An old bird is not to be caught with chaff
|
|
|
Nokia CEO hopes Symbian will save his job
FINNISH PHONE MAKER Nokia is trying hard to promote its obsolescent Symbian operating system, claiming that it will shift 50 million devices running Symbian in the coming years.
After posting dire financial results, embattled Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo tried to put some positive spin on the company's 40 percent drop in profits for the quarter. Apparently the Symbian^3 operating system that the firm bunged into its flagship N8 smartphone is wildly popular with mobile network operators. "The feedback from operators on the N8 and Symbian^3 has been very good," said Kallasvuo.
The CEO, who pleaded for an end to the speculation regarding whether or not he'll be shown the door, is pinning his and the firm's future on Symbian succeeding. "I'm optimistic that the N8 will be the first step towards overcoming the challenges we face at the high end of our portfolio," said Kallasvuo, before he had to deal with the fact that Nokia had announced that all future N-series devices will actually be loaded with its Meego operating system.
Apparently Meego is "about leveraging speed and agility to create industry leading flagship solutions," and Symbian is about "leveraging scale and expanding the smartphone category to cover a broad mass market footprint." That's the sort of leveraging that investment banksters would have been proud of, before going bust.
With Nokia talking about 'sweet spots' and 'unique strengths' of both operating systems, it's clear that the firm has no idea what its doing. Whereas Google has managed to create an operating system that is able to serve smartphones, tablets and even televisions, Nokia seems to be determined to keep Symbian alive, regardless of how inept it looks compared to Apple's Iphone OS and Google's Android.
Rather than simplifying things for developers and users, Nokia believes it's better to fragment an already bloated product range to lure mobile networks in the hopes that they'll be able to woo punters. But judging by the profits posted by the firm yesterday, Nokia isn't exactly doing a bang up job. µ
Share this:
Share
After going back to Nokia last year since 2000 I liked the Symbian OS it was easy to use and great that you can download programs to expand it. Yeah sure it's Ovi Store is not like Apple's but it was getting there over the year.
If people where interested in making more programs for Symbian it would be just as big. I got my free upgrade the Nokia X6 16GB but sent it back as I didn't like it, basically it's biger version of the 5800 but I prefered my 5800 more.
As stated above Symbian needs a revamp something to make it stand out more and it will be back in the big leagues.
The Nokia strategy is to have Symbian for the mid-range devices, which should compete with Android, and MeeGo for the high end which really has no competition as it's a mobile computer OS with phone functionality, rather than a dedicated phone OS as is the case with Symbian, Android and iOS.
With Qt on Symbian and MeeGo, these two platforms will be largely API compatible as far as applications are concerned - develop once, deploy on many devices and operating systems.
Nokia even have work under way to get Qt onto Android, so a developer looking to target Android, Symbian and MeeGo only needs to choose Qt and it's problem solved - instant access to tens of millions of devices.
Nokia have their software strategy, and it looks good. Choosing Android would be a major step backwards but I can see why it would appeal to the simpleton observer who knows nothing about MeeGo or Qt.
Symbian and MeeGo have a bright future, but only assuming that Nokia can execute perfectly.
Ovi continues to be a complete disaster however, and it's this repeated failure in the services space which will most likely sink Nokia.
Nokia gained popularity because they made simple and durable phones that are easy to use.
I don't know what their objectives are apart from making money, but their smart phones, even with superb hardware, are sub-par when compared to most of the other players on the market simply because of the software - namely the OS.
I have an N900 and I think it's a well engineered piece of hardware with the exception of the resistive touch screen. For a flagship device however, the software is childish and incomplete. I also owned an s60 device prior to this one and the battery life and reception were awesome, but those factors alone could not make the device a winner. I couldn't convince anyone I knew to buy it instead of another company's offering.
They need to decide whether they want to sell phones or fight a losing battle in the software department. The ovi store, ovi apps and ovi maps - practically everything OVI, are just not convincing; they cannot generate serious interests or hoopla for anyone to look at my phone or my maps and say, "I want to get that instead of an iPhone," for example.
For those of you Nokia fans like myself - here are a few pet peeves with my N900: no useful maps in Asia (Korea, Japan, etc..), fonts to display Asian characters (I had to get Droid fonts), no easy way to turn off each radio (I had to download additional tools to turn off the cell radio and use wifi or bt only), terrible touch screen, mediocre battery life and a host of other things.
Maemo is incomplete, Meego looks promising but they still need to decide what role they want to play. And the N8, well - I hope it'll be able to keep their head above water.
