Symbian 10 Years Old
Symbian is actually 10 Year’s old this June! It’s thought provoking to think back what’s been achieved over this time.
Despite the fact that Symbian has the largest slice of the World Mobile OS market, this slice is only about 7%. Why is this so small given that Symbian has been in business for 10 years? Why is it that newcomers such as Apple (and possibly Android) can compete so easily? Here are some random thoughts.
Symbian wasted a lot of time evolving form factors that, in the end, were eventually developed by its licensees. It also worked at the bleeding edge of hardware. It’s much easier for other new companies to use existing hardware now. Also 3G is only now becoming a (Chinese) commodity rather than a bleeding edge problem. Similarly, only now are 3G networks mass market. Only now are network operators opening up. For the last 10 years network operators have stymied the mobile market. I think Symbian was too early to the market.
Symbian has suffered with having only one major OEM (Nokia) shipping devices in large numbers. Symbian is now suffering from not being a ‘complete’ OS. Instead, S60 and UIQ have become platforms in themselves with some constituent parts that should really be in the OS itself. This has probably made the Symbian OS less compelling to other handset OEMs who now have to add too much to the base Symbian OS to create a new phone to compete with UIQ or S60.
Symbian still has opportunities. It’s best placed for mid-range implementations that, as Gartner research has shown, may become more popular in short term due to Worldwide economic troubles. Mid range implies single CPU. Nokia have only just touched on what’s possible with the affordable single-cpu 6124, 6210, 6220, 6120 rather than E and N series that are actually expensive, more niche, devices.
As an aside, if you are developing for mobile, I wouldn’t be too disheartened that Symbian only have 7% of the market. This is currently the top end of the market and represents the kind of people who are willing to try and pay for new applications and services. My experience is that the mid to low end market is currently more sceptical, cost concious and much less likely to try and buy new applications and services. Also, 7% of a large market is still a large number of people.
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