Symbian

Research In Motion and Apple are duking it out for the top spot in the U.S. smartphone market, according to the "Global Smartphone Report" released yesterday by Nielsen.

Among the 13,243 smartphone owners polled by Nielsen, Apple's share has grown steadily over the past year, with the iPhone grabbing 28 percent of them all in the third quarter. On the flip side, RIM has seen its share for the BlackBerry drop to 30 percent for the same period. Those numbers include all people in Nielsen's panel who own smartphones.

The difference in demand between … Read more

It sells just a single smartphone, but Apple is now the world's fourth largest mobile phone supplier, according to the "Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker" report released yesterday by IDC.

Thanks to record shipments of the iPhone 4, which arrived on the U.S. market at the start of the summer, Apple shot past several other mobile phone vendors, landing in fourth place ahead of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion. For the third quarter, Apple shipped 14.1 million phones, 1.7 million more than RIM and 3.7 million more than Sony Ericsson, which fell out of the top five list for the first time since 2004. This was also the quarter in which the iPhone 4 reached 17 additional countries to establish its beachhead worldwide. With heavy demand for smartphones, Apple also joined RIM as the second smartphone-only vendor among the top five.… Read more

Opera Software, continuing to develop its mobile browsers, today released a beta update to Opera Mini for Nokia's Symbian S60 smartphones.

Opera Mini 5.1 beta (mobile download) makes some small but significant tweaks to the Opera Mini browser for the Symbian platform, including integrating support for the phone's native copy and paste, as well as the native e-mail client.

That means you'll be able to use the phone's copy and paste functionality and also trigger the Nokia smartphone's e-mail composition window when you click a mail-to link in the Opera browser.

Other additions include … Read more

QNX unveiled its CAR Application Platform that uses mobile phones to integrate the latest technology and applications with a vehicle's infotainment system. The Canadian company's platform goes beyond Bluetooth audio streaming and uses Nokia Terminal Mode and Apple iPod Out to connect smartphones with the vehicle's multimedia head unit, opening the door to adding e-mail, social networking, music, navigation, and other applications, such as parking spot finders, to in-dash screens.

The integration strategy will enable users to eliminate the learning curve for mastering a new audio system. QNX will also be able to add new functionality quickly without hardware or software upgrades. The downside is that the available features depend on the phone and apps you use.

Based on QNX's promotional videos, it appears non-iPhone users will get the most robust functionality. QNX uses the VPN protocol to connect Terminal Mode-equipped smartphones with the vehicles' multimedia head unit, replicating the device's interface on the navigation screen. The car occupants can use the audio and steering-wheel controls or touch-screen to interact with the phone, and QNX will disable certain features it deems unsafe while driving. Unfortunately, iPod Out doesn't offer the type of data integration available on Terminal Mode-equipped phones.

Terminal Mode was developed by Nokia and Consumer Electronics for Automotive (CE4A), an association of which BMW, Audi, Daimler, and Volkswagen are members. QNX, formerly a subsidiary of Harman International, was purchased by Research In Motion last April. BMW offers Harman Kardon branded audio systems in its product line, and has already expressed intent to use QNX's platform to incorporate iPod Out and read BlackBerry e-mails to passengers.

QNX unveiled the new platform at the Society of Automotive Engineers Convergence 2010 conference last week in a modified Chevrolet Corvette, which also demoed QNX's dynamically reconfigurable digital instrument cluster. The feature offers two different displays: driving mode, which shows the tachometer and speedometer, or information mode, which shows weather, navigation, or entertainment information. … Read more

Nokia is making Qt its sole application development framework and is supporting HTML5--both of which the company says are designed to benefit mobile app developers and customers.

The mobile phone maker said today its Qt decision means that mobile apps will be compatible with future versions of Symbian and MeeGo. Previously, developers could write directly for Symbian or MeeGo, each with its own specific development tools and environment.

With Qt, developers can create apps that runs on both smartphone platforms.

Though Nokia will be switching to the MeeGo platform for its N series of smartphones, the company has said it … Read more

The head of the Symbian Foundation, Lee Williams, has quit.

According to a statement from Symbian today, Williams stepped down for "personal reasons." He has been immediately replaced with Tim Holbrow, the foundation's chief financial officer.

Williams' departure is the latest in a string of exits associated with the mobile operating system, which--since Samsung and Sony Ericsson abandoned the platform in the last month--is now supported only by Nokia, Fujitsu, and Sharp. Recent months have seen the resignations of Nokia chief Olli Pekka-Kallasvuo, smartphone division chief Anssi Vanjoki, and Ari Jaaksi, the chief of Nokia's other … Read more

Nokia today began shipping its new C7 smartphone around the world.

The follow-up to the recently launched N8 smartphone, the C7 is Nokia's second phone powered by its new Symbian 3 mobile operating system.

The 3.5-inch glass touch-screen is an active-matrix OLED that offers 640x360 pixel resolution. The C7 offers an 8-megapixel camera that can shoot stills and high-definition video. Bluetooth 3.0 connectivity and 8GB of memory are part of the package as well.

But the real focus of the new phone is social networking.

The C7 can display multiple home screens to receive live updates from … Read more

To the casual observer, Nokia would seem to be a company with something to prove.

Executive changes, pressure from the Android OS and the iPhone, advanced new hardware from the likes of HTC and Samsung, and the company's lack of carrier relationships in the U.S. have watchers and analysts wondering how long Nokia can hang onto its global dominance in mobile phones. But the company's executive vice president of mobile services, Tero Ojanpera, doesn't seem to be feeling the heat. Either that, or he doesn't have a lot of answers.

In the questions you sent … Read more

Samsung will withdraw support for the Symbian platform and will close its Symbian developer facilities by the end of the year.

The announcement, made yesterday in a post on the Samsung Mobile Innovator site, said the developer lab will be closing its doors on October 29, followed by the closure of the Samsung Symbian forums on December 30.

Samsung said all forum and development content will be removed on December 31 and that outstanding questions should be posted before December 10. As well as removing the forums on New Year's Eve, Samsung said that day would be the last … Read more