Talkin about S60 series of Symbian (S40 is not really an OS)
-Multitasking at its finest since day one.
-Not fancy but effective UI
-fast, not ultrafast, but fast considering is real multitasking
Nokia phones:
-These are real phones, most of them at least. Several successful models offer a lot of bang for the buck, including:
-Symbian OS.
-Superb battery life.
-Outstanding loudspeaker performance.
-Outstanding sound quality in both music and calls department.
-Durable and reliable.
-Not ultraexpensive. Think in Nokia 5800, look at all the features it got and the price.
What you're talking about.
Symbian is WAY more powerful than either iOS or Android... it just needs a revamp in the UI department.
iOS:
-Alarm is very basic doesn't even have a snooze function...
-No Mass Storage support... can't just drag and drop the files.
-Bluetooth = useless, can't transfer files, nothing
-Can't change tones for SMS/Email
-No free navigation
-No SIP Integration
-No Widgets
-No Themes
Android:
Is running in a VM environment and needs 1GHz CPU to run more or less smoothly.
Maps can't be pre-loaded/cached for offline use, if you don't have a data plan Google navigation is useless.
And, No Themes and No SIP integration.
Nokia is working on their strategy, Symbian^3 is a transitional OS, Symbian^4 and Meego will look great and match iOS and Android in looks, as for functionality.... well look above.
After my last wonderful experience with the incredibly sluggish Symbian OS on the N73, I decided to never buy another Symbian phone.
Overall it's not awfully designed, but even if they have improved the performance by throwing more hardware at it, it's still a dead end platform.
There are virtually no apps, and the handsets are hardly stand out.
I decided against Windows Mobile for similar reasons. It was just clunky and unstable. The HTC handset was pretty awful too. It's almost a joke that Windows NT4 performed better on lower performance hardware. It makes me wonder why they don't just port NT3.5 to ARM.
Icon based interface: check
Fast: check
Small: check
Secure: debatable, but I'll say check
And then there's Apple. With a 1920's Henry Ford attitude of they will make one simple design and give you anything you want as long as it's what they want you to have. It's not the phone for me.
So, the only remaining candidate is Android. It works pretty well, and once they sort out the fundamental design flaw that's fragmenting the market(drivers being part of the kernel), it's going to be everything to everyone.
Here's a prediction for Nokia:
1) Their sales will continue to decline
2) Their CEO will be replaced in the near future
3) The new CEO will walk down to the R&D area and find the guy who's ported Android to their floundering flagship phone.
4) That phone will be re-released as a minor version change but with Android on it.
5) Nokia's reputation for tough, well designed hardware, and positive reviews will convince people to try it out.
6) Their sales will start improving again.
In business, it's always been about location. Physically or figuratively.
Nokia is figuratively about as far from the application driven sales model as it can get right now.
If Kallasvuo's job is indeed tied to the success of Symbian, I believe it's time to start making bets on who'll be the next chief, and how long the Nokia board will wait before swinging the ax.
That's the only conclusion in light of the incredible market advantage that iPhone (a closed environment) and Android (an open environment) have.
Unless Nokia vows the world with functionality I'm quite doubtful they are even able to deliver if everything goes their way, the story is pretty much done for Symbian, and we'll simply be waiting to see how long it takes for Nokia to admit the same.
I would not be surprised if trying to push Symbian will be for Nokia what pushing OS/2 was for IBM in the early days of graphical UI computing. Yes, OS/2 was technically better, but Windows 3 (blechh) was what answered the high volume demand. (Apple thankfully didn't even try to license the single threaded single-color Mac OS until it was way too late.)
Symbian looks pretty good compared to Windows mobile 7.
- It is open source, so people can actually have a clue as to what they are running on their phones (and what their phones are doing).
- Windows malware does not run on it (however, Symbian viruses exist and can take over these phones).
- It multitasks.
- It runs fast, even on low-powered processors.
However, I agree that we have enough reliable, all-purpose mobile OS's (Android, Meego, WebOS), and making developers' and users' lives more complex by having to support/learn additional OS's is probably counter-productive. Microsoft would have been smart to buy Symbian BEFORE it went open-source (and was thus rendered unsuitable for Microsoft's proprietary needs) instead of spending billions writing Vista mobile (AKA Kin), then throwing this away and patching it (AKA Windows "mobile 7") and then billions more paying off developers to write apps for it. But Microsoft once again took the financial brute-force method...good luck with that.