Symbian phones such as Nokia's N95 haven't sold well in North America, but the Symbian Foundation wants to change that.
(Credit: CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--Americans are ready for smartphones, but is Symbian ready for America?
One of the most important factors that will dictate the long-term success of the Symbian Foundation will be its ability to make inroads in North America, which has been a bit of a enigma to London-based Symbian and Nokia, its former controlling partner. Think about it: Symbian has the lion's share of the worldwide market for smartphone operating systems, but new Symbian Foundation executive director Lee Williams agreed that if we walked outside the Symbian Partner Event in San Francisco, we'd be hard-pressed to find a passerby familiar with the mobile operating system.
It's a new era for Symbian, as it transitions from its past as an independent software developer controlled by Nokia into an industry consortium responsible for creating an open-source mobile operating system. The Symbian Foundation plans to release its first distribution to members during the first half of 2009, and phones with the operating system should follow in 2010.
With just under 50 percent of the total market for smartphone operating systems--but slowing sales--Symbian occupies an interesting place as smartphones evolve into sophisticated mobile computers. The vast majority of that market share comes from Europe and Asia, the legacy of lukewarm interest in smartphones from U.S. carriers and consumers for several years.
Research in Motion and Apple are the companies cleaning up in the U.S. market at the moment, spurred by the response to Apple's iPhone a year and a half ago. But those companies provide a high-end smartphone experience that not all customers want, said Roger Smith, director of next-generation services at AT&T, which sells both products.
As a result, organizations like Google and Symbian are jockeying for position as all mobile phones become smarter, and require more sophisticated operating systems than currently run on so-called "feature phones." Williams thinks the key to winning over North American consumers is to heighten awareness of Symbian with both consumers and developers in this hemisphere.
Developers need only to be reminded that Symbian has a proven record as a smartphone operating system, Williams said. The Foundation is planning to unify the three previous user interfaces that could be found on Symbian phones in favor of the S60 interface, which will make it much easier to guarantee that applications will work as designed across all Symbian phones.
Williams also thinks that developers will prefer the distribution method that the Symbian Foundation is planning for its applications. Call it the "app mall," as compared to Apple's App Store; Symbian wants to provide multiple ways for developers to distribute their applications, including through carriers, handset makers, some type of Symbian-branded application store, or on their own. And developers will get to keep all their revenue, rather than giving Apple a 30 percent cut of iPhone applications or the carrier a similar percentage for Android applications.
The harder sell will be consumers. Nokia's Symbian phones have not sold particularly well in the U.S., although it's not clear if those who are using them are aware of who developed the software running their phone. And the company doesn't appear to be trying to make any kind of breakthrough in user interface or features with its development efforts, focusing instead on marshaling developers and improving an operating system so popular with smartphone users outside the U.S.
Williams agreed that Symbian will have to spend the time and money required to raise awareness of its brand among U.S. consumers by showing off what the software can accomplish. One way that will be easier is that Symbian has some heavy-hitting partners on its back in Nokia and AT&T, who can carry a lot of the marketing water for Symbian.
In truth, it really doesn't have any other choice. Symbian devoted an hour of Thursday's event explaining to Symbian partners how the U.S. market was different from the European market, emphasizing points such as the fact that most Americans don't use public transportation to get to work.
The lure is clear, however. There is a huge potential market waiting to be tapped as North Americans grow more accustomed to doing more with their phones, hundreds of millions of potential customers.
"The largest percentage of products I've ever seen are focused on North America," Williams said, referring to Nokia's product development plans. It's still very early in the history of this market, with plenty of time for companies and consumers to forge allegiances with products.
But in a market that moves as quickly as this one, when the first Symbian Foundation phones roll out in 2010 things could be very different across the pond.
AT&T's Roger Smith implied a limited future for Java-based phones at the largest carrier in the U.S.
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News)SAN FRANCISCO--AT&T is planning for a future with just one or two mobile operating systems running on its products, and that may imply a limited future for Java phones at the carrier.
Roger Smith, director of next-generation services at AT&T, implied that Symbian might become the operating system of the future for the phones that AT&T offers subscribers under its own brand. During a talk at the Symbian Partner Event here, Smith promised "dramatic consolidation from AT&T in terms of the mobile platforms and tool chains that we support," and that appears to signal a limited future with AT&T for Java.
"Java has not been a success," Smith said. "It's not because Java is bad, but we didn't manage it effectively." Smith was referring to the much-maligned "fragmentation" problems in the mobile world; in this industry, that word carries the same stench that "proprietary" used to have in enterprise computing.
Solving the fragmentation problem is a key motivation behind the interest in operating systems like Google's Android and the LiMo Foundation's software. Carriers like AT&T want an operating system that they can put their own stamp on, with their own brand, their own applications, and their own unique experience, but they also need support from third-party developers because they simply can't develop everything.
Software platforms like Java and Qualcomm's BREW were supposed to give third-party developers a common platform to write to across different phones and carriers, but in practice, carriers and handset makers essentially "fragmented" those platforms into their own little walled gardens with different user interfaces and requirements. That meant third-party developers had to pick a carrier or phone on which to create their magic and basically start over if they wanted to put that application on another phone; an unattractive proposition.
And as mobile phones have started to become more and more like mobile computers, the software on those phones needs to become more and more sophisticated to run intriguing applications, Smith said. Java doesn't reach down far enough into the lower levels of the phone to exploit hardware in the manner that full-fledged operating systems do, he said.
Enter Symbian. Nokia is attempting to get in on demand for mobile operating systems by acquiring the Symbian operating system and releasing it as a free open-source project managed by an industry consortium called the Symbian Foundation at some point next year. Despite flirting with Android all year, AT&T was a founding member of the Symbian Foundation and is eying that operating system as a candidate for the basic phones that AT&T offers under its own brand.
"We want to standardize our platforms on a platform like Symbian that is mature and effective," Smith said. Obviously, AT&T will continue to offer third-party phones like Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry, but it has lots of customers who aren't looking for the type of high-end experience offered by those products, yet still want a basic Internet-capable phone, he said.
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