would Nokia be playing?”
Plenty of games. Europe’s wireless boys are playing every bit as dirty as MS. Europeans just won’t look at it because its okay so long as its a european company. By the way a better name for the european union would have been the hypocrisy union or the do as i say not as i do union. Ever wonder how it turned out that the license holders to UMTS were… amazing….. the same ones as in gsm plus a few token japanese companies. Think that is coincidence? its not. Europe is so far behind in wireless (the science of moving information via electromagnetic waves that travel in free space not the art of SMS or putting color screens on phones which they now renamed wireless) that it hurts me to even think about it.
The Fud and lies that have eminated from Europe regarding Wireless are just too much. If they did real R&D then they might not have to spend so much on hype advertising. MS is actually good for this industry because at least they have a chance of bringing some balance to it and perhaps turning the foundation of BS off.at very least they will offer competition.
that said, i still believe MS seems too tarnished to get much support in that industry and rightfully so. in other words i am not a fan of either.
Compared to the fragmented mobile phone infrastructure in the US? where companies would rather compete than form alliances via interconnection agreements which could result in better coverage for the customer and non-duplication of capital expenditure.
I have the same debate with people who scream to the hills of how great the US is. Here is a hint, the US isn’t that great.
Just look at your fragmented banking system. Heck, it has been 30 years since the first foundations stones were laid in New Zealand for the EFTPOS infrastructure, and here we are 30 years later, I can go to my local pie cart and pay for my meal via EFTPOS using a EFTPOS machine hooked up to a mobile phone. The US OTOH are still still pissing around just to get peoples cards to work at other banks ATM’s. I mean really, if a country can’t even get their banking together, what chance do they have in terms of the mobile phones?
As for high tech deployments and development, are you really that ignorant of NTT Docamo in Japan? who rolled out the first 3G network. Or how about Korea which is leading the world in wirless roll outs.
So, you did NOT mention any of those “””games””” that Nokia allegedly plays, after all. You moan about the European union, the European mobile operators, about New Zealand, just a lot of hot air, a lot of blah blah to show that ho hum you are gona show me, that you’re gona write stuff, oh yeah. And then you do not say what are those “””””games”””””.
bah
I didn’t notice it was Matthew that mentioned that one. Other than that, I stnad by what I wrote.
The Fud and lies that have eminated from Europe regarding Wireless are just too much. If they did real R&D then they might not have to spend so much on hype advertising.
You bash Euroupe for not doing R&D but completely forget top mention that that most of the patents on WCDMA are owned by Ericsson, something to do with them er, developing it perhaps?
As for GSM, not being open, Qualcomm sell phones with GSM as well as CDMA. If on the other hand Qualcomms network infrastructure and standards are so great why is not a single European operator – or anyone else outside the US – buying them?
GSM Has big advantages, I can send a text message to someone on another network in another country without problems. Try that in the US. I can buy a phone in one country and it works in the next without changing SIM or anything.
Their not perfect granted, the govenments doing the Auctions have screwed up the industry badly. But then the auctions were an American idea…
If you are going to slag off an entire continent at least do it for a good reason…