symbian – ɔimoɈɒ

Here Be Morons

Kevin Tofel at GigaOm reports on a curious trend. U.S. owners of Symbian-based handsets click 2.7 times more mobile ads than those with iPhones, according to April data due to be released by mobile ad company Smaato on Monday. And this is in a country where, relatively speaking, Symbian phones have very little presence. You … Continue reading “Here Be Morons”

Kevin Tofel at GigaOm reports on a curious trend.

U.S. owners of Symbian-based handsets click 2.7 times more mobile ads than those with iPhones, according to April data due to be released by mobile ad company Smaato on Monday. And this is in a country where, relatively speaking, Symbian phones have very little presence.

You can interpret these results in several ways. My own recollection of using Symbian was that every aspect of it, from specially optimised mobile sites to expensive apps was that there were ads everywhere. It was an advertisers dream – companies would let you put ads on every screen, cluttering an already ugly interface and squeezing out the actual content.

The Symbian Foundation didn’t really encourage anything better and it is really confusing that a company like Nokia would bet the farm on something so primitive and evidently so unsuited to modern markets.

But I guess the reality is much simpler. When you’ve got iPhones, Android, Palm and Blackberry out there, staying on Symbian just indicates a lack of awareness. People still on Symbian in 2010 are morons.

Symbian NetBooks? Why not?

For kicks and giggles, the Symbian Foundation ported their platform to run on Atom, the Intel chipset which seems to be powering these popular NetBooks. Engadget wrote: “the only question left to be answered is whether there’s a place in the world for a Symbian-powered netbook.” The irony here is that the Symbian OS first … Continue reading “Symbian NetBooks? Why not?”

For kicks and giggles, the Symbian Foundation ported their platform to run on Atom, the Intel chipset which seems to be powering these popular NetBooks. Engadget wrote:

“the only question left to be answered is whether there’s a place in the world for a Symbian-powered netbook.”

The irony here is that the Symbian OS first appeared on small PDA-like and in some cases, NetBook-alike devices. The real issue (and what Engadget means I think) is whether the proliferating number of NetBooks and potential operating systems (Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OS X “Hackintosh”, several flavours of “desktop” Linux, Android), is there any point in chasing the NetBook market.

It won’t be for me. I found it very hard to use a NetBook and ended up giving it away to family who wanted a tiny laptop.

And with Nokia’s current revenue issues it might service them better to address their current markets. For last quarter their operating profit was only $72 million (down from $2 billion in the year ago quarter). They shipped only 80% of their 1Q08 numbers as well. In the smartphone market, their shipments dropped from 14.6 million to 13.7 million over the last year as they content with strong competition from RIM and Apple. They are pinning a lot o hope on their 5800 touchscreen phone, the only touchscreen phone in their arsenal.

I wish they’d pay more attention to their Maemo platform though. Mine (an N800) is feeling neglected as the last release I loaded was sluggish and had horrific usability bugs.

Nokia to launch Ovi Store. Bored Now.

Robin Wauters of Techcrunch writes: At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Appleâ€™s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move… …because we can’t expect Nokia to innovate, only copy. Developers of the apps will … Continue reading “Nokia to launch Ovi Store. Bored Now.”

Robin Wauters of Techcrunch writes:

At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Appleâ€™s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move…

…because we can’t expect Nokia to innovate, only copy. Developers of the apps will retain 70% of revenues (which might be enough to help people put up with developing on Symbian S40 and S60

The Ovi Store does include this feature:

Ovi Store is unique in its ability to target content based on where you are, when youâ€™re there, why you are where you are and who else has downloaded similar content.

Nokia estimates that this will reach 300 million users by 2012 which essentially means that we’ll be inundated with tat because everyone around us will be downloading it. Depending on where you live it’s going to be classical music or something tremendously chavtastic. It’s a bit like the Welcome to the Social feature of the Zune. I frankly don’t care what my neighbours are downloading, I want to know what’s good and I feel this feature will not build upon the wisdom of crowds but mob stupidity. I won’t even go into the privacy concerns of an online store front having your location and using that information to inform your neighbours what to buy.

Of course this will be a success. The model has already been proved (though whether the UI sucks will be another thing)

So why develop for the iPhone

Nick commented on my earlier post claiming that the cost of a development machine (a Mac) is simply too much to sway him to develop for the iPhone. This mentality ignores the principle that good apps on the iPhone MAKE money. CONNECTED DATA writes about why they develop for the iPhone: When the pitcher releases … Continue reading “So why develop for the iPhone”

CONNECTED DATA writes about why they develop for the iPhone:

When the pitcher releases the ball a batter has to decide where they will swing. If they wait too long the ball will be in the catcherâ€™s mitt before they decide. The same logic is why we are developing for the iPhone.
…
In learning about development for the Blackberry platforms, we have to create a build for each phone and each network. As a developer, I just canâ€™t afford it. Most of my customers right now have Blackberries. I think that in the next year or two they will have an iPhone.

Thing is, this problem already exists for Symbian devices and it will become an issue for Android devices as well. (It’s less of an issue for Windows Mobile because the UI is so generic ,and meaning that in the negative sense, that it doesn’t matter. It would be on a refrigerator and still be crap!)

David Pogue’s recent and damning review of the new BlackBerry Storm has the internet all a-twitter about the shortcomings of the device.

He writes:

“A light touch highlights the key but doesnâ€™t type anything. Only by clicking fully do you produce a typed letter. Itâ€™s way, way too much work, like using a manual typewriter.”
“Remember: To convert seconds into BlackBerry time, multiply by seven.”
“Freezes, abrupt reboots, nonresponsive controls, cosmetic glitches. Way too much ‘unexpected behavior.â€

Why do developers prefer the iPhone?

Developers arenâ€™t a tricky breed. They like to code cool applications and get paid for it. The benefit of coding for the iPhone/iPod Touch is that the specs are the same and arenâ€™t likely to change anytime soon. Coding across platforms takes more time, energy and money, and if the payoff isnâ€™t there, then developers arenâ€™t likely to adjust their code for the varying screensizes and hardware/software features specific to a particular phone.

Mark my words – it’s simple to develop for Android now that there’s a single hardware specification (in the form of the T-Mobile G1). It’ll be entirely different when there’s five competing hardware manufacturers.

Moving on…

Does anyone care about Android?

I got this video from “Mobile Web Wars Videos: Does Anybody Care About Android?“: A few things. Michael Arrington is funny. There seems to be a difference in opinion on what the mobile web represents to some. To Jason Devitt (CEO of Skydeck) it seems to be the ability to buy games (and presumably applications) … Continue reading “Does anyone care about Android?”

I got this video from “Mobile Web Wars Videos: Does Anybody Care About Android?“:

A few things.

Michael Arrington is funny.
There seems to be a difference in opinion on what the mobile web represents to some. To Jason Devitt (CEO of Skydeck) it seems to be the ability to buy games (and presumably applications) on mobile (using his $700M on games quote) but this doesn’t represent the mobile web to me. I’ve got to agree with Omar Hamoui that the mobile web really represents what can be done on the internet as a whole (and not just used to download applications).
People obviously feel very passionate about the subject to the point where they may ignore protocol if they feel their voice isn’t being heard.

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